Those Who Feel Eternity: Goodness and the Religious Life

Here I am concluding the summer series of reflections on the transcendentals – Beauty, Truth, and Goodness – as they are brought forth and nourished by artists, intellectuals, and professed religious. This month, my focus is on professed religious – whose vowed devotion to goodness is a calling less dependent on innate talents than either the artist or the intellectual.

The lives of the saints tell us of the wide variety of professed religious. Weak, strong, wise, ignorant, creative, simple, kind, crabby – God is continually calling a wide range of men and women to walk “this narrower path” (CCC 932) in imitation of Him.

The religious life is also one of the most neglected essentials within the Church. This past Sunday, our transitional deacon reminded the parish again to pray for vocations “within your own families” and that is often exactly what we don’t want to do. Most of the good, devout Catholic families I know are praying for vocations to the priesthood and religious life, while at the same time actively or passively discouraging those vocations among their children.

For too many young people, religious life seems entirely foreign – a leap into the wild. They’ve seen marriage up close. They may even have heard their parents talk longingly of grandchildren. If they’re like most young adults, they’ve been encouraged to head off to college right after high school, gathering debt. The idea of a religious vocation may have been hovering on the edges of their minds, but because of family and social expectations, it never stepped into conscious thought.

But religious life is, in a sense, the heart of the Christian life. The opportunity to live out the goodness of God with a single-minded devotion.

The Vocation of Creativity

There’s a reason that so many of the Church’s most creative thinkers and artists chose the religious life. As St. Paul wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians:

The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; ³³but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, ³⁴and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband. ³⁵I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord. (1 Corinthians 7:32–35)

A life of “unhindered devotion to the Lord” is certainly a life in which the gifts of the artist or the intellectual can thrive. It’s also a life in which other gifts – no matter how large or small – thrive as well. Structure, guidance, community, and accountability are consistent aspects of the well-lived religious life. Even in less-than-ideal circumstances, religious life offers a life “dedicated totally to God” (CCC 916).

When a life is dedicated totally to God, the vowed religious has the opportunity to pour all of his time and energy into following Christ closely and intimately. For the artist or the intellectual – like St. Hildegard or St. Thomas Aquinas, this allows them to more fully live out their potential without the distractions of “the affairs of the world.” For others, the religious life allows them to focus wholeheartedly on Goodness. Simple, active, authentic goodness is the living out of the love of God in the world – through “prayer, penance, service…, and apostolic activity” (CCC 924).

A Higher State?

The Church has always considered the religious life a “higher” state of life than married life. This gives us happily married Catholics a jolt sometimes, but when we clarify a bit, it all makes sense. St. Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians that an unmarried Christian can pursue goodness in a more whole-hearted way – undistracted by the cares of the world. That religious life is a higher calling doesn’t mean that God loves professed religious more than He loves everyone else, nor does it mean that he wants some people to have fun, easy lives of comfort while other people waste away in a monastery somewhere.

Religious life is “a gift [the Church] has received from her Lord” (CCC 926). If you grew up Catholic, it’s likely you’ve heard that before. But the “gift” of religious life isn’t just a gift for the laity, who benefit from the work and prayers of monks and nuns throughout the world. It’s a gift for the professed religious themselves. When God calls us to religious life, he calls us into a life of “more intimate consecration” (CCC 916). They are given the chance to live in community while whole-heartedly pursuing goodness.

The gift of religious life is a gift on all sides: the religious give themselves fully to Christ, Christ gives them the gift of deeper intimacy with Himself, and in the mingling of these two gifts, the Church as a whole benefits from those who “witness ‘that the world cannot be transfigured and offered to God without the spirit of the beatitudes’” (CCC 932).

The higher state of religious life is a “special sign of the mystery of redemption. To follow and imitate Christ more nearly and to manifest more clearly his self-emptying” (CCC 932).

The Call to Religious Life

One of the saddest aspects of our modern, Catholic approach to religious life is the way we muffle up the call. When friends or family members are discerning, we are often less than supportive. Religious life, we’re told, is for socially awkward or unattractive Catholics.

In many ways, Catholic parents tend to ignore the religious life until they’re stuck with a 35-year-old, perpetually single, adult child. Then they toss it out as a last-ditch option. But the call to religious life isn’t a desperate attempt to save a floundering life, it’s a calling. THE calling. God calls pretty, social young women and attractive, competent men. He calls the conventional and the eccentric, the excessively obedient and the wild. He also calls the socially awkward and unattractive. That’s one of the great joys of religious life – it’s an opportunity to see people as Christ sees them, beyond the limiting labels of the world.

It’s important, especially now, when the world needs to see the goodness of God lived out abundantly, that we treat the call to the religious life as a first choice, not a backup plan. This can be difficult to do in a world where we don’t see as many monks, nuns, or even younger priests around us. But it is essential. “Pray for vocations within your own families” as our young deacon encouraged us to do. Nurture those vocations, long for those vocations, and look forward with delight to seeing your children take religious vows.