VITA CONSECRATA - FROM THE FEMININE SIDE

by Sister Mary Augustine O.P.

It seems to me that a woman religious can read "Vita Consecrata" and feel it was written just for her.

Many modern Church documents on Religious Life tend to devote special attention to religious women in particular - and we should not be too quick to assume that this is just a reassuring response to the many feminist complaints about an 'oppressive Church patriarchy'. Anyone with a knowledge of the Church's wonderful teaching on Religious Consecration will read such passages in proper context - and thus in the light of the truth,- the truth being that the Church has never regarded religious women as some kind of inferior sector within its life and mission: a minority group to whom occasional patronising sops must be cast in order to maintain political peace and general morale. On the contrary, it places the woman religious where it places the Mother of Christ - at its very heart.

"Vita Consecrata" brings this home in an extraordinary way. Not content with merely including a chapter on religious women, the Holy Father weaves throughout the entire document, teachings and images which reflect the place of the feminine in the life of the Church as a whole, - and in particular in the Consecrated Life. Then he goes on to include practical instructions and exhortations to action, which, on closer examination, contain so much that is pertinent to the woman, that one might almost feel a certain neglect of the masculine element which must balance and complement her own special gifts.

There is a special vision in this document - a vision which distils the highest and oldest wisdom of the Church, and which pertains not just to religious, but to every member of the Church. Religious women have special reason for rejoicing in this vision and for drawing hope from it. The values and concepts to which the Holy Father gives voice are those related to that feminine genius of which our world has largely lost sight - to its great impoverishment.

It is surely no exaggeration to say that the world around us favours the masculine. This may sound like the original feminist complaint, but, as the Holy Father suggests in "Vita Consecrata", radical feminism actually promotes masculinity, imitating models of "male domination" and succeeding to the point where the values of true femininity have been well and truly driven underground.

Modern society generally demands of us that we be tough, self-reliant, self-motivated, self-actuated, aggressive, pro-active, rational, dominant, adventurous, practical and inventive. We are made to feel that the more feminine qualities of soft-heartedness, dependence, altruism, receptivity, longsuffering, contemplative thought, creativity, stability and fidelity are somehow inferior and not what we need to take society into the future. Even when such qualities are appreciated, they are only appreciated insofar as they are seen as more or less useful means to getting the masculine "job" done. Under all the talk of caring, listening and affirmation which has become "de rigeur" at practically all levels of social relationship, there is a hard, shallow intolerance that breaks through at the first sign of failure to achieve the desired "result". We should not be fooled into thinking that the softening up processes used in business management have anything to do with "re-feminising" the world. They are all ultimately directed at making money and winning influence.

Is it any wonder, then, that such a world has lost God? The human soul is feminine before God. It cannot try to be masculine before God without trying to be God, (which is precisely what our world is busy about). What the Holy Father is busy about in "Vita Consecrata" is a restoration of the true balance of values found in the Church's traditional spirituality.

I went to "Vita Consecrata" looking for some really tough, no-nonsense directives from the Holy Father. I wanted him to tell religious to stop chasing after secular moonbeams and start being the prophets of the next world that their vocation demands. At first, I was disappointed on this score. All I found was a lofty, complex dissertation on the traditional meaning of the consecrated life and its spiritual and juridical place in the Church.

Yet it is a document not to be mined for information, but to be pondered for wisdom. We should read it with the heart, - not merely with the head, - so as to receive what it is designed to give, namely a call to conversion. The Pope is lifting us up to see the great horizons of God's true design for our souls, bringing us to the remembrance that we are all feminine before God, as is His Church before Christ our Lord. We may now all begin to see that a restoration of feminine values is essential to the spiritual life of both men and women. Religious, - especially women religious, - may be brought to realise anew that their relationship with Christ is a spousal one: the expression of His spousal relationship with His Church.

The first of the Holy Father's "feminine" themes in this document is the theme of beauty.

