V.J.E.

This year, as we prepare to celebrate the First Vows of our sisters, we want to share with you a series of reflections on how living our religious life and professing the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience allow us to live in freedom, totality, faithfulness, and fruitfulness each day. This series is inspired by St. Pope John Paul II’s reflections in the Theology of the Body.

This reflection on faithfulness is written by  Sr. Sara Cecilia Ferreira, HMSS.

Something that is often misunderstood about religious life is how our vocation can still be fruitful in terms of children. Of course, we take a vow of chastity, which means that we will never have biological children, but that does not mean that we will not have children. Something that has brought me the most joy in my vocation is watching my spiritual children grow. Through the vow of chastity, I am actually free to love more people as a spiritual mother. This motherhood is not limited by age or by physical distance but instead extends even farther than biological motherhood necessarily can. 

The Lord knows the desires of every woman’s heart to be a mother, and He does not just take that away when He calls a woman to religious life; instead, He uses that maternal heart to care for more of His children. One of my first experiences of this was on the March for Life in 2023. From Baton Rouge, we took eight coach buses full of students on a pilgrimage to the March for Life in Washington, DC. As we began our trip, my bus leader said, “We are a family on this bus,” and I was given a particular grace to see each child and adult on that bus as one of my own and to care for them as a mom would, spiritually and even physically at times. From that trip, the Lord gave me two particular children, a college student and a high school student, who I would remain in contact with through ministry and have a deeper understanding of that spiritual mother/child relationship. One of them became a seminarian one year ago and I was able to spiritually walk with him along that journey. When I got the email that he was accepted to seminary, I came to understand the true pride and joy that only a mother can have for her son. 

Something particular to spiritual motherhood is the unseen fruit and the trust that it demands. Romans 8:24-25 says, “For in hope we were saved. Now hope that sees for itself is not hope. For who hopes for what one sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait with endurance.” As a spiritual mother to the world, there are so many times where I am praying for people I don’t know or for an intention that I may not know if it has been granted or resolved for months or even ever. Being espoused to Jesus means that there are times that only He knows the fruit that my maternal heart is bearing. This calls me to a deeper trust and hope in my Spouse that He will provide as a good Father for our children and that I am called only to pray and trust. It also brings the opportunity for such delights when I do get to hear of the fruit happening in someone’s heart that I have prayed for and creates an even greater longing for Heaven, when distance will not separate my spiritual family, but we will all finally be united. 

V.J.E.

This year, as we prepare to celebrate the First Vows of our sisters, we want to share with you a series of reflections on how living our religious life and professing the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience allow us to live in freedom, totality, faithfulness, and fruitfulness each day. This series is inspired by St. Pope John Paul II’s reflections in the Theology of the Body.

This reflection on faithfulness is written by Sr. Maria Beatriz Fidelis Galindo, HMSS.

Gardening is on the mind, at least here in the community of Our Lady of Mercy in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Tomatoes, potatoes, watermelon, cucumbers, peppers, and more; since Easter until now, I can say that gardening has really grown on me! It’s far from boring; from the peace of some time outside in the sun to excitedly looking for new growth to talking about the garden with each other, our garden has given me much food for thought. As we continue our series on the vows and Theology of the Body’s four pillars of free, total, faithful, and fruitful, we have arrived at “faithful.” When thinking about how our vows call us to be faithful to Jesus and the gift of our consecration, gardening instantly came to mind. Let’s take a walk through the garden of souls.

Called to Remain

There are many ways to think about our life of faith using the analogy of a garden. St. Thérèse of Lisieux found in the various flowers of springtime an image of “the world of souls, Our Lord’s living garden,” where every soul just like every flower, no matter how simple, is beautiful. Jesus himself uses agricultural language in his teaching and instruction to the disciples. We can gather from the Gospels the theme of cultivation; we are called to receive the Word of God like good soil receives seed (Matt 13:1-23), to depend on the Father who cares for even the wildflowers (Lk 12:24-26), and to bear fruit in following Jesus, the grain of wheat who dies to bear fruit (Jn 12:24-26) and the vine in which we must remain to have life (Jn 15:1-17). Across the Gospels we see that we can depend on the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit to provide for us, prune and cultivate us, and send us into the world of souls to do the same by first of all entering into God’s own life. 

So, first of all, our love is a response; we are called to free, total, faithful, and fruitful love as a response to God’s free, total, faithful, and fruitful love of us. Our faithfulness is a response to God’s faithfulness. Therefore, if we want to cultivate faithfulness through our vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, we must first recall and remain in God’s love for us, just as a branch remains in a vine (Jn 15:4, 9). Faithfulness is not what we are called to “do” of our own strength; rather, the Lord is our strength (Psalm 28:7) when we remain in him and his faithfulness to us. The Father gives us Jesus Christ as our way to and model of fidelity. In practical terms, remaining in God’s love can look like receiving the sacraments, praying with God’s Word in Scripture, and receiving him in each other. 

