Over the last year, I've come to the realization that my call to religious life has changed. It isn't gone, but it is distinctly different. In my latest column for the Global Sisters Report, I try to explain the nature of this change. I don't think it's just me either...it's the nature of call. For our church, our society, and each one of us, our call is changing. Recognizing that is the first step in more consciously living out our call. Below my column. Enjoy!
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There’s a tightness
in my chest that is hard to explain. I can’t remember when it first started or
on what occasion it became noticeable. In a way, it feels like it has always
been there, loosening and tightening over time. Like a band wrapped tightly
around my chest, it binds up my heart; not in a painful way but as a steadfast
reminder of a presence deeper than myself. In simplest terms, it’s the feeling
I get when I find myself deep in prayer. And for good or for ill, it’s also
what I’ve come to associate with call.
A friend once told
me, she’d considered religious life and could see herself becoming a sister
except for one small thing: the call. “I
can do the apostolic works, the study, the community, but I don’t know if I
know what it means to be called” she said, “is it a voice or a feeling or
what?”
That’s a hard
question to answer. God speaks differently to different people. (My friend
would also take issue, I’m sure, with what it means to “hear God’s call” on
grounds that call is something far beyond a momentary utterance.) For me, though, there’s a deep sense of
serenity, a steadfast groundedness that signifies that sense of being called.
For a long time, I
didn’t know what to do with that feeling. In prayer, in writing, in service, in
reflection, and in conversations, it would surface. It came and went freely; yet
it stayed present enough in my muscle memory that I could never forget it. I recall times as I was discerning religious
life that I actively ran from that feeling and yet each time it came, I knew I
was in the right place.
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Sitting across from
my formation director a few weeks ago, I panicked: that feeling was
missing. It had been for months and as I
looked back at my first year as a professed woman religious, I wondered what
might be happening.
At the end of a year
heavy in transition, I knew that feeling wasn’t gone, yet in the moment I
couldn’t exactly feel it. God has had a
firm hold on me, but the tightness I cherish has been intermittent. “My call has changed.” I stammered out to my
director.
What I thought this
year might be, it wasn’t. My call to religious life felt different than I
thought it would. And to my dismay and delight, I’ve discovered this is a
changing call.
And that’s the thing
about call: you answer the call awesomely unaware of where it will lead you and
all it will drag you through. This
almost always guarantees that life and call will feel different than you
thought they would. The answer isn’t to
run, though, it’s to keep discerning.
My sense of God’s call
has shifted. The white hot lightning of initial fervor has cooled, making way
for a tempered tension, reliant on prayer, reflection, and balance. Passion
percolates with nuance in a way that’s become more apparent in the months and
years since I first answered the call to religious life. I’ve come to realize
that what I feel called to hasn’t changed, how
I feel called, though, has.
In time, part of this
call has become more apparent: being called is about recognizing a need and
filling it. That need is not just in the
world, it’s also in yourself. I need to
be here. Not because my religious congregation needs me, but because in order
to live the life I am called to- a life dedicated to Jesus- I need to live my
life for now as a religious sister. This need is one that has been underscored
over time. If I hadn’t met God in a very real and tangible way in my life would I
still be here? If this way of life
didn’t allow me to foster and focus on that relationship, would I remain?
Probably not. I need to be bound up in
love; in a tightness that frees me by holding me close in a world of risk,
uncertainty, and instability.
In the day-to-day,
holding firm and staying focused explicitly on call can be difficult. What we
are called to is embodied in how we live and who we are. Day-to-day life tempers
idealism, draws us into relationship with the world and others, and changes the
way we understand call. If call means living, it is the life we live that
influences the way we hear the call, melding together the theoretical and the
actual in what we hope is harmony.
In that way, we come
to realize that the call is not something that is answered once and for all. The
call requires living. And such a requirement is sure to be messy. Living the call presents surprising changes
to our lives. We are changed in the process of answering. “What you want me to do”; “who you want me to
be”; and “what I actually know” become questions relative to a call that leads
ultimately and primarily to Christ.
So, how do I know
this call is the same despite its new feel? I know it because I feel it in the
same place even if in a different way.
Like a foreign touch that produces a familiar sensation, it is a
changing call that tightens the heart as an act of constriction, not
restriction. Thus the heart beats,
bringing life, growth, and strength to the body as it is stretched in new ways
of listening to and living out the call every day.
Such growth comes
from openness to the Spirit. We change
in the act of answering the call, becoming, in the process, more authentically
who God has called us to be. This
process is one of renewal and reawakening. With intention and the Spirit, we
come to hear in a new way, live in a new way, and love God
in new ways.
And I can’t help but
think that this changing call is not just on an individual level. As a church, as religious communities, and as
the People of God, our call is changing too.
We are called to love and to live the Gospel. And so, the same question
proceeds- not what are we called to do, that’s constant, but- how we are being
called to do so.
Recent weeks have brought great cause to consider this everyday question of call. How is our love – God’s love – being felt in the world? As Pope Francis offers his latest encyclical Laudato Si’, how are we living our faith and answering the call of the Gospel in relation to the natural world? As the Supreme Court rules on same-sex marriage, and Ireland offers a “reality check” (in the words of Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin) by constitutionally redefining civil marriage, how are we continuing to be called to love in transformative ways for the world and ourselves? And as the Vatican implements a process of accountability for bishops on sexual abuse, how are we working towards healing and justice through accountability and compassion?
These are but a few questions (of many) to ask as we consider our call and the ever evolving nature of our response. As is so often the case, there are many more questions than answers. The process of answering the call though is a gift. We’ll surely be changed in the process – that’s the nature of our faith and of call. It makes us who we are and that process of becoming transforms us as we journey with Christ into who God has meant for us to be.
