Fresh from the Anniversary...

As we inaugurated our 45^th president of the United States, 600 Dominicans from around the world gathered in Rome with Francis to close the 800^th Anniversary celebration of the founding of the Dominican Order. We are fresh from that wondrous anniversary.

The challenges we face now often draw from our charism, from our ministerial situations, or from our cultural realities. I’d like to ponder the “background music” to all of these. I mean the counsels we have taken upon ourselves by vow. The counsels are radical Christian values that identify us as folks living within the lifestyle called consecrated life. Like the married, we have a set of vows added to our baptismal vows. These public vows witness to something, just as the married, by their wedding vows, witness to the faithful love of Jesus for his people. Those in religious life witness to the counsels as signs of the kingdom already in our midst.

The counsel of Poverty has nothing to do with destitution. Destitution is not a sign of the Kingdom. But a non-consumerist stance in daily life is. The vow of Poverty means we live simply so that others can simply live. We live open to the needs of others making a claim on us. Now this witness is not just for us. It’s for the entire Church…indeed for the whole culture that is home to us. The mutual care we daily extend to one another, the sharing of material goods, the goal of reducing waste, and recycling what we can, is a value catching on gradually across the globe.

 What is unique to us as publicly witnessing to this value is its focus. We have one non-negotiable: we cling to the Divine Mystery that has captured our hearts. This is why everything else can be negotiated. This focus makes us quite free. There is only one thing that we cling to. When we clarify that focus for ourselves, then we can sort through those boxes…we can ask honestly whether our living space is uplifting and beautiful or merely cluttered…we can ask whether we really need something or whether we simply want it. This counsel, if it is truly operative in our daily living, gives us the clarity to discern wider community decisions. What challenges ahead keep us focused, and what is becoming a distraction?

We’ve been around for 800 years…but we are just beginning.