When pondering some thought or idea, I always find it helpful to turn to a dictionary or to a poem or quote. As we continue to ponder the question of what it means to live the vow of poverty or a life of simplicity in a complex world, here are a few more points of view that might jump start another idea or two or invite us to shift a bit and look at this in a new light.

“Voluntary simplicity means going fewer places in one day rather than more, seeing less so I can see more, doing less so I can do more, acquiring less so I can have more.”
- Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are (2005) p. 69

*** ***

“The vows are first and foremost poetic language. Words like poverty and obedience are not literal descriptions … They are world-creating metaphors that are hyperbolic … They intend by their literally impossible extravagance (who can be absolutely poor?) to capture the totality of the commitment being expressed. Hyperbole is exaggeration for effect, the use of extreme language to evoke what is beyond expression.”
- Sister Sandra Schneiders, IHM, Selling All: Commitment, Consecrated Celibacy, and Community in Catholic Religious Life (2001)

*** ***

“How refreshing, the whinny of a packhorse unloaded of everything!”
- Zen saying

What idea popped into your head about poverty upon reading one of these quotes? What new insight might be brewing in you?

I have been meditating on the Vow of Poverty this morning after reading comments on the Nun News Roundup podcast we did on Friday.

Jean raises some very good questions about discerning a call to religious life and encountering the question of privilege. Here’s what she wrote in part:

I am struggling mightily with a concern that 21st century American religious life may place many of its new or younger entrants (post-1990s, say, and I did just pull that out of my hat) in a tremendously privileged life and socioeconomic/cultural class in this society. That the matter of who legally owns the resources can be, in real terms, very much “semantics”, placing many religious and communities well and even deep within the ranks of the “non-poor” in terms of both concrete resources and the stew of privilege (or not) that is “class”, a powerful possibility in this society.

Jean, poverty and the vow of poverty are not easy realities to get one’s head around! But it is good to tangle with them as you are considering your calling in life and exploring religious life. I pulled your comments to the fore because I know I thought about them when I was discerning religious life (still do!) and I know others are as well. So I think this conversation will be helpful to many. All are welcome (as always) to participate in the conversation.

Although not all sisters and nuns profess a vow of poverty, one of three evangelical counsels (the other 2 are chastity and obedience … Jesus’ advice to those who wish to dedicate their lives to God), all religious strive to live this virtue in their personal and communal life.

Here are a couple of my thoughts on the vow of poverty … one comes from my reading of Pope Benedict XVI’s book on Jesus of Nazareth and the other comes from a visitor’s question a while back about the different dimensions of poverty. It’s important to note that poverty in the sense of the vow, the evangelical counsel, is not the same as poverty in the sense of destitution or lack of subsistence or means of supporting oneself or one’s family.

I would like to hear more from you about the topic of living poverty as a religious. If you are a sister or nun, what does this mean for you? If you are discerning like Jean, what concerns do you have? And for all visitors, do you find echoes of the evangelical counsel of poverty in your own life?

P.S. Join us for prayer at midday today — live at noon Central Time.

Celibacy is a way of life for Catholic sisters and nuns as well as for religious brothers and monks. But what is celibacy and how does one live celibacy, especially in a society that can be both sex-obsessed and a bit prudish about sex?

Before talking about celibacy, I think it’s important to point out that celibacy is not a condemnation or rejection of sex. And celibacy (as well as sex) relates to a lot more than the physical act of having sex. “Sexuality affects all aspects of the human person in the unity of his body and soul. It especially concerns affectivity, the capacity to love and to procreate, and in a more general way the aptitude for forming bonds of communion with others. (Catechism) Also important to note is that there is a difference between celibacy and chastity.

Okay, so celibacy. I’m responding in part from a reader’s email asking for a post on celibacy — not just an “academic” approach to what it is but sisters’ own personal witness to the celibate life.

As she noted, it’s not all that often that we celibate folks talk about it from a personal standpoint. I think mostly that’s because it is has to do with one’s sexuality and is indeed personal. Still, since celibacy isn’t mainstream, I think it’s important that we do talk about it with some degree of candor while also respecting personal boundaries. I was blessed to have a couple nuns whom I could ask any thing and it was through their own experience and witness to celibacy that I could find answers to my own questions and carve out a way of understanding what God’s particular call to me.

