Motherhood and the Religious Life
Motherhood is to give life. A mother gives life, watches over life and is concerned about its development. Now all life, whether it be physical life, spiritual life, or supernatural life, is a flowing out, a movement, a renewal. A plant is living, and to live, it must receive; it receives from the earth and from the atmosphere all the external principles of its growth. Yet, in living, it also gives. The plant yields a flower, a fruit. Similarly, living water flows, it leaps over the rocks, receiving from its source and giving itself towards its mouth. Human life consists in receiving freely, in humility, that is, the fully spiritual acceptance of one’s proper role, which is one of cooperation and not of initiative, in order to give freely, in charity. Is not woman, in her vocation, in an exemplary way, the realization of human life in full freedom? Physically, and even more spiritually, her motherhood consists in receiving and giving.
To be mothers, to give life, is what God destines for the woman: “It is by becoming a mother that a woman will be saved” (I Tim. 2:15). You will perhaps reflect on this statement and say: “but then you, Sister, must be missing your vocation, because you cannot give life, you have renounced it by consecrating yourself to God.” If it is a question of giving natural life, then yes, in fact, the religious Sister renounces it: she makes the sacrifice of the joys of human motherhood, but for all that, she has not renounced her vocation to be a mother. Quite the contrary! She fully embraces her feminine vocation, in a much more radical, fertile and transcendent way. In fact, if she renounces natural, physical motherhood (and this is a real sacrifice) it is for another motherhood, much greater, more vast, and even more beautiful: spiritual motherhood. For the religious, it is a question of giving birth to souls in the life of grace, of saving them for eternity. That is the fruitfulness of a consecrated soul!
A gift
Whether it is a question of spiritual motherhood or physical motherhood, there is a gift at its core: one must give, that is, one must go out of oneself. One cannot give life without giving oneself, and that is what is so beautiful and inspiring.
This vocation of motherhood is common to every woman, regardless of the particular vocation to which God destines each one, whether religious or mothers. This vocation will be a source of joy and of fulfillment, precisely to the extent of her gift. To do good to souls, to draw them to Our Lord, requires many sacrifices, but it is precisely this sacrifice of self that brings countless joys. Many have already experienced this: after an act of charity that has cost them, that has forced them to go out of themselves, they felt a deep, lasting joy, maybe hardly perceptible, but true, nonetheless. A woman must continue to develop this gift of self, this generosity, whether in the family first or elsewhere: this attention to others, this feminine glance that makes her recognize her neighbor in need, or see where a service is to be rendered…Consider Our Lady at Cana or think of her going with haste to help her cousin Elizabeth at the time of the Visitation. Too easily, if we listen to our nature, we focus on ourselves: it is selfishness that can ravage a woman’s life. The world in which we live pushes us to this destructive selfishness which kills true joy and enthusiasm. No, the woman is not made to be centered on herself, but to give herself, and therefore to forget herself. Whatever be her vocation, whatever be her temperament or character, the woman will be more or less happy, more or less fulfilled, according to how much she gives. We all know mothers of large families, fulfilled, radiant in the midst of many worries, many trials…And others, who may have fewer worries but who seem to carry the heaviest load on their shoulders. True joy and profound happiness do not depend on external circumstances or temperament: it is a matter of the soul. It all depends on the quality of the gift of self... And this is perhaps why consecrated souls in the religious life can be so fulfilled: it is because they have given everything, and they give themselves more radically every day.
Where does this gift, this quality of self-giving, come from? It comes from the heart! To give, to give oneself, one must love. This is the condition of giving. Without love, there is no gift of self. This is why God, in destining woman for the magnificent role of motherhood, has given her a heart so rich, tender, deep, delicate and capable of devotion and sacrifice. The man is the head of the family, the woman is the heart. This is a woman’s wealth.
Training Your Heart
The heart can be formed, deformed or transformed. It can be damaged by selfishness, by self-enjoyment, by evil passions... It can also be enriched and ennobled. How? Let us look at Our Lady. She is the ideal model; she will form the heart of those who draw near her.
Every young girl and woman must work close to Our Lady, to cultivate one’s womanly qualities (which are sources of joy), and to strive to remove one’s defects (which are sources of sterile suffering). The humility of Our Lady and the total gift of herself helped her to go to God, to accomplish His Will with her whole soul in very ordinary tasks. And with what perfection, with what charity she did these ordinary things, with what generosity and forgetfulness of self. Every woman should learn to improve her power to love, to pacify and dominate her heart, to go out of herself. If she trains her heart well, it will make her happy.