Little Fidelities

Looking more closely at our garden, we can consider the elements necessary to cultivate plants: sunlight, water, soil. We not only add to it; we also remove weeds and pests in addition to pruning as needed. Little weeds left alone, for example, do not remain little for long. Considering our call to faithful love through the vows, our choices matter. We live faithfully in response to God’s faithfulness in our concrete choices, relying upon grace without neglecting our free will. Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C., in her book My Beloved is Mine and I am His: Reflections on Brideship for Women Religious explains that it is not the vows that nurture us, but we who are called to nurture our vows without neglecting even the smallest act of fidelity. She cautions us to avoid little infidelities that we can be tempted to excuse (for example, “Just this one time” or “Nobody will notice”). These seemingly small infidelities can snowball into even greater danger to our faithfulness to following Christ through the vows. 

Mother Mary Francis’ point stuck with me. Sometimes I find it tempting to think that our vows decide how we live our lives; how easy it can be to think in terms of “have to” and “can” or “cannot” when it comes to our religious life, let alone the Christian life to which we are all called. Yes, in one way our vows “decide” how we live, but even more we decide how we live our vows: in cooperation with God’s call each day or not. Our vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience do not make us faithful; we are called to live our vows faithfully for the glory of God and the sanctification of the world and ourselves. Practically, this faithfulness means paying attention to the choices we make, especially the small ones, and asking for God’s mercy and aid when we make mistakes. I love the sacrament of Penance for this reason; grace has real power to uproot sin in our lives and grow new attitudes in us.

A Communal Undertaking

Do you have a green thumb? While I grew up gardening in grade school, by my college years I could say that I wanted to have a green thumb more than I actually had one. Gardening in community is a completely different experience. We work together to make sure the beds are watered, share new ideas, and walk together through the garden. I can now truly say that I find gardening recreative and community-building. While gardening is not necessarily a group activity, cultivating the garden of souls is a communal undertaking. As Jesus sends forth his disciples, he declares that “the harvest is abundant but the laborers are few” (Luke 10:2). We are not called to live faithfulness alone.

In religious life, we are responsible not only for ourselves but for each other. This responsibility is not a burden but a gift. We are called to become one in Jesus Christ, inside the chapel and out. We share the same source of life without losing our unrepeatable beauty. Our fraternal life grounds our vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Practically, we are called to practice reconciliation, give encouragement, point out ways to grow individually and as a community, and rely on our community to provide for our needs. Of course, the call to cultivate faithfulness as a community does not start or stop in religious life; we are one Church called to be faithful to Jesus Christ. Family, friends, and fellow disciples are instrumental. By caring for each other, whether in prayer, word, or deed, we become more faithful to our Lord as individuals, as communities, and as the Church. We live our vows in community.

Called to be Faithful

Now we come to the final stretch of our garden walk. I want to share with you one of my takeaways this year: we are called to be faithful, not to make ourselves perfect or never make a mistake. More succinctly, in the words of St. Mother Teresa: “God does not ask us to be successful, He asks us to be faithful.” We do profess the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to consecrate ourselves to God for the perfection of charity. As the Second Vatican Council teaches, “all the faithful of Christ, of whatever rank or status, are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity” (Lumen Gentium, 40). This perfection of love does not consist in quantifiable success or lack of failure or temptation. In the Gospels, Jesus offers us mercy and models for us how to face temptation (Matt 4:1-17 and parallels). When we as Mercedarian Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament profess vows, we promise “with the grace of God and through the help of Our Lady of Mercy, to strive for total receptivity to being perfected in the fire of Eucharistic love” (Constitutions no. 40). Our love is perfected when we are faithful and receptive through sorrow and joy, trial and ease, transition and stability. 

Faithful love is persevering love, just as behind a well-cultivated garden is a committed gardener or team of gardeners. At the end of the day, we can always say that the Lord has been faithful to us. I can think of no better way to conclude than by drawing from Mary’s Magnificat: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…for he has remembered his promise of mercy, the promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.”

V.J.E.

This year, as we prepare to celebrate the First Vows of our sisters, we want to share with you a series of reflections on how living our religious life and professing the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience allow us to live in freedom, totality, faithfulness, and fruitfulness each day. This series is inspired by St. Pope John Paul II’s reflections in the Theology of the Body. 

This reflection on freedom is written by Sr. Raquel of the Holy Spirit Gutierrez, HMSS.