The only thing I knew about celibacy in religious life, prior to knowing my nuns, is that it meant NO SEX. It was something that was half-admired, but also half-mocked. Are nuns celibate because they “can’t get a guy” or because they are sexually repressed? Is it a special calling for only the holiest of holies? Does God give nuns a gift of not having sexual urges? None of those things particularly appealed to me or applied to me (I did not imagine myself to be particularly holy) so I never thought that lifelong celibacy would be my particular calling.

In grad school when I first began thinking about religious life (and resisted being attracted to it) I got to know more religious — women and men who were celibate. They didn’t strike me as repressed people and seemed to have a healthy sense of self and other. They were not “holier than thou” people, just ordinary women and men serving God.

Long story short, I became more open to the idea of celibacy and now I’m celibate for life.

My witness to celibacy is more than just not having sex, it’s about being free. An important “ah-ha!” moment was watching Dead Man Walking and the scene where Sister Helen Prejean talks about why she became a nun and chose not to be married. There was a sense that her not being attached to one single person or one single family allowed her to be free to go where the needs were. It made a huge impression on me. I began to realize that as big of a deal it was to commit to no sex it was a bigger deal to commit to the positive life stance of being free to serve wherever God called.

I know you probably have some questions so I’ll end here with this quote:

“Life is not all about sex.”

Samantha (Kim Cattrall) in a Sex in the City episode

Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, has made public an important paper on Ministerial Religious Life. In the paper God So Loved the World … Ministerial Religious Life in 2009 Sister Sandra describes what Apostolic Religious Life is and how it is evolving (or has evolved) into what she has called Ministerial Religious Life.

Here’s my very brief outline of the paper — any inaccuracies here are mine and not Sister Sandra’s. It’s meant only to give you a sense of the topics in the paper and to encourage you to read the full paper. You really don’t want to miss it if you are at all interested in Religious Life.

Sister Sandra looks at the origins of Apostolic Religious Life (which “has had official canonical recognition since 1900 and existed for centuries before that”) and situates it both canonically (what does Canon Law say about this form of consecrated life) and ecclesiastically (how does Apostolic Religious Life as a lifeform fit within the structure of the Church).

She shows how the Apostolic Religious Life that is being lived today is still authentically religious life and at the same time “involves some very significant discontinuities with earlier understandings of enough of the constitutive dimensions of that life that it is really a new form in relation to traditional apostolic Congregations.” Two important aspects of this evolution are what Sister Sandra calls “the end of Religious Life as Total Institution” and the simultaneous “ministerial turn”. She looks at how both of these have affected our understanding and living out of the vows, community life, ministry, and public witness.

Once Sister Sandra has set the context she goes on to asks, “What has brought about this development and how do we interpret, evaluate, and appropriate it?” What follows is an excellent piece on the impact of the Second Vatican Council on Religious Life. She notes how “most Religious Congregations of women, especially in the developed world, did not read Perfectae Caritatis in isolation, as a kind of self-sufficient magna carta for renewal. They read it through the lenses of Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes.” Note: Perfectae Caritatis is the document on the renewal of Religious Life; Lumen Gentium is the document on the Church affirming the universal call to holiness of all the baptized; and Guadium et Spes is the document on the Church in the modern world.

Sister Sandra then looks at the development of a new theology of world and the development of a new spirituality of world as a result of the shifts and the ongoing urgings of the Holy Spirit. Finally, she articulates some of the implications of these developments for vowed Religious Life.

Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, is one of my nuns and a leader in the study of religious life and of biblical spirituality. This talk was originally presented at our IHM Motherhouse for the Sisters and Associates of my community.

Read God So Loved the World … Ministerial Religious Life in 2009 and let’s get a discussion going about this. It’s an excellent paper, a good read, and definitely worth reflecting on.

Question from Christina, a visitor to A Nun’s Life …

Hello Sister, My son and I were watching the Rosary tonight and he asked,”can Sisters be married and still be a Sister?” I didn’t know the answer to this question so I’m asking you for help.

The answer very simply is no. Catholic Sisters and Nuns cannot get married. Here’s why.

When a woman becomes a nun or sister (or a man becomes a monk/brother/friar), she makes 3 vows: a vow of poverty, a vow of obedience, and a vow of celibacy. So just as married people make vows to each other — that they will love one another and be a family for their whole lives, “till death do us part”, so to do sisters make vows to God within the context of her religious community (her family) for her whole life. These are two different kinds of life commitments.

As a married person, your love for God is expressed through love of your spouse and children and through the work that you do. As a sister, your love for God is expressed through your community life with your nuns and through prayer and ministry. There are similarities, but the two life commitments are mutually exclusive.