Now with all due respect to those countless gifted men whose profound sense of beauty has expressed itself in works of art which are the aesthetic joy and pride of humanity, and to those holy men whose teachings have lifted souls to Heaven, and with due acknowledgement that all women are not beautiful, it remains true that the realm of beauty is "feminine territory". Most women cannot live without beauty - interior or exterior - and where they find it absent, they have a need to create it in some way, while most men can often manage, so long as things are functional.

"Vita Consecrata" is full of references to God as ultimate beauty. There is that quotation from St. Augustine, fulsome in its praise of Christ:

Beautiful is God, the Word with God. He is beautiful in Heaven, beautiful on earth:beautiful in the womb, beautiful in His parents' arms, beautiful in His miracles, beautiful in His sufferings, beautiful in inviting to life, beautiful in not worrying about death, beautiful in giving up His life and beautiful in taking it up again. He is beautiful on the Cross, beautiful in the tomb, beautiful in Heaven.

This theme of beauty is especially appealing and helpful to a woman religious. Attraction for the sheer beauty of God, of Christ his Son, has played a vital part in the recognition of her vocation and in her fidelity to it. It is a moving thing to hear an elderly religious speak of the story of her vocation. The "romance" and delight of her initial falling-in-love with Christ has never faded in her heart, but has become purified and deepened by suffering and struggle. Her eyes will light up with the remembrance of how He has won her heart: He who knows more than all the sons of men how to win and keep a woman's love. Attraction for His beauty not only endures in her but becomes intensified long after her own external youth and vitality have waned. This is because the attraction is a spiritual one, fed by the ever-growing fires of grace. The Holy Father uses Jeremiah's words "you have seduced me, Lord, and I have let myself be seduced". This is interesting imagery. Worldly notions of romance hold us to the concept of the fatal attraction of the male towards female beauty, but here in the realm of the spirit, God is the irresistible Beauty to which we are drawn. (Another example of how things come to be reversed when we move from the physical to the spiritual).

Another important feminine theme in the document is that of love - those particular forms and aspects of love which reflect the feminine genius. In "Mulieris Dignitatem" - his earlier document on the place of woman in the Church, - the Holy Father has reminded the faithful - especially women, - that virginity and motherhood are the two special dimensions of the fulfilment of the female personality, which finds its full meaning and value in the Mother of God. Feminine love, then has its elements of virginal love and of motherly love, and in both of these we find the threefold, self-giving love of the woman, involving receptivity to life and love, the nurturing of life and love, and the putting oneself at the service of life and love.

"Vita Consecrata" is rich with themes of love which reflect receptivity to, and acceptance of God's initiatives and His grace. The Holy Father speaks of the spousal receptivity of Mary's fruitful virginity, of the Church's own fruitful virginity and of the virginal love of the consecrated person, whose love is the "source of a particular fruitfulness which fosters the birth and growth of divine life in people's hearts". He speaks of that receptivity to the Cross which is to be found in a great number of consecrated persons whose "fidelity to the One Love is revealed in the humility of a hidden life, in the acceptance of sufferings... in silent sacrifice...and abandonment to God's Will". It is a receptivity which consecrated women share with all women - this capacity for self-giving to the point of suffering and death.

Then there are themes of faithful, nurturing love. The Holy Father reminds religious that "their first duty is to make visible the marvels wrought by God in the frail humanity of those who are called." His explanation of the Trinitarian dimension to which religious are asked to live and bear witness, is very beautiful and reflects the feminine desire for an undivided heart and the total gift of self. Religious are being called anew to become one with Christ, "taking on His mind and His way of Life" in order to "reveal the transcendence of the Kingdom of God, and its requirements over all earthly things". This is a message very close to the heart of the religious woman, whose dual role as virgin, (leaving all to follow the Lamb) and as spiritual mother, (nurturing the life of the Church in the precious souls entrusted to her), can only be carried out by those who have said with the Blessed Mother, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord".

