The primordial reference of Christian spirituality is Jesus: conversion to Him and to following Him.  Christian life is a life “in Christ” and “in the Spirit,” which is accepted in faith, expressed in love and lived in hope.  This Christian life is diverse due to the richness of its content and the circumstances in which it is lived.  There is unity of Christian life and diversity of spirituality: Eastern and Western, ancient, medieval, modern, contemporary, lay, priestly, religious, male and female.  This happens because spirituality embraces all of life, even action, and is conditioned by the circumstances in which it is lived.  From these circumstances different accents arise which characterize spirituality within the Church.

            Consecrated life is a style or way of living Christian life.  Its point of departure is a charism communicated by the Spirit to follow Jesus in a consecration through vows, lived in communion for mission. Among the characteristic aspects of the spirituality of consecrated life there is the fact of living one’s faith, hope, and Christian love beginning with the commitment of the vows of obedience, poverty and chastity.  These vows introduce special tones in the way of living a theological life.  The three vows are expression of the three theological virtues, but each of them emphasizes and exercises one of them in particular.

            Obedience is, especially, a lively experience of faith in openness to God’s ways, sought and discovered with the mediation of the superior and community. Limiting one’s own will and renouncing exclusively personal plans, consecrated religious women and men seek to fulfill their mission in service of the Reign, with responsibility and creativity. It is a way to be free in one’s clinging to the Father’s will for the sake of love, as Christ did.  Obedience manifests and establishes a new type of relationships in society: that of an authority as service and that of freedom that keeps in mind the good of others.  In this way, it contests a totalitarian and oppressive exercise of authority and individualistic selfishness in the use of freedom.

            Poverty is particularly related with hope, which guides the Christian in the use of the goods of this world. Material goods were created by God for the good of all and must be shared in justice and fraternity.  Consecrated religious, through the vow of poverty, feel committed to live a simple and moderate life, characterized by work, detachment and personal and community availability, and to place all that they are and have at the service of those most in need, in an evangelical communion of spiritual and material goods.

            Consecrated chastity, along with fraternal life in community, are a special expression of Christian love.  They generate a universal fraternity.  They help us understand the richness and demands of love, fruit of the Spirit.  They manifest, in their exercise, particular connotations: universality, gratuity, availability.  Consecrated chastity, on the other hand, permits being able to form community as families united not by bonds of flesh and blood, but by the common vocation received from God. The power of the resurrection of Jesus, who calls persons to fraternal communion, finds expression in consecrated chastity and life in community.

            A spirituality of the vows furnishes a special framework to the three fundamental demands of the following of Jesus  (Cfr. Lk 14:2-35), which are addressed to all Christians: keeping family ties in balanced perspective is expressed in consecrated chastity;  seeing material goods in just perspective is concretized in poverty; keeping one’s autonomous life plan in perspective is symbolized by carrying the cross and seeking to fill God’s will in obedience,  and living free for the service of the Reign, in consecrated chastity.

QUESTION:  Do you consider this framework for a spirituality of the vows valid?  Why?  For you, what are the main practical consequences that follow from this?