Consecrated life is essentially “a gift of God the Father to his church through the Holy Spirit” for which everyone needs to be primarily grateful (VC 1, 2). Even Jesus is consecrated by the Father and sent into the world, as he himself acknowledges (Jn.10:36). This consecration is a life – long process and is deep as one’s self offering is deep and sustained. This offering to God to be consecrated by the Spirit is the core of the spirituality of consecrated life. This availability is the universal spiritual dimension that characterises each and every school of spirituality of the numerous religious congregations that exits today. Consecrated life is a radical following and an offering of oneself to God, allowing oneself to be transformed fully into the divine, an ever clearer sign and proof of the Sacred, a guarantee that the Supreme being pervades every dimensional situation of existence.
Lumen Gentium clearly teaches us that “the forms and tasks of life are many but holiness is one that sanctify which is cultivated by all, adoring the God the Father in Spirit and in truth”. Therefore consecrated persons are not primarily persons who exercise particular charisms but persons who are called to “nourishing and fostering their action with overflowing contemplation” (LG 41). Thus consecrated men and women become “privileged partners in the search for God which has always stirred the human heart and has led to different forms of asceticism and spirituality” (VC 103). Consecrated life is primarily a contemplative life – style and not merely a ceremonial religious profession.
It is to be noted that since a few years we speak of consecrated life and not of religious commitment or profession. It is more than a change of terminology, and manifests a radical change of understanding. The older term springs from an active perspective of life and service where as the latter derives from a more passive, truly contemplative understanding. Consecrated life transformed existence rather than a particular activity. From it’s first beginnings, consecrated life, with it’s focus on contemplative prayer, was primarily making more space for God in one’s life. Therefore, a constantly deepening contemplative life style is the primary and indispensable proof of this universal, basic dimension of consecrated life.
Consecrated men are called to embrace different spiritualities according to the particular charism of the institute. So every school of spirituality is but an adaptation of the basic spirituality of a contemplative life. The challenge of consecrated life today is precisely to return to this core spirituality of every institute of consecrated life to make oneself available to be continuously consecrated by God through one’s purely contemplative prayer practices and ensuing life style. The indispensable and primary sign and witness of living consecrated life today as individuals and communities is the daily commitment to a purely contemplative prayer practice. Officially and externally, individual and community living abounds in diverse prayer formulae and liturgical rituals. Nevertheless, the focus on and depth of contemplative dimension of prayer leaves much to be desired. It would be naïve to presume that one can claim to be living a consecrated life without a daily systematic schedule of contemplative prayer.
A consecrated person can be simply defined as one who through a rigorous schedule of daily contemplative prayer surrenders oneself to be transfigured by the gift of consecration by God every day and every moment of one’s life (VC 35). The contemplative practices of the members individually and the community as a whole need to be woven together. The collective energy produced by group contemplation is indeed inexhaustible. This perpetual process of consecration effected through regular, committed contemplative prayer practice, is an emanation of the supreme Eucharistic consecration – bread that is offered, taken up, blessed, broken and given away.
The Christian mystical tradition is replete with numerous purely contemplative prayer practices. Particular methods can be chosen according to one’s spiritual tastes and experiences. “Jesus Prayer” is the most ancient form of a specifically Christian contemplative prayer practice. It is also the most simple method that can be easily taken up by beginners in the spiritual life. It’s riches are inexhaustible. There is also much one can learn from the wisdom of other contemplative traditions, especially from the orient. But what is absolutely indispensable is the systematic, rigorous daily schedule of one contemplative prayer practice passionately adhered to. Such daily contemplative practice needs to be valued as no less sacred than the daily community celebration of the Holy Eucharist and the liturgy of the hours prayed in common. Experience tells that this can transform life far more efficaciously, beyond all expectations.
The single-minded life-long pilgrimage of wholehearted contemplative prayer practice is the radical response to the invitation of Jesus to leave the self behind. It is an ongoing transformation of consciousness. It is “living the same kind of life as Christ lived” (1 Jn. 2:6) and arriving at the mindfulness of Christ. “Have this mind among yourselves which was in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5). This is consecration in its purity and totality.
The fundamental challenge of Consecrated life is to spread the joy of the Gospel, true and lasting joy, which is an essential attribute of divinity. Only a deepening contemplative experience can help us re-discover true and lasting joy that has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. This is the joy independent of all external circumstances, a joy that deepens with our awareness of being consecrated by God already at our baptism, a consecration that is deepened each and every day of one’s life, to the extent one surrenders oneself to be blessed, broken and given. As the Pope has pointed out far too many suffer from the disease of a lugubrious face. Only consecrated persons who re-discover the Gospel joy through contemplative exercises can liberate others from a sterile pessimism and the evil spirit of defeatism (Evagelii Gaudium 84-86).
This ineffable joy is the infallible proof of God’s presence and grace. This joy is not passing fun or fleeting hilarity, but the ‘ecstasy’ (standing out of ) from the visible, external world. St. Augustine describes it as entering into the joy of the master (MT.25: 21, 23). St. Catherine of Genoa depicts it as being immersed in a sea of profoundest peace. In the words of St. Theresa the great, it is the grace never to be upset or frightened knowing that the one who experiences the unconditional love of God lacks nothing. It is the light that was shining on the face of Moses because he had been talking with God face to face (Ex. 33: 11, 34: 29). This is the universal charism of consecrated life, being witnesses to the joy of the Gospel and waking up the world to this lasting joy, which all the worldly progress can never bestow.
As a fruit of contemplative experience, consecrated persons will awaken to the prevalent over-emphasis on the babbling of prayer formulae and scrupulous performance of obligatory ritual practices, at the cost of genuine openness and surrender to God. Decades ago the great contemplative, Thomas Merton, warned that “liturgical life can become a short-circuit of routine and regimentation that can serve as a hiding place” and that professed religious may be merely “men and women who go through a pantomime of perfection quite unaware of their spiritual mediocrity” (Merton, Contemplative Prayer). It is no secret that life of many consecrated persons and communities today consists of the mechanical recital of numerous prayers that does not lead to deeper God-experience.
Waking up to the origins of consecrated life, going to the basics of religious life, consecrated persons should once again give absolute priority to the spiritual life, or more specifically to the contemplative life. The need and relevance of such a life to the world of today is beyond all doubt and all the consecrated persons should prioritise their spiritual life through contemplative prayer practices, because it is the best remedy to be joyful in consecrated life.
Fr. Vinu Velutheppilly RCJ.