The primary experience for every believer should be discipleship. Jesus only had to pass by in those early days, and there was a Presence. And Christians would ask, "Where do you live?" And His response, "Come and see." (John 1:37-39, 46)
Christ continues to walk even in our time. And when we recognize that Presence, and believe me, we do, we ask "Where do you live?" And He will say, "Come and see". And if you are wise, you will respond.
In this question, and in this response, lies the source of the truth that makes each and every one of us free. Christ expects the fire which He cast on this earth to be rekindled and He is depending on each and every one of us to help Him do it. (Luke 12:49)
In the Book of Acts (1:18) we read, "You will receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. You will be my witnesses, indeed to the ends of the earth."
Think back to the experience in the Upper Room, when Jesus was preparing His disciples for His departure. They were used to being with Him every minute; they were used to reaching out and touching Him. They were used to hearing His voice. And He is preparing them for the time that He will no longer be with them. Remember He is going to send a Comforter.
And He talked about the vine: "I am the vine, and you are the branches. . . . My Father and I will come to live within you." (John 15:1-9; John 14:23; John 17:20-21) And at our Baptism we are inserted into that Vine. And the Father and the Son come to live within us. We have the great love of a Father for His only Son, the great love of a Son returning to the Father, and the love of both of them flowing out through the Holy Spirit into each and every one of us.
Do you realize the power that has been given to us to help to ignite that fire in the world?
And we go through life HO-HUM. The witness to be given is what must become our reality, in the midst of the confusion and the chaos of our own time. The disciple is one who will come to know that Triune Community Who lives within. He will take time to be quiet and to listen. The disciple is one who is close enough to hear, and not only to hear, but to respond to Jesus' deepest question: "Do you believe in me?" (John 11:26)
And everything depends on my answer: my faith, any work that I do, my prayer. I believe in Jesus because all is anchored in my faith in Him as being present within me. (Matt 18:9) Not only present within me, but always going before me, and sending me out as the Father sent Him. This is the victory over the world: my faith. (I Jn 5:4) The Kingdom of God is not just words, it is power: the faith that speaks to our world today.
Like all Christians, those of us who have been called to the Religious Life, who live there, have acknowledged Christ. We have responded to His call, "Follow me". However, as a Religious, as with all Religious, we live that call out in a different pattern than you have been called to, or that you live. By living the Religious Life, our pattern says that we must not own anything, that we will not marry, that we will not make our own decisions. And all of these things are the roots of human life, but this is the pattern which God has called us to live by.
The moment of the call can be very dramatic. It can be very subtle. It can be very brief. It can be just a whisper. My moment of call happened in the stillness of the Convent Chapel. It was probably the first time in many, many years that I had allowed myself to be still and to listen. I did not hear any voices. I did not see any flashing red and green lights. But the stillness that I learned in that chapel I was able to take away with me. Because of that stillness, I went back to the nitty-gritty of everyday life, which was very busy and noisy, and yet, because I had that still center, I was able to be more attuned to the circumstances that came by me each day. It was in those circumstances that God spoke to me and told me what He wanted me to do with the rest of my life: "Be still, and know that I am God". (Psalm 46:10)
It can be just as simple as Jesus passing by. Remember John the Baptist stared at Him and said: "Look, the Lamb of God!". Hearing this, two disciples followed Jesus for a while. Jesus realized that they were following Him. He turned around and He asked: "What do you want?" (John 1:35-39) His Presence, His Presence touched the deepest core of their hearts. And that is what His Presence does. And His Presence is in each and every one of you. That Presence will draw everyone to Him. The disciples said: "Where do you live?". His response, "Come and see". So they went, they saw, they stayed with Him the rest of their lives. So when Jesus calls, it is not always with words. Having experienced His Presence is oft times sufficient.
Those of us who live the Religious Life, live by vowing to follow Jesus. When we do that, we live an incredible risk, the risk of His abandonment into our hands. But look back, because it was in His incredible abandonment, that He depends upon our capacity to love, our capacity to be faithful, no matter what the cost. (Philippians 2:5-8) And only in His vow to us can we vow to Him. In His fidelity is our faithfulness. Remember when He said: "Without Me, you can do nothing."? "But whoever believes in me will perform even greater works than mine." (John 14:12; 15:5) Do we believe that? I do.
