With this I conclude the summer series of reflections on the transcendentals – beauty, truth, and goodness – as produced and nurtured by artists, intellectuals, and professed religious. This month I focus on professed religious – whose vow of devotion to goodness is a calling that depends less on innate talents than that of an artist or intellectual.

The lives of the saints tell us of the great diversity of religious. Weak, strong, wise, ignorant, creative, simple, kind, sullen – God constantly calls a wide range of men and women to walk and imitate “this narrower way” (CCC 932).

Religious life is also one of the most neglected fundamental elements of the Church. Last Sunday our interim deacon reminded the congregation again to pray for vocations.within your own families“And that is often exactly what we do not want to do. Most good, devout Catholic families I know pray for vocations to the priesthood and religious life while at the same time actively or passively preventing those vocations in their children.

For too many young people, a religious life is totally foreign – a leap into the wilderness. They have experienced marriage first hand. They may even have heard their parents talk longingly about grandchildren. If they are like most young adults, they were encouraged to go to college right after high school and accumulate debt. The idea of ​​a religious vocation may have been on the fringes of their minds, but because of family and societal expectations, it never consciously entered their minds.

Yet in a certain sense, religious life is the heart of the Christian life. It offers the opportunity to live out the goodness of God with single-minded devotion.

The calling to creativity

There is a reason why 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 concerned about the Lord’s affairs and about pleasing the Lord. ³³But the married man is concerned about the affairs of the world, how he can please his wife, ³⁴and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are concerned about the things of the Lord, that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband. ³⁵I say this for your own benefit, not to impose any constraint on 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 flourish. It is also a life in which other gifts – no matter how great or small – can flourish as well. Structure, leadership, community, and accountability are consistent aspects of a religious life well lived. Even under less than ideal circumstances, the religious life offers a life that is “wholly consecrated to God” (CCC 916).

When a life is totally dedicated to God, the religious has the opportunity to devote all of his time and energy to following Christ intimately and deeply. For artists and intellectuals like St. Hildegard or St. Thomas Aquinas, this allows them to live out their potential more fully without the distractions of “worldly affairs.” For others, religious life allows them to focus wholeheartedly on doing good. Simple, active, authentic good is living out God’s love in the world – through “prayer, penance, service… and apostolic activity” (CCC 924).

A higher state?

The Church has always viewed religious life as a “higher” state of life than married life. This sometimes comes as a shock to us happily married Catholics, but when we think about it a little, it all makes sense. St. Paul makes it clear in 1 Corinthians that an unmarried Christian can pursue the good with a larger heart, uninfluenced by the cares of the world. That religious life is a higher calling does not mean that God loves professed religious more than anyone else, nor does it mean that He wants some people to live fun, comfortable, prosperous lives while others languish in a monastery somewhere.

Religious life is “a gift received from her Lord” (CCC 926). If you grew up Catholic, you’ve probably heard this before. But the “gift” of religious life is not just a gift for the laity who benefit from the work and prayers of monks and nuns around the world. It is a gift for the religious themselves. When God calls us to religious life, he is calling us to a life of “more intimate consecration” (CCC 916). They are given the chance to live in community while pursuing the good with all our heart.

The gift of religious life is a gift in every sense: religious give themselves completely to Christ, Christ gives them the gift of a deeper intimacy with himself, and through the union of these two gifts, the Church as a whole benefits from those who “witness that the world cannot be transformed and presented 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. It enables us to follow and imitate Christ more closely and to reveal 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 suppress the call of faith. When friends or family members ask critical questions, we are often less than supportive. Religious life, we are told, is for socially awkward or unattractive Catholics.

In many ways, Catholic parents tend to ignore religious life until they are left with a 35-year-old, eternally single adult child. Then they throw it overboard as a last resort. But the call to religious life is not a desperate attempt to save a helpless life; it is a calling. THE calling. God calls pretty, sociable young women and attractive, competent men. He calls the conventional and the eccentric, the overly obedient and the wild. He also calls the socially awkward and unattractive. That is one of the great joys of religious life—it is an opportunity to see people as Christ sees them, beyond the limiting labels of the world.

Especially now, when the world needs to experience God’s goodness in abundance, it is important that we see the call to religious life as a first choice, not a backup plan. This can be difficult 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 in your own families,” as our young deacon encouraged us. Nurture those vocations, yearn for them, and look forward to seeing your children take religious vows.