The feminine way of service is, in its ideal form, an unobtrusive way. It expresses the loving devotion of the mother and the self-renunciation of the virgin. Its chosen fields are those which promote humanity and culture. Its special charism is that of communion. And so the Holy Father challenges religious, - and indeed the whole Church - to return to what can be seen as essentially and traditionally feminine forms of communion, evangelisation and mission. He emphasises the need for care of the elderly and of the poor, the need for cultivation of fraternity in order to witness to the beauty of family life in common. He speaks of a new commitment to education and to evangelising the culture. He makes a plea for dialogue and reconciliation, both of which call for the special gifts of the feminine - listening and compassion and long-suffering. Above all, he calls us all back to the spirituality of the heart, to the hidden service of prayer, both intercessory and contemplative. In all of these there is a special message, I think, for women religious, and for the Church who, in this very rugged, hyper-active, unfeeling and grasping world, needs what they can give, both by way of feminine service and feminine spiritual witness.

The call to spiritual witness, is, I think, what sums up the overall theme of "Vita Consecrata" The Holy Father's use of the Transfiguration as the "icon" which captures the meaning of the following of Christ, and in a special way, the close and exclusive following of Christ which is the Religious State, is especially helpful for the religous woman. There are aspects of this revelatory event in the life of Our Lord which pertain very directly to the feminine genius.

Firstly, there is the aspect of receptivity. The disciples receive the vision of the transfigured Lord. It is a moment of heightened contemplation for which they did not seek. What is demanded of them is simply receptivity to grace: that they prostrate themselves before the Mystery. The Holy Father says that those who are called to the consecrated life have a "special experience of the light which shines forth from the Incarnate Word...The profession of the evangelical counsels makes them a kind of sign and prophetic statement for the community of the brethren and for the world." He goes on to say that "the ecstatic words spoken by Peter 'Lord, it is well for us to be here' bespeak the Christocentric orientation of the whole Christian life. But they also eloquently express the radical nature of the vocation to the consecrated life: how good it is to be with You, to devote ourselves to you, to make you the one focus of our lives." The woman religious, fitted by her feminine nature to the inward contemplation of mystery and to the appreciation of the transcendent, has much to learn from the Transfiguration, and from these words of the Holy Father. She has much to teach a world which has only the most superficial interest in mystery and which is radically threatened by the idea of divine transcendence.

There are other elements in this Transfiguration experience to which the Holy Father refers in his teaching on the eschatalogical role of religious, such elements as memory and expectation. These are vital elements in the feminine way of looking at and doing things. The woman has the propensity for cultivating and cherishing memories. While the masculine mind often sees this as weak sentimentality, (and while it may degenerate easily enough into this), the feminine action of remembering is clearly essential to the feminine role of preserving humanity culture and faith.

I believe the Holy Father is attempting to bring the world, the Church and religious - both men and women - back to a quiet inward reflection on God and on His ways with mankind: back to the beautiful spiritual patrimony of the Church, which is rich with the expectation of human fulfilment. He speaks of "three major challenges to the Church herself" - challenges which "relate directly to the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience, impelling the Church, and consecrated persons in particular, to clarify and testify to the profound anthropological significance" of these counsels. He shows how the counsel of Poverty relativises the goods of this world by pointing to God as the Absolute Good, how the life of consecrated Chastity offers to everyone the testimony that the "power of God's love can accomplish great things within the context of human love", and how consecrated Obedience testifies that true freedom is found, as it was in Christ, through obedience to the Father's Will.

All of this implies a return to tradition, - an unpopular idea right now. The world is madly impatient for movement forward, and has less and less time, it seems, for reflecting on the past - yet another sign that the masculine mentality prevails to an unhealthy degree. History is either ignored or manipulated, contemplation is treated as some kind of mind-game, and wisdom is a very rare commodity. The Holy Father would have us recapture the more feminine virtues in order to escape from this doom of amnesia and empty activism that hangs over society. "Monasticism and the Contemplative Life," says the Holy Father, holding up for our reflection that way of living and thinking which stands in starkest contrast to that of our masculinised world, "are a constant reminder that the primacy of God gives full meaning and joy to human lives, because men and women are made for God and their hearts are restless until they rest in Him."