The Choice for Consecrated Life,
by Father Marie-Bernard Kientz, A.A.
(translated into English by Father Aidan Furlong, A.A.)
A Year of Consecrated Life began in Rome on November 30, 2014, and is continuing until February 2, 2016.
Why does the Church invite all Christians to reflect on the consecrated life and to pray for the women and men who embrace this way of life? Is it because vocations have decreased in number and communities and monasteries have been closed? Is the meaning of the consecrated life no longer understood in the Church and in the world? This year is a time for enabling people everywhere to discover that hidden treasure, at work like yeast in the world, that calls us to true life, happiness, service, and joy; a call of the Gospel, a “happy annunciation” to our world and to the Church. What loss would it be to the Gospel and to the world if the consecrated life did not exist?
It is often said that the consecrated life is a way of living the Gospel that is more radical, more perfect, more absolute. But let’s beware of comparisons — they are often false. The consecrated life is but one, special way of living the Gospel. It entails generosity, it gives happiness. It is not a higher way of life than that of love rooted in the sacrament of marriage or than the life of the celibate person. It is another way, through which a prophetic role is perhaps more obvious.
Why do people, when they speak of the consecrated life, emphasize too often its aspect of renunciation: “You’ll never have chidlren to climb up on your knees!” “You will never enjoy the intimacy of union with a spouse!” “You will never again decide anything for yourself!” To my mind, that’s looking at it the wrong way around. Before renouncing anything one has first to make a positive choice: I choose to live the Gospel, I choose the one to be with — Christ. The prophet said: “He seduced me and I let myself be seduced.” And as Paul put it: “I try to take him for myself as he has taken me!”
That’s not something out of this world. Every baptized person, in choosing to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, is committed to living the Gospel. The one who is consecrated does the same, only in a different way. The consecrated life is nothing but the life of baptism, lived in full conformity with the Gospel of the Lord, just as in marriage or in the life of a celibate person.
These pages give just a modest picture of that consecrated life which we endeavor to practice in our large Assumption family of religious sisters, priests and brothers, and associated laypeople: a life of prayer, of service, of fraternal community, of joy and of self-giving. Simply because we love Jesus Christ, because the Gospel is our rule of life and because we believe it to be the most precious service we can offer at the heart of the Church in today’s world.
[This essay originally appeared in L’Assomption et ses Oeuvres, No. 740, March 2015.]