It is possible, however, for a woman who has been married and is no longer married in the eyes of the Church to become a nun. It is also possible for a woman who was a nun and left the convent validly to get married. But she cannot do both at the same time.

Many thanks for the question, Christina, and son!

What thoughts do you have on this question?

Big news it seems in the entertainment world. Natalie Portman has been outed as having turned down the role of a young nun in the movie Doubt because she couldn’t wrap her head around the character being celibate. Playwright John Patrick Shanley explained: “We asked Natalie Portman, and Natalie was very interested but kept saying she had a problem. And we finally nailed down as to what the problem was: she basically said she didn’t understand celibacy.”

As you might suspect, I have a few words of wisdom for Natalie, as well as for Amy Adams who eventually took the role. Celibacy, my friends, is not an easy thing to understand especially in our society, but it is worth wresting with.

First things first: celibacy is basically abstaining from sexual relations. For people who take a religious vow of celibacy (as Catholic sisters and nuns do), the meaning of celibacy goes deeper than “merely” not having sex. Don’t get me wrong, not having sex is a significant choice and is not for the faint of heart. But it’s more than that for nuns. When we profess a vow of celibacy, we make a conscious choice of how we want to BE in the world, how we want to comport ourselves and how we want to relate to people and to the world. It means that we choose not only to not have sex, but also to not engage in sexual activity or to have “romantic”, exclusive relationships.

Whereas a married, sexually-active person gives herself/himself to a spouse and to a family, a nun gives herself to her relationship with God which is expressed through her relationship with her religious community (her “family”) and her mission (the way she serves the world). Being celibate leaves a nun “free” to go where God and her community calls her to go (having children and a spouse can make this more challenging). There’s also a counter-cultural dimension to the vow of celibacy. A nun testifies by her life that sex is not what it’s all about. Yes, sex is good, but even for healthy, sexually-active people, it doesn’t define a person nor constitute who she or he is.

Celibacy is not all that a nun is about — there is much more, though celibacy is definitely the first thing that might hit you! Celibacy is lived within a community of sisters who support one another in this lifestyle. We also profess the vows of poverty (simple living, holding all things in common) and obedience (to God and to the mission of the Congregation) which combined with celibacy shape a nuns life and help her live her life-long commitment to God, her sisters, and the world.

There’s lots more to say about living celibacy as a nun, but I’ll stop for now with an invitation: if you are considering playing a Catholic sister and nun, don’t get hung up on the celibacy part of it. It’s worth wrestling with and you can always come by A Nun’s Life for some insight and advice!

I am delighted to announce that one of our own blogging nuns, Sister Susan Rose Francois, CSJP, will be professing first vows in October. Sister Susan is currently a 2nd Year Novice with the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace and is the author of the popular blog Musings of a Discerning Woman. Sister Susan was one of the first people who linked to my blog, helping me to get started. She’s also one of the nuns behind the web ring (a network of websites) SisterBloggers.

I am very happy for Susan and think it’s way important to celebrate these moments — both for Susan and for religious life! Being a nun is a fabulous way of life and everytime a person commits to the life, it reaffirms my own life choice and my love of God and serving others. I think it is also an inspiration to people to know that religious life is alive and well and continues to be a viable way to live joyfully and radically, to be fully human, to serve God and others.

Be sure to visit Sister Susan’s blog — recently she wrote a great post about an article in America magazine– Religious Life in the Age of Facebook. I highly recommend you read the article and Susan’s post, especially if you are a religious and/or vocation director. (The America article is in the July 7, 2008 edition, available online only to subscribers.)

Blessings to you, Sister Susan, and upon the Sisters and mission of your community.

Here’s a good article (minus the title) about Anne-Marie Gallagher, a 24-year old who will be professing vows as a Josephite Sister in Sydney, Australia — “A social butterfly gets herself to a nunnery.” Some quotes from the article …

ANNE-MARIE GALLAGHER was in her final year at Domremy College in Sydney’s inner west when the assistant principal suggested, “you would make a good nun”.

“I just laughed it off,” she said. “I thought of myself as a normal teenager and, like most of my peers, [at one stage] I even questioned my faith. I just thought it was normal.”

Just a brief comment here — we all have a responsibility to let others know, especially our young people, if we see a particular vocation in them. Sometimes it takes someone outside of ourselves to call us to become aware of God’s call to us. All you have to do is plant the seed. The Spirit (who has already prepared the soil) will take care of the rest.