 

“A Free and Total Love”

When proclaiming our profession formula at the altar, a statement we make is: 

“I consecrate myself to God with a free and total love…” As sisters, when we have arrived at this point in our religious life, when we profess our vows to Jesus publicly, this is our marriage declaration. We are responding to the Love of all time who has called us to Himself, Jesus Christ, the one who gave His complete self for us in obedience to the Father. We declare our consecration in complete freedom, from an abundance of praise and thanksgiving in our hearts, from a cup that is overflowing (Psalm 23:5). In complete freedom and love we profess a life fully given over to the One who has fully given Himself over to us for the sake of our freedom (Gal. 5:1).”

We have the freedom to make choices, to do what is right or to choose otherwise, to follow Jesus or not to follow Him. While the world may see our life as sisters as restricted, and yes, as Christians we are called to renounce things, as Jesus tells us in the Gospel of Matthew, “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). The denial of ourselves and the renouncement of relationships, possessions, control, and our own time leads us to greater freedom in Christ in two ways. First, we are free to give ourselves totally and radically to Jesus Christ (the Source and Summit of our freedom) and from that same place of a transforming relationship in Him, He breaks our chains through the Holy Mass, Eucharistic Adoration, Lectio Divina (encountering Him in His word), the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and many other ways. Jesus’ transforming love gives us the freedom to live a life in Him, to continue to choose God’s will every day, and to blossom into the person He calls us to be. Second, the fruit of this is that as Jesus fills us with His love, we grow in freedom to love others with the love of Christ. A free and total love for Christ sets us up for a free and total love for others. 

As Christians (vowed or not) in order to grow in freedom, we are called to let go of things that keep us captive. It can be things like television, social media, a love for our reputation, or internal captivities like pride, selfishness, unforgiveness, grudges, addictions, unbelief, comfort, or even laziness or procrastination. True freedom is the ability to put our wills aside and do the will of God. The freer we become by letting go of attachments, the more we can grow in inner freedom. Juan de Bonilla, a Franciscan Bishop, said “true freedom is not being attached to anything.” A question to ask ourselves is: what are those things that I am attached to that interfere with my freedom in Christ and giving myself totally to Him?

Each moment of prayer is an opportunity to give ourselves over to Jesus once again, and His love sets us free! As Mercedarians, we are called to be free and help set others free. Pray for us in our redemptive work, to grow in inner freedom as we pray and work to help set others free. Our Lady of Ransom, pray for us!

V.J.E.

This year, as we prepare to celebrate the First Vows of our sisters, we want to share with you a series of reflections on how living our religious life and professing the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience allow us to live in freedom, totality, faithfulness, and fruitfulness each day. This series is inspired by St. Pope John Paul II’s reflections in the Theology of the Body. 

This reflection to introduce this series is written by Sr. Yvelyne Marie Bernard, HMSS.

“God wants to marry us!” These five words summarize the entire drama of salvation history as it unfolds in human time. From beginning to end, God is seeking a covenant of love with His people so that we can participate in the union and communion of His Trinitarian life. 

A couple who desires to make a successful “wedding cake,” that is, a holy and enduring marriage, needs four essential ingredients: freedom, totality, faithfulness, and fruitfulness. If any one of these ingredients is missing, the cake will not be what it is meant to be. Authentic love must be freely given, totally self-donating, faithful until the end, and fruitful, bringing forth new life and goodness.

When God proposes this divine marriage to us, He Himself supplies these ingredients in perfect measure. He says, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.” His love is free. He says, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” His love is total. He promises, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” His love is faithful. And He tells us, “Abide in me… for apart from me you can do nothing… Whoever abides in me bears much fruit.” His love is fruitful.

In Christ, God reveals the perfect Bridegroom. The whole story of salvation—from Eden, through Israel, to the Cross, and finally to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb—is the story of God’s relentless desire to unite Himself to His beloved. The question is not whether God desires this marriage. The question is whether we will say “yes” to His proposal.

Consecrated life is a beautiful way to say yes to Christ with a free heart, ready to give all that she is and all that she has in order, even now, to possess Him who possesses her.  

V.J.E.

“He said to them, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.”- Mark 16:15

In accord with our vow of obedience, our Sisters are often transferred to follow the Lord where He leads and serve Him in the needs and apostolates of our various communities. The following Sisters have received new obediences for the 2026-2027 school year:

Sr. Beatriz Fidelis, HMSS will be sent to the St. Joseph Community in Maumee, OH and serve at St. Joseph Church and School.

Sr. Grace of Mary, HMSS will be sent to the St. Augustine Community in Gainesville, Florida and serve at St. Patrick Church and School.

Sr. April Marie Josefina, HMSS will be sent to the St. Augustine Community in Gainesville, Florida and serve as local superior.

Please join us in praying for our Sisters as they transfer this summer and begin to serve in many ways in their local communities and parishes.