Religious Vows and the Laity

With Vatican II, the Church has emphasized the Sacrament of Baptism as the source of our common call to follow Christ. Our unity as Church is now centered on the Pauline baptismal theology from the early Church:

“For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:27-28).

With this renewal of our common call to holiness, the members of religious communities worldwide were called, in response to Vatican II’s call to renewal, to rediscover the charism of their own religious community, thus exploring their special and unique calling by the Holy Spirit to live their charism within the church. With that renewal, there also was an effort to rethink and update their theology of their religious vows within the context of our common Baptism.

The scripture scholar, Bonnie Thurston, gives a truly biblical and refreshing vision of the three religious vows (1). First of all, she states that religious vows do not have as their prime purpose to merely “keep” the vows. They are intended to nurture and deepen certain qualities in the daily Christian life of religious, to extend and deepen their awareness of solid Christian values.

The Vow of Poverty – a Call to Detachment

The vow of poverty, as many religious learned in their novitiates of old, was seen as a call to be openhanded with regard to their possessions (perhaps their first and only thought). But poverty is also intended to develop in us detachment at the deepest level of our being, and this detachment is, itself, for the end of freedom. In fact, each vow, in its own way, has greater freedom as its goal (2).

Jesus’ interest is in our inner motivation – why we do what we do. A further implication is that we must also be detached even from the results of our good actions! In other words, we do what we can, but then we leave the results to God (3). As St. Paul reminded his followers, they must not get caught up in personalities but allow God to take credit for growth in God’s good time:

“What is Apollos, after all, and what is Paul? Ministers through whom you became believers, just as the Lord assigned each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth. Therefore, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth” (1 Cor 3:5-7).

Frankly, we’d love to see the fruition of much of what we do. The final aim of the vow of poverty is to let go of all we possess so that God can fill our empty hands with riches that do not fade or wither. Proper detachment is not a languid indifference, especially not indifference to the suffering of others. In fact, our Lord shows us how the spiritual life and the work of social justice are one! Religious and laity alike from the Baptism no longer belong to themselves, but to Christ and to each other (4).

The Vow of Chastity – a Call to Charity

The vow of chastity has as its end charity or love. It may be surprising to hear that this vow is not, in its most spiritual sense, about virginity or physical intactness. Celibacy (abstinence from intercourse) and chastity (understood as purity) are not finally about what we do with our body.

When it comes to revisioning Gospel living, to think of chastity in terms of sexual behavior alone is a dead end (5). The purpose of the vow of chastity is for the sake of charity; it is for life and freedom, not merely “against sexuality.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church describes chastity within and outside marriage: “Chastity means the successful integration of sexuality within the person…” (CCC, 2337). Therefore all people need to express chastity and seek out its wellspring of life and freedom.

The call to “be perfect, just as our heavenly Father is perfect” does not imply complete sinlessness and full virtue as matters of fact. Rather it implies wholeness of consecration to God and acting on that aspiration.

Perfection for Matthew’s Jesus is not the condition of having arrived at some “perfect” state of being; rather, perfection has to do with discipleship – those who are honestly trying to follow Jesus (6)! To be perfect, in short, is to aspire to love as God loves: impartially, universally, selflessly, without restraint or limit or conditions (7).

The Vow of Obedience – a Call to be Pliable in the hands of God

Concerning the vow of obedience, we hear in the scriptures that God inspires Jeremiah to tell a story to his people about going down to the potter’s house and watching him throw clay at his wheel. Whenever the vessel of clay turned out badly, the clay was formed again by the potter’s hands. And the Lord said: “Can I not do to you, house of Israel, as this potter has done?” We are to remain malleable, formable clay in the hands of the Lord, ready to be and do whatever God wills.

Obedience is certainly not about power. “Obedience” is derived from the Latin, oboedire (obey), which shares its roots with audire (to hear) (8). In other words, if we hear God and positively respond, we are obeying God. Obedience is for the sake of humility, that most Christ-like of Christian virtues. In our Christian tradition, the virtue of humility is described as “lowly service, chosen and executed by a noble person,” (9) echoing the example of Jesus washing the feet of his disciples (Jn 13:1-17).

As in Jeremiah’s story of the potter (Jer 18:1-6), this means we are to called to be pliable, maliable in the hands of God (10). When we speak of obedience we no longer speak of enforced servitude but rather chosen service after the model of Christ, who “emptied himself… he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” (Phil 2:7a,8).

The Three Vows – Qualities needed by every Christian

In speaking this way about the three vows of religious life – poverty, chastity and obedience – we can see that these are basic virtues that all Christians can certainly emulate and imitate.

In seeing the goal of the vow of poverty as a call to detachment, we can encourage the laity to seek after a lifestyle that does not accumulate for its own sake but places the “things of life” at the service of others who are more needy.

In looking at the goal of the vow of chastity as a call to charity (love), we can see how laity are called within their own family structure and beyond to love as God loves – impartially, universally, selflessly, without restraint or limit or conditions.

In valuing the goal of obedience as a call to be pliable in the hands of God, laity are called to do this often at home, at work and with others. It is an opportunity to live the virtue of humility, described as “lowly service, chosen and executed by a noble person.”

Finally, we hope that this new way of looking at the three religious vows can encourage all members of the Church to look again at the scripture for those ways in which we can follow Jesus in our daily living.

Jesus’ description of the conditions of discipleship are very challenging and are still a benchmark to which we can aspire:

“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?” (Luke 9:23-25)

Footnotes:

1: The Meaning of Consecration Today: A Marian Model for a Secularized Age, by Fr. René Laurentin, Ignatius Press, pg. 42.
2: Religious Vows, the Sermon on the Mount, and Christian Living, by Bonnie Thurston, Liturgical Press, 2006, pg. 58.
3: Ibid., pg. 59.
4: Ibid., pg. 48.
5: Ibid., pg. 76.
6: Ibid., pg. 41.
7: Ibid., pg. 43.
8: Ibid., pg. 65.
9: Ibid., pg. 69.
10: Ibid., pg. 67.