Raleigh Diocese
Annual Celebration of Vowed Life
February 10, 2007
Bishop Burbidge, Bishop Gossman, reverend clergy, colleagues, family and friends: Thank you for sharing in today’s celebration of God’s faithful love in our lives: Sisters Mary Peter, Shirley, Mary Therese, Theresine, Teresa, Margaret, Joanna and I.Your friendship and prayerful support are truly part of the 100-fold! In these few minutes, we usually reflect on the nature of religious life; I would like to sketch a partial answer to the question I often hear, Where are the Sisters?”
In the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church (Lumen Gentium), the life of vowed religious is described as a “gift of God which the Church has received from her Lord and which by God’s grace she always safeguards.” We are part of an historic transition period in the experience of this grace. We made our first vows at a time when the form and activities of religious life seemed immutable, and it is likely that at some period after the day of our vows we each faced the question of commitment in a new way. As others among our number heard other calls in their lives, friends and family asked us, What about you? Will you stay in this life?
The second yes was the braver. We knew by then that our society, our church and our religious congregations were all entering a time of flux. We were less sure to what we were saying yes, but the anchor of our lives was the Who to whom we said yes. In a deeper way, we believed in the faithfulness of God’s care and mercy toward us.
I served on two committees that gave me the opportunity in recent years to stay with Sisters of many congregations all over the United States. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious sponsored a study of the leadership roles for women emerging in the U.S. church, and I was part of the team that studied the emergence of women in such roles as administrators of parishes without a resident pastor, members of diocesan Tribunals, and Vicars for Religious. The second was a committee of my Congregation, the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary, that facilitated the formation of a new North American province from five geographically smaller ones.
I was edified by my visits to these diverse communities of Sisters. They reflected a deep commitment to prayer and to hospitality, to justice and to service. The word that comes to mind is authentic—these Sisters are living the way of prayer, community and service that honors the foundresses whose lives we have studied with such care since the Second Vatican Council.
From what I have seen, the question of “Where are the Sisters these days,” comes down to four identifiable patterns. Sisters continue to serve in the taproot ministries for which their Congregations were formed: Education, healthcare, social work, retreats, etc. As we have seen so clearly in our diocese, the Sisters have also fanned out into related ministries in parishes and diocesan settings and with nonprofit human service organizationsparticularly serving members of poor and marginalized populations. Who was a better example for us of outreach to the poor and marginalized than our late, beloved Sister Evelyn Mattern? Evelyn spent the summers writing mystical poetry and the remainder of the year advocating within the NC State Legislature forpeople such as migrant workers and against institutional violence, such as the death penalty.
There are two other current ministerial patternsfor today’s Sisters.Both are less visible: their outreach to others for more effective advocacy against all forms of violence, and on behalf of the poor and the marginalized and their inter-congregational activities for global justice.
More than just individual or local advocacy, congregations are more likely in recent years to collaborate as advocates for social justice. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, for example, has written to political leaders to stem the spread of the Iraq war and to pass legislation banning human trafficking. Twelve congregations of religious women have formed UNanima, a registered non-governmental organization (NGO) with the United Nations. The Sister Representatives work with the various UN secretariats to encourage peace initiatives, end human trafficking and make the earth’s resources, especially water, accessible for all peoples.
The International Union of Superiors General, established by the Vatican and constituted of the major superiors of Congregations the world over, is more active in reaching out to the Sisters in developing countries or in countries where the Church has experienced oppression. Our different Congregations have responded in various ways. Ours, for example, teaches English to the Adorers of the Holy Cross in Viet Nam and helped indigenous African congregations in South Africa become well-established. The School Sisters of Notre Dame work with Lithuanian Sisters who are reestablishing their houses and ministries suppressed by the Soviets.
Taken together these works of inter-institutional influence strengthen the voice of faith and peace throughout the world and again reflect the American religious women’sgift for practical and constructive action in the world.
But what about the future? We are welcoming small numbers of wonderful young women into our Congregations. They are rooted in the primacy of God in their lives and they search for communities of prayerful women dedicated to care and hospitality and with a commitment to social justice.
We thought we were brave! These young women know that the Congregations they are entering will be different when it is time for their jubilees. They know it will be another 20 years of transition before our Congregations reach a new point of demographic stability. From what we can see now, there will be fewer women religious serving in the U.S. church of the future, but that number is probably more like the historic proportion of vowed religious before the explosion of apostolic orders in the 18th and 19th Centuries.
We already experience in this diocese what the future will be like. There is no provincial or congregational motherhouse; there are no congregational high schools or colleges. The Sisters are, nonetheless, leaven in the communities of which they are a part. Our influence on faith and spirituality belies our numbers, and our presence continues to say within the Church that God is worth a life-gift.
Thank you all for coming. Today we can say with the psalmist, “I know I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” God bless you all for being here.
1