The Catholic Leader - 7 May

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The Catholic Leader, May 7, 2017
Radical and relevant: Religious
life does make a difference
Faithful together: Sr Melissa Dwyer (front left) with other members of the congregation of Canossian Sisters.
By Sr Melissa Dwyer
THE more I reflect on the call to fol-
low Jesus as a consecrated woman,
the more convinced I am that reli-
gious life is just as relevant and just
as essential to the Church as it has
ever been.
Religious life is radical.
Now more than ever, the Church needs young
people who are ready to witness with the totality
of their lives that Jesus is the most important
thing for them.
Now more than ever, the Church needs young
people who are ready to stand for their faith, ir-
respective of the challenges that they face.
Now more than ever, the Church needs com-
mitted people who are ready to risk everything
for Christ and be open to go to the ends of the
earth to serve those in greatest need.
Many young people desire to make a differ-
ence in the world. But perhaps they don’t realise
that religious life is one concrete way of doing
that.
Opening your heart up to the unconditional
love of Jesus and having the courage to push
away from the shore with Jesus sets you on the
adventure of a lifetime.
Religious life is an opportunity to grow each
and every day more in love with God, whilst
living in a community of other religious who are
also striving to follow Christ wherever He leads.
The vocation to religious life is ultimately
about an encounter.
It’s about a life-changing encounter with Jesus
that transforms the heart of someone.
Once we meet Jesus and He speaks to our
hearts, we are never the same as before.
What’s even more exciting is that religious
life provides the avenue to have a daily trans-
formative encounter with Jesus, allowing Him
to stretch and mould us in whatever way He
desires.
When speaking about religious life, Pope
Francis said, “The Church and the world have
need of this testimony of the love and mercy of
God shown by religious.
“Totally consecrated to God, they are totally
given over to their brethren, to carry the light of
Christ there where the darkness is thickest and to
spread His hope to hearts who are discouraged.”
With the world rocked to its core by terrorism
and threats of war, religious life becomes a sign
of hope and joy in the midst of despair.
In the midst of so much negativity that sur-
rounds the Church, I believe living my life as a
religious sister is a privilege.
It is a privilege to be able to serve the Church.
It is a privilege to be able to live my life com-
pletely for Jesus.
It is a privilege to live with a community
of other women on a mission of making Jesus
known and loved.
Sometimes when we hear the word “vocation”
we think that one has to be perfect to even con-
sider embarking on the journey of religious life.
How far from the truth that is!
One of the saddest things is that many young
women feel a call to religious life but never have
the courage to give it a try.
Attuned with a society that to a certain extent
is afraid of commitment, young women some-
times miss the opportunity to take the first step
of exploring a religious vocation.
Whilst sometimes it can be difficult for a
young person to discern which congregation to
join, there is a certain inner peace that comes
when one is in the right place.
There’s no need to have all the answers at the
beginning.
When I first entered religious life I had no idea
of what this vocation was really all about.
Yet I continue to appreciate the beauty of the
daily journey of sitting at the feet of Jesus and
discovering more about His call to follow.
The vows of poverty, chastity and obedience
give me opportunities to grow in freedom from
possessions, love without measure and complete
trust in God’s will for me.
At the end of it all, I love my life as a conse-
crated woman.
I love the opportunity every day to be avail-
able for whoever God calls me to serve.
I love the opportunity to witness to my faith,
even without words.
I love the opportunity to ground my life in
prayer which invites me to allow my relationship
with Jesus to transform my life.
I would never have expected my life to turn
out the way it has.
Yet it’s exciting to dream of the possibilities
ahead of me in continuing to love and serve God
with all that I am.
We each have one life to live. I want to make
sure that I use every possible moment to spread
the Good News.
In whatever opportunities arise I want to
simply do the very best I can in deepening my
love for God and allowing this love to transform
the world.
If you want to make a difference, if you want
to serve the poor, if you want to be radical in
responding to the great gift of faith you have
received, consider religious life.
It’s a radical adventure of a lifetime.
Where are you going? Follow Jesus. He is
more than enough.
Sr Melissa Dwyer is a Canossian Sister
from Brisbane. She works for Vocations Bris-
bane. To find out more about religious life,
contact her at
Vocations Talk
By Adam Burns
DID you know that the Fourth Sunday of
Easter, also known as Good Shepherd Sunday,
is also the World Day of Prayer for Vocations?
These days, just about anything is commemo-
rated with a “World Day” (for example, in
some parts of the world, May 3 is “Lumpy Rug
Day”), so our response might echo that of the
crowd that Peter addresses in the first reading:
“What are we to do?” (Acts 2:37).
This World Day of Prayer for Vocations,
there is much to do.
In his message for this 54th World Day of
Prayer for Vocations, Pope Francis urges all
Christians to remember the essential call to mis-
sion that is part of our vocation: “As disciples,
we do not receive the gift of God’s love for
our personal consolation, nor are we called to
promote ourselves, or a business concern.
All the baptised called to mission
“We are simply men and women touched and
transformed by the joy of God’s love, who can-
not keep this experience just to ourselves.”
The fundamental definition of our own voca-
tion is to share God’s love with others.
The call to mission is firstly an encourage-
ment to pray this Sunday for our own vocation.
We are all called, by virtue of our Baptism, to
be part of the Body of Christ in the world today.
All of us – priests, deacons, bishops, nuns,
sisters, brothers, consecrated, husbands, wives,
single people, young and old – are called to the
mission to proclaim the Gospel in our world.
What could this mission look like?
In a recent address at the TED Conference in
Vancouver, Pope Francis suggested the mission
requires tenderness “… to use our eyes to see
the other, our ears to hear the other, to listen to
the children, the poor, those who are afraid of
the future … to listen also to the silent cry of our
common home, of our sick and polluted Earth.
“Tenderness means to use our hands and our
heart to comfort the other, to take care of those
in need.”
Our lives, expressed through our vocation,
have a very real influence on others and in our
world.
Specifically, because our vocation is pointed
towards others, we are responsible for helping
them discern God’s calling in their life.
In his message for the World Day of Prayer
for Vocations, Pope Francis further writes,
“Dear brothers and sisters, today too, we can re-
gain fervour in preaching the Gospel and we can
encourage young people in particular to take up
the path of Christian discipleship.
“Despite a widespread sense that the faith is
listless or reduced to mere ‘duties to discharge’,
our young people desire to discover the peren-
nial attraction of Jesus, to be challenged by his
words and actions, and to cherish the ideal that
he holds out of a life that is fully human, happy
to spend itself in love.”
This Sunday we are asked to pray for voca-
tions. But our prayer must extend to accom-
paniment, especially with the young people in
our communities, as they undergo an authentic
search for identity and meaning.
Not only does our Church need them, but
they need the Church to speak to them, to ask
them the big questions, to challenge them to
more.
This Sunday our prayer is that the Lord would
send out labourers into his harvest – and let us
not be afraid to sow God’s love into the lives of
those we meet.
By ADAM burns
Adam Burns is a vocations
office for Vocation Brisbane.
World Day of Prayer for Vocations