THE ESCHATOLOGICAL FUNCTION

 

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL FUNCTION

Being a religious means being committed herself under the vows to strive unceasingly towards the highest degree of love. It aspires towards the fullness of an undimmed and unlimited vision. It involves the eschatological tension of love, wholly directed towards the kingdom that is to come. Its function within the Church is to invoke unceasingly that cry of Marana tha (I cor 16:22) which extends throughout the time from the Resurrection to Parousia. (Rev 22:20). The religious vows find their deepest meaning.

The vow of chastity

Chastity is an anticipation of eternal life, ‘like angels in heaven’ to quote our Lord’s word (Mt 22:30, Mat 25:1-13). Waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom. Their vow is an expression of their love, a single, undivided and sure love for which they renounce all earthly nuptials. Consecrated virginity is a permanent sign within the Church., keeping alive this spirit of expectation, this withdrawal from all things in an impatient longing for the imminent return of the Lord: a thousand years are as a single day. It is a nuptial seal which brings the mystery of the body into the spiritual offering, and prepares the marriage-feast of the Lamb, whose bride adorns herself for him throughout her earthly life (Rev 21:2)

The vow of poverty

‘Sell what you possess and give it to the poor; and come, follow me’ (Mt 19:21). This is the first demand that Christ makes of those who wish to follow him. Poverty the first of the beatitude, is at the heart of the sermon on the mount and the whole gospel. Poverty is a mystery of childhood and of nakedness. It is the secret aspiration of those whose hearts have been touched by the sight of the crip and the humiliation of the Son of God, and attracted by his freedom. A need to penetrate to the very heart of the beatitudes in order to find there beatitude itself.

The vow of poverty is to be found under the eschatological aspect. Poverty is the condition of the soul which in its love for Christ looks only to the ultimate realities. The substance of this world is passing. We must go beyond beyond temporal wealth and temporary possessions. ‘we must go beyond temporal wealth and temporary possessions. Here we have no abiding city. The heart of a man is capable of more.

Vow of obedience

Christ in his obedience to the Father, and to follow him to the very end of this mysterious path: they choose for themselves the way of obedience. ‘Thy will be done on earth as in heaven’. Christ himself has shown us how dearly this prayer can sometimes cost us when he made this petition at Gethsemane for himself, making clear to us to what extent the Father’s will may be contrary to what we want ourselves: ‘Not my will, but thine, be done’ (Luke 22:42). It doesn’t matter so much to the religious whether her superior is good or bad or misguided or led away by passion or whatever it may be, because she is intent only on making a holocaust of the whole life. The superior is there to give her what her soul, in its love the Lord, came to look for the school of perfection, the way of obedience. 

Religious obedience stems primarily from the desire to give immediate realization in some way to the request we make in the Lord’s prayer, from the desire to anticipate the harmony and unity of the heavenly Jerusalem. ‘As you will be done in heaven’ we pray, ‘as it will be done completely and unceasingly by all the citizens of the new heaven and new earth, so too on this earth of refusal and pain let there be at least one voice of acceptance, one poor heart in which your will may, in so far as it is possible with our human weakness be accomplished with that eagerness and alacrity which are the marks of love! In this way the vow of obedience gives expression to the deepest aspirations of our love, attaching us wholly and unreservedly to the will of him we love.

The obedience we promise in our vows prefigures this city in our hearts, already giving reality to the eschatological reference of those words in the Lord’s Prayer: ‘As it is in heaven.’ That is why it is this vow which accomplishes the central holocaust of consecrated life, by giving God our will and even our freedom