Religious are called to be a sign. They are called to be a sacrament of Christ's Presence. The Communities in which we live are to be sacraments of the Resurrection -- remember, Jesus lives; He is NOT dead! We have vowed to Him not only with words, but with our lives. And it is up to us to live the Gospel with our lives.
In November of 1999, Archbishop George Carey addressed the General Synod in England during a debate about Religious Communities. And he backed a call for more Anglican monks and nuns by saying, "They witness to values which are so often scorned in our society." And he described the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience as "a three-fold protest against the tyranny of materialism, sexual idolatry, and unbridled individualism which oppress so many of us today". He went on to say that the "common assumption of many outside of the Church," (and I would say many inside the Church), "is that Religious Communities are out of touch and they are irrelevant." He goes on to say, "My experience has shown to me that the praying life -- (underlined: "praying") -- the praying life of Religious Communities is the greatest understanding of mission and unity. It gives the most awareness of human frailty and weakness, and the keenest expectation of God's amazing grace and mercy."
When I read that, I just gave thanks, because I look back in the history of my own Community, when our Mother Foundress in 1851, during the Victorian era, was looking to bring about a Religious Community in London, she really had to be a bit devious, because it was the call of God, it was her prayer life that was really giving her the impetus to do all the wonderful works of mercy that she was doing. But that part had to remain hidden. The bishops would accept Religious Communities, only if they were out there taking care of the poor, and doing all the works of mercy that had not been done for a long time.
So here is the Archbishop of Canterbury, looking not just at all of the good works that Religious do, but he is looking at what allows them to do those works -- their prayer life, and their intimacy with God.
All Religious Communities are different. God gives each Religious Community a specific ethos. It does not mean that the way we live at All Saints Convent is right, and the way that St Flibbertigibbet's Convent is wrong, because together we form a great mosaic, and together we do His will. But the one thing that gives us the power to do what we do, is our prayer life.
We bumble to Chapel in the morning at six o'clock. Some of us are wide awake. Some of us are half asleep. But we are there. And all through the day, we leave our work and we go to prayer. It is like the ebb and flow of the tides. Religious Communities are doing this all over the world. And then I hear people say, "Huh! Why bother with Religious Communities? We can get along without them." I don't think you can.
I live in an area that has been plagued, for the past three years, with power outages. And they come at very inappropriate times. And you go and flip the light-switch, and no light. You are going to have a retreat, but the freezers are out. You cannot use the computers. You really cannot function when the power is not there. And we have a fit! We get on the phone and we call a certain number, and eventually the power comes back on. I do not really know anything about the power-houses, or how the power from the river brings about our electricity. I just do not know all of those intricate things, but I know they are important, and I know they are there. And if they were not there, we would not have all the power that we have to live. So, if somebody put a bomb under our power-house, I would miss it, and so would you. And if the Religious Communities were removed, were taken away, I think you would notice the difference. But now that you know that we are around, and some of the things that we do, maybe you can help us in our prayer.
Religious take the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. And, as the Archbishop says, our vows should be a protest against the values of the world. But are they? Has the Religious Life just melted in to the world, so that you do not even know that they exist? And they do the same things in the same way as people in the world. Are we any longer a disturbing influence? Not as much as we should be. But if we are truly living our vows, we will be a disturbing influence.
Our vow of poverty: By the time I answered my call to the Religious Life, I had really worked hard on simplifying my life, and preparing myself for this vow that I was going to take. And when I arrived at the Convent, I thought that I had done a pretty good job. But I was not there very long before I realized that I had not gotten very far.
I realized how dependent I had been on the clothing that I wore. Because now I wore this very simple black dress, black shoes and stockings, a white veil that covered my hair. And, all of a sudden, I realized that my hair was my crowning glory. I could not use that any more.