While studying education and theology at Australian Catholic University as a 19-year-old, she came across the website for Catholic Vocations Ministry Australia. “I couldn’t believe that I was [looking] there,” she laughed. “Me, of all people. But for a while this feeling of being unsettled had niggled at me.

“I had dated some guys but something else, involving a deeper commitment to God, was demanding my attention.”

Too many times people don’t consider religious life because they think they have to be super-pious or not have any romantic feelings for another person. It’s okay to have dated, to be a social butterfly, to be a “normal” teenager … God calls whomever God chooses. It’s that simple.

Blessings to you, Sister Anne-Marie and the Josephite community!

Here’s Sister Katherine’s profession of final vows …

As promised, I took a couple little videos (I don’t have a real video camera, just the one on my digital camera) so that I could share with you some of the profession ceremony of Sister Katherine Collard, IHM.

In this video, Katherine responds to Sister Mary Fran Gilleran, IHM President, who asks Katherine to speak to her desire to become an IHM Sister.

Powerful and beautiful.

On Sunday, May 4, 2008, Sister Katherine Collard, IHM professed final vows during the Eucharistic Liturgy. It was a joy to celebrate with her and to welcome her fully as an IHM Sister. We are greatly enriched by Katherine’s presence, her gifts, her faithfulness, and her love. I have a few videos of the ceremony that I’d like to share with you. Stay tuned!

We are also blessed to have just had another final profession of vows by Sister Barbara Stanbridge, IHM. Unfortunately my plane ride was canceled and I missed the ceremony. However, you can read about her profession in the article “Detroit Business Woman Returns to IHM Sisters as Vowed Member” at our IHM website. I’ve known Barbara almost since I first joined the community. She is a delight, full of energy, and committed to mission.

From my Ask Sister page …

I’m stepping into religious life… or at least I think I am. I was wondering – do you ever feel lonely and alone? I really hate travelling alone and I yearn for the physical presence of a man – not sexual – just the ‘being there’. Jesus is my spouse, yes, but there are times when He just isnt there – and you just want someone to lean on or to hold you or to just pick you up from the airport.

I dont know if you know what I mean. Is this normal? And how can we deal with it? Or do we just accept it and learn to suffer it?

Thank you for the question, Rosemary. It’s a good one, one that I certainly wondered about when I was considering religious life. The answer has many dimensions, so I’ll just give you my thoughts (hopefully in some semblance of order) on loneliness.

Feeling lonely is something everyone feels at one time or another, nuns included. But do nuns feel it more acutely because they make a vow to be celibate, that is, nuns choose to not have 1) sex or 2) romantic or exclusive relationships? (NOTE: the vow of celibacy is actually not about the “have not’s” but about being free to love all and go where God calls us to … but that’s the subject of a future post). Because of this vow, it may seem like women who become nuns are going to be physically lonely — like you said, not necessarily in a sexual way, but just having someone physically present to you.

This is a question that I too had when I was discerning religious life. I wondered about how intimacy (not talking sexual here) could be expressed as a nun — physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, spiritual intimacy. I didn’t know if the vow of celibacy and just the general life of being a nun prohibited any kind of close connection with others. I treasured my relationships with close friends, siblings, etc. What was going to happen?

Now, I’m not exactly sure how this all worked itself out (probably by living into it and trusting God), but I do know that I came to realize that God did not desire that I be cut off from everyone, that I be isolated and therefore alone. It’s just that my primary relationships were now with my religious community, and (as it always had been) with God. My community of nuns is my family. They’ve got my back — always. And I’m there for them. I’d drop just about anything (short of someone else’s welfare) in a heartbeat for any one of my nuns. So in this sense, I am never lonely or alone.

In another sense, however, there is a kind of loneliness that I and others (not just nuns) experience. The source of such loneliness is not necessarily lack of another person, but that ultimate realization (conscious or otherwise) that only God can fulfill us. Saint Augustine wrote, “Our souls are restless, O Lord, until they rest in you.” Even with our closest relationships, we feel this radical loneliness because we long to dwell with God. Don’t mean to go existential on you here, but it’s an important understanding of loneliness. It’s what helps people not suffer loneliness, but embrace loneliness as an experience of God.

A little while back I wrote a post called, Do Nuns Know How to Love? You might check that out to for a response to your question here.

Do respond and let’s have a conversation about this. And I know others will have insight into this question too.

Catholic News Service published this article yesterday about the resignation of Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, SJ, as General Superior of the Jesuits. He had been General Superior for 25 years.

