What if the freest people in the world
own nothing,
keep no one,
and answer to a whisper?
This is not a story about rules,
but a story about a heart
with the doors taken off.
Religious life, is meant to liberate;
vows to be lived: to love, to share, and to serve
Just practical
in daily, ordinary,
and sometimes stormy ways.
Religious Poverty is all about holding lightly not having less. To have nothing of your own,
yet to give everything: time, energy, goods,
talents, joys, and sorrows.
All is set to be served to
Whosoever is in need
not just inside our walls.
The real questions poverty asks
in quiet: Do the doors stay open?
Both the physical one
and the inner one.
Am I free enough to share
not only bread,
but myself?
What do I got to offer?
My presence.
My attention.
My willingness to sit
with another person’s burden
When we live this way,
we discover a strange truth:the less we cling to,
the more we have to offer.
Chastity is not about closing off.
Its about loving without limits.
To own none but have all.
So to:love deeply; be ready to move
toward the greater need.
She asks :
Are we afraid of relationships,
or free for all?
Do we love familiar circles,
or the stranger?—
Those from the Church, or
Those hurting Her?
Chastity is a road not a wall for Virtue
He liberates me to God,with unbreakable ties to trust.
Even within our circle, even when hard.
Obedience is listening not compelled to follow.
It frees to respond to the Spirit.
As She speaks:
in a superior’s word,
in the stirrings of our own heart,
in community discussion,
in the Church,
in the news of the neighborhood
and the world.
It asks us to keep reading,
to keep questioning together:
What are we about?
Is this still love?
In order to change
how we live or work?
if love requires it.
Two things are opened for those who live them:
A deep, consistent,unavoidable suffering—
because love always costs something.
And a joy that knows no bounds
and never ends.
The joy of walking on stormy waters
and finding we are held. The joy of hoping,
because God’s promise has the last word. The joy of loving from a love that came first:
God loves all
This is freedom.
Not the kind that keeps,
but the kind that gives.
By: Sr. Cecilia Affum, SIJ
(Catholic Sister Communicators Network, Ghana -CASCON-GH)
