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.”