My prayers are with the Jesuits as they discern who will be their next General Superior. I’ve known the Jesuits for many years and have been formed by Ignatian Spirituality. I am grateful to be working for a Jesuit apostolate — Loyola Press.

The Jesuits are a religious order of men. Like Sisters, they profess the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Here’s what one Jesuit vocation office says about their understanding of the vows:

A Vowed Life in Common

St. Ignatius of Loyola imagined religious life in non-conventional terms. His monastery was the world; his prayer, to find God in all things; his work, whatever helped people. In this setting, the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience become instruments to enable Jesuits to do the work of God’s realm.

The vow of poverty is focused on using one’s energies, talents, time and resources for the good of others. In an age when possessing means power over others, Jesuits take a serious promise to live in a public way as Christ did, believing that people are more important than things.

Chastity centers on one’s affective, sexual life. It is a vow which orients one’s energies to a love people can trust. Jesuits should be men of openness and availability. Their chastity is the willingness to be available to all, not exclusively to one person or to one family. The Society of Jesus looks for men who are capable of directing their affective life towards all people, caring for them with the integrity of Christ himself.

Obedience, the touchstone of Jesuit life, is the call to find and follow the will of God, through prayer, discernment and dialogue with one’s superior. The Jesuit places his entire being at the disposal of God for the service of God’s people, to do the work of God’s realm as presented to him by the Society through the superior.

These traits of trust, openness, vision and communication are practices in daily community life. While Jesuits live together for the sake of their apostolic work, we also live together for mutual support, challenge and inspiration. These two sets of values have been kept in balance: community for service and community for mutual growth and development.

(source)

Happy feast day! Today is a major feast day for us IHMs. It is the feast of the Immaculate Conception. This feast celebrates the conception of Mary (Jesus’ conception is celebrated on the feast of the Annunciation) who was born “immaculate”, that is, without sin so that she could be a pure vessel of the holy.

Though this feast day is cause for great celebration, today it is with a mixture of joy and sorrow that I celebrate with my sisters. Today was the funeral of one of my dear sister’s mom. Virginia was a wonderful woman, a loving wife and mother. I am a better person for having known her.

Though the circumstances were tough, it was so good to be with my IHM sisters, many of whom I see only once or twice a year. Though we don’t say these words in our vows, “for better or for worse” definitely describes how we are with one another. Life is real and we hang in there with one another no matter how tough it gets. And we IHMs weren’t the only nuns to come to support our sister and her family. Many sisters from a variety of religious communities came out to mourn and to remember and to celebrate her mom’s life. I am in awe at the sisterhood that exists not only among sisters of the same community but of all sisters. It’s like we are all cousins to one another and share a bond together that is as thick as blood.

On this feast day, please say a prayer for Virginia and her family. And my prayer for you and for me is that we–like Mary and Virginia–be vessels of the holy.

According to the footnotes in The Life, Saint Teresa of Avila entered the Monastery of the Incarnation November 2, 1533, and made her profession November 3, 1534. Though scholars disagree about these dates,  Teresa undoubtedly entered the monastery and professed vows as a Carmelite nun.

When I took the habit, our Lord at once made me understand how He helps those who do violence to themselves in order to serve Him.  [Teresa seems to be referring to the terrible pain at entering the convent without her father's consent. See previous post.] No one observed this violence in me; they saw nothing but the greatest good will. At that moment, because I was entering on that state, I was filled with a joy so great, that it has never failed me to this day; and God converted the aridity of my soul into the greatest tenderness. Everything in religion was a delight unto me; and it is true that now and then I used to sweep the house during those hours of the day which I had formerly spent on my amusements and my dress; and, calling to mind that I was delivered from such follies, I was filled with a new joy that surprised me, nor could I understand whence it came.Whenever I remember this, there is nothing in the world, however hard it may be, that, if it were proposed to me, I would not undertake without any hesitation whatever; for I know now, by experience in many things, that if from the first I resolutely persevere in my purpose, even in this life His Majesty rewards it in a way which he only understands who has tried it. When the act is done for God only, it is His will before we begin it that the soul, in order to the increase of its merits, should be afraid; and the greater the fear, if we do but succeed, the greater the reward, and the sweetness thence afterwards resulting. I know this by experience, as I have just said, in many serious affairs; and so, if I were a person who had to advise anybody, I would never counsel any one, to whom good inspirations from time to time may come, to resist them through fear of the difficulty of carrying them into effect; for if a person lives detached for the love of God only, that is no reason for being afraid of failure, for He is omnipotent. May He be blessed for ever! Amen. (Life 4.2-3)