She should also train herself to have a great esteem for this vocation of motherhood, to which God is calling her, and a great respect for her body, the temple of the Holy Trinity. Modesty, a deep interior life, a life of daily prayer nourished by good reading, the help of the sacraments, Mass also during the week when, and if, possible…these are all means of helping her to grow in her vocation as woman and mother. She ought to protect her heart from everything that can defile or degrade it, or prevent it from being lifted up towards God (e.g., bad music, social media, abuse of internet, smartphones, profiles...) How much time could be well used by good occupations, by practical, manual activities, which allow her to live in reality and develop the gifts that God has given her. She is wise who knows how to keep peacefully occupied so as not to let idleness take hold of her.
The Religious Vocation
The basis of the feminine vocation is motherhood. Spiritual motherhood remains in the first place; without it, physical motherhood is stripped of its divine meaning.
In general, the woman’s heart is attracted to marriage, which allows her to respond to her innate vocation of motherhood. Marriage is a work of God and has a sacred beauty all its own. Love, however, is not only synonymous with home and physical motherhood. Love is the generous giving of self.
It is given to some to hear the call to a love that goes beyond the framework of other loves, that puts them at the service of the only Lord who really counts, Our Lord. A love that will fill them divinely because it will tear them away from themselves... For in the end, it is always our own limits that we come up against so painfully.
“The most prodigious adventure is our own life, and this one is to our size,” wrote Guy de la Rigaudie. “A brief adventure: 30, 50, 80 years maybe…This adventure does not go beyond our stature. We only have to walk towards our God to be at the size of the infinite…Follow the crooked or straight path that God has marked out for you, but do not leave this path that is yours, whatever it may be. Run the adventure boldly and with joy in your heart, but when the time comes, you will have to move on to the only adventure there is, the total gift to God, to accept. It is only God who counts. Only His light and His Love can satisfy our poor human heart, too vast for the world around it.”
Beyond marriage, there is a call to the splendid realization of the female destiny. In each woman, beyond the instinct of happiness, there is a need, no less great, no less vital; it is the passionate need to ‘serve,’ which some of us perhaps only appease by giving ourselves to a great cause. Of course, it is God who calls, but in order to perceive this call, it is necessary to look in the direction from which this call can come. It is a question of not missing out: if He calls, we must respond, because one’s whole life is at stake, in its joys as well as in its fruitfulness. The rich young man of the Gospel “went away sad”: he did not have the courage to leave everything to follow Our Lord.
“The religious state is like a method and an exercise for arriving at perfection, for it is a holocaust by which one offers oneself to God entirely, with all that one possesses: external goods, by the vow of voluntary poverty; the good of one’s own body, by the vow of chastity; the good of the soul by obedience, by sacrificing its self-will, which is the faculty by which man makes use of all the powers and habits of his soul” (St. Thomas Aquinas).
This radical immolation of one’s whole self is the answer of a loving soul if God calls her: it is a question of loving Jesus more; the sacrifices inherent in a religious vocation become proofs of love and at the same time a powerful means to develop it even more.
Privileged Love from Jesus
Everything is love in Jesus’ relationship with souls. Everything He does for us, He does out of love, even when He tests or chastises us…What can be said of the preeminent gift of vocation? He draws souls so close to Him; He consecrates them directly to the service of his Person; He establishes between Him and them those relations of intimacy which constitute the sovereign charm of religious life. Oh, this merciful love, which makes these souls the friends and privileged one of His Heart! “God is a consuming fire.” The whole essence of the religious vocation is there, on the part of Jesus as well as on the part of the soul. The more this charity grows within the soul and the more it is purified of self through the religious life, the more this consecrated soul will be fruitful in the order of grace. She herself radiates divine life, and she mysteriously, but really, obtains the birth and growth of that divine life in others.
Conclusion
To give life is to collaborate in God’s work: by her consecrated life, the religious helps transmit the supernatural life of grace to souls, sharing in the work of the Blessed Trinity, the adoption of souls enlivened by the blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
The society of tomorrow is in the hands of women: the decline or elevation of a society also comes from women. Behind every great saint there is often a holy mother. On Calvary, Mary silently stood, renewing Her fiat as to become the Mother of all those who would share the life of Her Divine Son. The religious by her profession and her “fiat” throughout the day united to Jesus and born for love of Him, saves souls.
Today, too, holiness is possible. Certainly, God arouses heroism in our troubled times, heroism of littleness, perhaps, by the fulfillment of his Will in quite ordinary tasks. Yet, this is true greatness, the true “success” of a life, whether inside or outside the cloister. The value of a life, like the value of an action, is not measured by what is seen, but by the degree of charity, in correspondence with the Will of God. It is up to us to correspond to these graces, for the honor of God, the salvation of our souls and of many other souls.
God calls each woman to a magnificent work: motherhood. To give life, physical life or spiritual life, to collaborate closely with Him in His sacred work…in other words: to love! This is what she is made for.
TITLE IMAGE: Hike in the Dakotas on the summer girls’ camp.
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