The wind could have blown the seed
Religious Life at the Crossroad is the 21st-century analysis of the present and future of religious life. Written by Amy Hereford, C.S.J., an attorney and canonist, the book traces religious life from its past “marked by courage and creativity in the face of adversity as well as by heroism and zeal.” Hereford attempts to chart a course into the future by understanding the historical and present characteristics of religious life through the context of the time. Her self-appointed task was to use the ideas, social media conversations and visions of her “minority cohort” (younger women religious) to imagine “the future of religious life in the next fifty years.” The author takes a linear approach to her topic as she moves from the earliest forms of religious life, beginning with the desert mothers and fathers and moving through the Second Vatican Council renewal period. Using theological communities, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s New Monasticism, Brother Roger and the Taizé Community and Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement, she looks for “seeds of newness” and re-imagines the vows, community life and mission in the context of the 21st century.Read complete book review in America Magazine....
All human life is created for mysticism and prophecy.
All of Christian life aspires to it.
Religious life is deliberately and purposefully oriented to mysticism and prophecy.
I am so grateful to be part of the conversations about the future of religious life. We are indeed at a crossroads, and we have before us an abundance of opportunities for creativity in responding to God's call to Gospel living.One could come up with a long list of negatives about religious life in the 21st century, but Sr. Amy has taken the higher road and convincingly portrays the possibilities inherent in communities founded and empowered by the Spirit. Her views of religious life in an emerging church are based on the no-longer viable structures of pre-Vatican II Church. Her candor in exposing the masculine influence that has led to the disintegration and disruption of women’s religious communities is relevant for the restructuring of postmodern religious life. Her future-oriented chapter on ‘New Forms of Religious Life’ should be required reading for everyone in consecrated life or contemplating it and very every bishop—and that includes Pope Francis.
Only when the Church becomes what Jesus had envisaged it to be, namely, a servant Church, a Church of the poor, the leaders becoming truly servants and ceasing to be Lords, etc., then the Church regains its authority to speak for God and in God’s name. It is true that Vatican II spoke of the Church as a people of God, but we all know how it has been effectively negated in the Church since Vatican II. That concept has been buried and the presumed hierarchical nature gained predominance....
1. iIn the light of Pentecost, what is religious life today and where are we going as younger religious?
2. How can our local GV group support us in this?
3. What would we like to do for the Year of Consecrated Life?
I've got two events coming up.I never saw God start a miracle without finishing it.He was talking about Christian unity, but I heard it as referring to the miracle of religious vocation, and the rebirthing of the religious life in our own times. A great and welcome miracle, and I want to put my trust in God's miracle, and God's gift of leading this remnant through the challenging desert into a new era of religious life.
Holding the Earth as a sacred trust commits us to asking how our decisions and behaviors impact the Earth community. We commit ourselves to simplify our lifestyles through our consumption and waste. Practically speaking, we can actually cut our expenses and resource footprint in half by living in community. The environmental impact of choosing to live singly over group living is huge.
We have committed to deepening our living and contemplation of consecrated life. Part of the radical nature of our lives is the witness of living together in community. Our world, especially in the United States is becoming more and more individualistic. We buck that in living together, in choosing the challenges of rubbing shoulders and the communication and understanding that it requires over the ease of living singly.
Those of us coming to religious life today name the desire to live with others in community as an important component of religious life. Studies show that most women coming to religious life today want to live with others in community. If we are going to be inviting to others, living together with other sisters, having local communities into which women can move, live, pray, eat, and share life is a must.
I see living with others in community as a way that I consciously work towards radical Gospel living on a daily basis. It gives fruit to my prayer, contemplation, and theological reflection shared with others on a daily basis as we pray together. It helps me enter more deeply into the mystery of God as expressed in the diverse and emerging theologies and spiritualities taught and shared with me through those with whom I live. It helps me explore and act upon what it means to be a collegial Church. Living in community helps me take ownership for, join in, and keep generating rituals that reflect the experiences of women and people of diverse cultures. I cannot tell you of the prayer and ritual experiences to which I have been exposed living with our sisters and those who live with us. Living with others calls me to transform my world view and educate myself in ways that challenge my world views. Stories of mission and of the people with whom she worked on the edge are a nightly education that I wouldn't get if I lived alone.