When I came to the Community, all women wore make-up, and when you did not wear it, you looked ghastly. And when you stopped wearing it, it would take you at least six months for your natural color to return. Now, there I stood looking in the mirror, myself without all of my layers of veneer. I realized that I was used to a certain brand of toothpaste. I had listened to all the media hype that unless you use this, all of your teeth will fall out. A certain deodorant. A certain cold remedy. In the Religious Life you will get all of this, but you get what is on the shelf.
I realized that it is not always the things that we possess, but the things that we allow to possess us. So keep that in mind as I discuss the vow of poverty.
The professing of evangelical poverty is a means for fusing the members of Religious Life into one. There is something to say about dressing alike. In the period of renew that has occurred, many of the Communities have gone to secular dress. I'm not condemning that because that is probably a part of the ethos that God has called them to. But one Sister is going to look a little bit better in her clothes than the other one, or maybe she picked out something that really makes her look a little more chic. Dressing alike does bring some sort of unity.
Our most effective form of evangelization is the love and unity of our lives together.
And our poverty causes a radical sharing of all that we are. That phrase is important -- all that we are -- not just all that we have. But we are called to share all that we are, and all that we have, so that we may produce a community life that makes people stop and wonder.
When the world sees that all of our efforts are directed not to personal aggrandizement, but to the support and strengthening of our life in Christ, then we may be seen as those who stop the world, questioning the futile values that the world creates.
The vow of chastity: We cannot live the vow of chastity through our own efforts. It is impossible. Jesus made this very clear when speaking to His disciples (Matt 19:11-12). Not everyone can accept this teaching, that it is better not to marry. Only those to whom it is given to do so. I am allowed to live that vow of chastity, because God has given me that gift. It does not mean that it is easy, but the gift is there.
What is so important about this gift is not the fact that we forego marriage, or forego any genital expression. What is important is that we are totally consecrated to God. And by being totally consecrated to God, He enables us to love deeply with His love, in a much broader and universal manner. This vow enables us to love everyone. We do not have to worry about it. Our celibate lives have their source and their strength purely because of God's love, and because of this connection, we should not be afraid of taking the risk of loving.
If you look through history, you will see how Religious have loved. Look at the life of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, how she went and picked the dying off of the streets. Our own Community, when we came to the United States in 1872, Maryland was still suffering from some of the repercussions of the Civil War. Our Sisters came in from England. They worked with the colored people. They were able to love them, because they knew that God loved them so very much.
In our own century, in our Community, just fifteen years ago, when AIDS was just really beginning to escalate, we were able to take the victims of AIDS into our hospice, and love them. We are now about to bring the prisoners from the State of Maryland's prisons into our hospice to die, rather than die in the conditions that they would die in if they stayed there.
It is love that allows Religious to do the things that they do.
We have been taken over by His love, and it must be reflected and witnessed to the world by the quality of our love. The quality of our lives, back in our own Communities, these Communities that are supposed to be Communities of, or sacraments of, the Resurrection. We are not primarily chaste so that it will free us for ministry. We are primarily chaste so that we can love, that we can share God's love with all.
Now, we go the vow of obedience, which is a very, very difficult one for people in our century, and in our culture.
What does Religious obedience mean today?
By taking the vow of obedience, I commit myself, in freedom, to God's will. You must remember that God's purpose for our lives is permeated with love. So, I can lift myself, in freedom, to the living purpose of God, God's will. And like every other Christian, I pick up that element of baptismal life by which I am committed to God's loving purpose, and attempt to make a way of life out of it.
My concern is only one thing: that I do His will. Not mine, His.
I do not come to Religious Community, or even when I was working in the world -- as a Christian, you should not come to what you are doing purely because it is a service that you like to do, you feel comfortable in doing it. I do not come to do a service even that particularly suits me. But I come allowing the loving purpose of God's will to work itself out in me.
In my own life, in the Community, I can look in retrospect and see that happen. Before I entered Community, I was a nurse, (I'm still a nurse) and I functioned totally in crisis-oriented areas. This is the area in which I excelled. I loved it. I was comfortable in it. And I did not want to do any other kind of nursing. I came into the Religious Community, and I took my gift of nursing, it wasn't really mine, it was God's gift, and I turned it over to Him. He took it, and began to reform it, and I did not like it one iota.