When I professed final vows, I did not expect to feel any different than I had because I’d been with the community for approximately 10 years already. I’d taken my first (“temporary”) vows 3 years earlier and figured that I’d already had the “vow experience”. I was looking forward to it and knew it’d be great, I just thought that it would be a confirmation of everything that had already happened.But surprisingly, the experience of professing final vows was different than anything else I had ever experienced. I felt ontologically (in my very being) changed, like my DNA was uncoded and re-coded with IHM. I felt like a new person, different, yet more myself than ever. The way I saw my sisters and my place in the community shifted too. This is one of those things that again is difficult to express but unmistakeable nonetheless.With Teresa I can say, “I was filled with a new joy that surprised me, nor could I understand whence it came. Whenever I remember this, there is nothing in the world, however hard it may be, that, if it were proposed to me, I would not undertake without any hesitation whatever.” Blessed be God forever!

Here’s a recent story about Sister Carrie Flood, IHM, a young woman who professed vows with the IHM Sisters of Scanton, Pennsylvania, on July 27. (Click here to see how the Scranton IHMs are related to my IHMs.) Be sure to follow the link below to the article to read about Carrie’s journey to religious life. And here are a few quotes from the article with Carrie’s reflections on religious life.

Congratulations, Carrie!

Nun at 41: A sister’s journey led her to service
by Lawn Griffiths
September 21, 2007
East Valley Tribune (Phoenix)

Many people look at Catholic religious life, as priests or nuns, “in terms of what you can’t do,” such as not being able to marry or have children or being financially prosperous, she said. Instead, “we learn about the vows in terms of what you are invited to do,” Flood said. “The vow of chastity invites us to try to love everyone equally, meaning it is not so much not having children because we are actually called by our vow of chastity to love all of God’s creation, to love all people. Our vow of obedience just calls us to listen to the voice of God and the movement of the Spirit in our lives.”

Only one other woman went through the training and took the vows with Flood.

That there aren’t more women entering religious life isn’t necessarily discouraging, she said. “I wasn’t around” in the years when as many as 50 or 60 women would enter convents for training, “so I don’t have any sense of loss.”

“I think there are a lot of misconceptions that you have to be a special person,” Flood said. “I am not very special. I listen to rock music and watch ‘The Simpsons,’ and I am just a normal person. God has called me to be his presence in the world and to be a witness to the kingdom, so that is what I am here to do, and I hope I can fulfill that.” …

“We call out jobs ‘ministries,’ ” she said. Days include going to Mass each morning and gathering in the evening at St. Ephrem’s Convent in Brooklyn with 11 other sisters for dinner and prayer. Nuns in her house dress simply, and only older ones wear veils. …

I’ve been reading Pope Benedict XVI’s new book, Jesus of Nazareth: From Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (Doubleday, 2007). Of the book the pope himself says, “This book is… my personal search ‘for the face of the Lord.’”

I’ve been quite impressed by this book … some very excellent reflections on who Jesus is and how to understand Jesus in light of today’s world and concerns. It’s got an academic and apologetic edge to it, and yet also has some truly inspired pieces that make you feel like you are praying.

I recently read chapter 4, “The Sermon on the Mount” and spent some time reflecting on the part about the “poor in spirit” from the Beatitudes. The Pope connects this saying with the piety of the psalms which reflected people’s sense that even in the midst of their poverty and oppression, God did not abandon them but was working toward their salvation. This, the Pope writes, “developed that generosity of heart that was to open the door for Christ.” (page 75; emphasis mine) I think this sense of generosity of heart is something that should characterize the vow of poverty for us religious.

“[Persons who are poor] know that their poverty also has an interior dimension; they are lovers who simply want to let God bestow his gifts upon them and thereby live in inner harmony with God’s nature and word. The saying of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux about one day standing before God with empty hands, and holding them open to him, describes the spirit of these poor ones of God: They come with empty hands; not with hands that grasp and clutch, but with hands that open and give and thus are ready to receive from God’s bountiful goodness.” (page 76; emphasis mine)

“… in order to be the community of Jesus’ poor, the Church has constant need of the great ascetics. She needs the communities that follow them, living out poverty and simplicity so as to display to us the truth of the Beatitudes. She needs them to wake everyone to the fact that possession is all about service, to contrast the culture of affluence with the culture of inner freedom, and thereby to create conditions for social justice as well.” (page 77; emphasis mine)