The Specific Character of Religious Life

Over the past few weeks I have been doing assigned readings related to Saint John Paul II's encyclical Vita Consecrata (On Religious Life). The encyclical is a call for renewal in religious life by calling every religious to pursue holiness, that is

the Divine Life communicated and received. Nothing impedes this more than attrition of the thinking, attitudes, and values of the world through attachment to the ways of the world.

Attainment of holiness is through participation in the life of Jesus, and Jesus reveals himself through the Scriptures with the presence of the Holy Spirit. This is why contemplative prayer is the heart of religious life.

In both personal life and community life, living holiness requires both self-discipline and spiritual combat. Vigilance and discernment of spirits are always necessary to protect the consecrated life from internal and external dangers.

The reading on internal dangers in religious life was surprising for me. There are more of these than simply personal pride and arrogance. One of the biggest addressed here is the tendency to attempt reinterpretation of the evangelical counsels according to a secularized mentality, such as secular humanism that has been in vogue. "The evangelical counsels are rooted in the Gospel and no one at any point in history can change their meaning."

Something else I found significant was differentiating the religious life from the lay vocation. Especially with an active apostolic institute, there is a danger for defining it by work and characterizing it as "bringing the Gospel into the secular world;" this charge was laid on the lay vocation by the Vatican Council II, so what differentiates it?

Cardinal Jean Danielou, S.J. was very clear in an article for Lay Witness entitled "Specific Character of the Religious Life":
The role of the layperson is entirely different from that of the religious. The laity is charged to make the spirit of the Gospel present in the secular world, while the proper role of consecrated religious is essentially to be witnesses of the spiritual life and to manifest its splendor and value.

Cardinal Danielou becomes even more explicit and warns that secularism is a great danger to religious life today; to the extent that there is confusion with the lay vocation, religious life does not achieve its proper role. It is necessary for religious life to establish its specific character and realize the value that it holds in itself rooted in Scripture and the teaching of the Church. It is a unique call rooted in the life of the Most Holy Trinity, with a spousal character, and a state of being, not one that is entered for service but with the primary end of making Christ present in the world as an agent through which his image is communicated.