It was like Bishop Parsons' loving to lecture and teach, and he was made the Dean of a seminary. He did not like it, but he gave himself over to God's loving purpose, and God indeed used him mightily.
So the first thing that I did -- I was assigned to be school nurse at the parish Day School. I like kids, but pediatrics was not my specialty. I was there for at least six years. Believe me, I learned a lot.
Then I was assigned to our branch house, which is on the Convent grounds, and at that point it was a residential school for the mentally retarded. I would never have chosen to work with the mentally retarded. Number one: I knew nothing about it, and number two: I would not look good. But I am here to say that those six years I worked with those mentally retarded children turned out to be one of the most powerful times of my life.
And then God took me into the area of working with the dying. Now, here is someone who work in crisis-oriented nursing, and if a machine would not do it, it could not be done. And so He has a sense of humor -- He brings me into the hospice ministry where technologies we pay no mind to. That loving purpose that takes care of our patients. To be with them when they die, to be in this segment of life with them, to share the love, to be in the passage with them, though we can only go so far, to prepare them for their real life. Whether you live one day or a hundred years, we are living in the kindergarten stage. This is the preparation for the great life ahead: living in the loving purpose of God.
By taking a vow of obedience, I make an act of faith that for me can best be lived out in Community. By taking a vow of obedience, I make a declaration that in my search for God's will for me, in my life in this Community, I need the gifts of the other members of this Community. I need their ideas. I need their guidance. I need their evaluation. I need them to help me with my decision-making. And remember, we are all people who have been touched deeply by the Spirit. And sometimes my spirit, or the Spirit of God within me, might get a little bit cloudy, but my Sister's is clear. So it is a constant time of discernment.
By this vow I commit myself, in freedom, to search for God's will with the gift of authority in the Community of which I am a part, knowing that that authority is being obtained from the same God, the same love that goes to the Son, the love that goes from the Son to the Father, and through the Spirit through each and every one of us.
And as one who lives under this vow of obedience, I must allow each and every member of my Community to stir me up, to make me think, and like Jesus, to ask the questions. And secondly, I must listen. I must listen to the Spirit of God speaking within me. And I must listen to the Spirit of God within each and every one of my Sisters. Thirdly, I must allow myself to be evaluated by each and every member of my Community. Sometimes we have a bright idea, and we really want to move on that idea. Maybe God wants us to, but not yet. I can not move on that idea without really listening to the Spirit within each one of my Sisters.
So, to sum this segment up: to be obedient is to allow myself to be stirred and questioned. Now, as I say these things, I want you to apply them to yourselves, because you, too, are disciples of Christ. And you, too, want to do His will. So as I propose these questions, do ask yourself.
To be obedient is to allow myself to be stirred and questioned?
To be obedient is to speak my opinion honestly, but always with
respect?
To be obedient is to allow my ideas and my plans to be evaluated?
To be obedient is to accept a decision once it is made (at least for the
present moment)?
To be obedient is to allow myself to be challenged, if I am not following
the decisions that have been made?
So this obedience, this vow of obedience, is a challenge for each and every member of the Community to attempt to know what God's will is for our lives, and then to do it.
The vowed Religious basically strives for a deeper union with Christ. We should be able to live in the midst of this world of chaos and confusion, reflecting Christ's Presence, reflecting Christ's love, and we should be able to love as He loves us. And we must abandon ourselves to the world as He abandoned Himself to us.
We are all called to make the Eucharist visible. Not just Religious, but all of you who are in this Church. We all made our Communions this morning. We are meant to do something with that Presence of Christ that came into us. If you no more than walk out those doors, and walk up the street, and smile at the person who passes by.
I love to think of our Lord's Mother in her pregnancy. For nine months, she walked the roads, and to everyone she passed by, she brought a blessing. We leave this Church after making our Communions, and we do the same thing. We go into a nursing home and hold a hand, we go into a conflicting situation -- we are not doing it alone. We are carrying Him with us.
Make the Eucharist visible. Make the world aware that His promise has been kept. This promise that: "Lo, I am with you always." (Matt 28:20b)
Remember: He is with us as being alive, and not dead. So let us go forth and share God's Good News.
Thank you.
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