I know that not everyone in my community is looking for this kind of community, but this is my experience and my desire. No experience is right or wrong. They just get us to where we are today and help us make decisions about where we will go tomorrow. Our experiences are different, how we hope and intend to live this life is different, our definition of community is different, etc. I believe that we hold many similarities, or we would not have made the same vows in the same community. It is my hope and my joy that we can honor and support one another, even as we lived our shared vocation in different ways.
--anonymous sister
Thank you!!! It is so difficult to talk about religious life and maintain a high theology of Baptism, which call everyone to radical discipleship. Religious men and women have the privilege of living this radical gospel living in a particular way, "in a prophetic way," in a way framed by vowed life in community.Wake up the world! Be witnesses of a different way of doing things, of acting, of living! It is possible to live differently in this world. We are speaking of an eschatological outlook, of the values of the Kingdom incarnated here, on this earth. It is a question of leaving everything to follow the Lord. No, I do not want to say “radical.” Evangelical radicalness is not only for religious: it is demanded of all. But religious follow the Lord in a special way, in a prophetic way. It is this witness that I expect of you. Religious should be men and women who are able to wake the world up.
I am convinced of one thing: the great changes in history were realized when reality was seen not from the center but rather from the periphery.This reminds me of the mark of New Monasticism - Relocate to the abandoned places of Empire. This is the deliberate choice to move out of positions and places of power, downward mobility, the choice to live with and for the lowest and the least.
Introduce persons of various cultures into the central governance of the Orders and Congregations, who express divers ways of living the charism.This is an invitation for the central governance to represent not just the dominant culture, even the dominant age cohort. It should also represent all the view points, even the younger cohorts who have distinct perspectives and abilities to meet the culture of today.
They all live a real life of community together. They are an impressive apostolic role model for young people. The religious community has an enormous power to call people together.Regarding formation, the Pope said that
Formation is a work of art, not a police action.... To avoid problems, in some houses of formation, young people grit their teeth, try not to make mistakes, follow the rules smiling a lot, just waiting for the day when they are told: ‘Good. You have finished formation.’ This is hypocrisy that is the result of clericalism, which is one of the worst evils.
The charism is not a bottle of distilled water. It needs to be lived energetically as well as reinterpreted culturally. But in this way there is the danger of making a mistake, you say, of committing errors. It is risky. Certainly, certainly: we will always make mistakes, no doubt about it. But this should not stop us, because there is the chance of making worse mistakes. In fact we should always ask for forgiveness and look shamefully upon apostolic failures due to a lack of courage.I re-commit to this risky business of living religious life, of daring to live simply, contemplatively, prophetically. And I invite others to wake up! and join the adventure!
We Are...
We will welcome new paradigms, new models and new energies that are emerging.
- A peer-led, self-organized space for visioning and fostering future oriented initiatives for religious life
- Inspired by Giving Voice and its circle process
- Established and committed finally-professed women religious
- Born after 1955 and generally born before 1975
- Trusting the spirit to gather the women who are meant to join this movement.
It's been over a month since Pope Francis' wide ranging interview appeared in American magazine and in other publications world-wide. The published interview there is a paragraph about religious life where he focuses on the prophetic dimension of the life itself.Religious men and women are prophets.... In the church, the religious are called to be prophets in particular by demonstrating how Jesus lived on this earth, and to proclaim how the kingdom of God will be in its perfection.We prophecy, not by foretelling events in the misty reaches of the future, but by living the Gospel here and now. Francis named this as the essence of the life. Yes, the vows give it shape, but it is the prophetic mission that is at is core.
The prophetic function and the hierarchical structure do not coincide.He is not proposing an oppositional role, yet he acknowledges that religious and the hierarchy play different roles among the people of God. In the best of times, this allows us to walk together and work together for the common cause of the Gospel. However, it also means that there are times when it will be a challenge to strike this balance that allows both to remain faithful to their call.
Being prophets may sometimes imply making waves. I do not know how to put it.... Prophecy makes noise, uproar, some say ‘a mess.’Yes, then, so let's get out there and live the Gospel - and make a mess. I can definitely see that statement being lived out by Pope Francis. He is making noise, an uproar, a mess. Yet goodness and authenticity are a part of this mess.
Prophecy announces the spirit of the Gospel.The vocation to prophecy invites us to live the Gospel, announce the Gospel with our hands and with our hearts and with our lives.
