The Lanterian Charism: Personal Charism

I have previously written some brief and deficient descriptions of the Lanterian charism of the OMV (here and here) and it is something I am continuing to elaborate as I progress in my formation this year.

Last week we had nine men in discernment visit the seminary and, although it was a busy week, it gave me excellent opportunities to reflect on my own discernment when I was at that stage and make a then/now comparison. I was also deeply involved in several discernment visits last year, but I have a very different perspective now in novitiate from studying the charism of the founder and the congregation closely.

The charism of the founder, an idea put forth and elaborated in Vatican Council II conciliar and post-conciliar documents, is something we have begun to unpack slowly over the past month.

The essence of the Council's teaching is that the founder of each religious institute experienced a movement of the Spirit, a unique inspiration that educed a charism to serve the needs of the Church in a particular way according to the needs of their specific place and time. It is out of this personal charism of the founder that the charism of the institute springs, which is important because it explains why the Council's addresses to religious urged them to return to the "original inspiration and charism" of their founders in order to reform and renew their institutes; the charism of an institute is not precisely the same thing as the charism of a founder; some change over time and acquire new features, such as Jesuits spreading devotion to the Sacred Heart and Marians of the Immaculate Conception adopting the Divine Mercy apostolate, but in some instances religious had strayed far from the original purpose of their foundation.

In practical application, many religious took this invitation and used it as an occasion to reform their institute in conformity with their vision rather than their founder's, but it was meant to be an occasion to return to the heart of the way of life and apostolic works proper to each institute according to the founder's charism. In almost all instances, it led to heated debate if not outright strife over how the rule/constitutions should be interpreted and what life for each institute should look like in the 20th century.

The OMV are not an exception to this. There was not much debate in the 1960s; the congregation was vastly more stable and assured of its identity and orthodoxy than the majority of religious institutes, which is precisely why the tiny Italian community began attracting large numbers of American seminarians at a time when Archbishop Fulton Sheen said he could not recommend a single seminary in the United States to any young men discerning the priesthood. It was some of these Americans who read the writings of the founder and discovered that the Ignatian aspect of the congregation's charism was not being practiced the way he had intended. This began a slow process of renewal and rejuvenation that has been progressing slowly but steadily, and not without resistance and disagreement.

Anyway, that is all background information to what affects me most directly.

We have also been learning about the personal charism of individual religious; these are the means by which each individual is constituted in relation to a founder and a community. A religious vocation is recognized by a community when an individual expresses the same movement of the Spirit experienced by the founder, or rather a similar movement or an echo of the founder's call. This immediately grabbed my attention because it expresses and formulates my experience in a way that I have not previously framed it.

When I was learning about the Oblates and reading Venerable Bruno's writings, I could not express my experience that clearly, and yet I felt a strong attraction to the founder's spirituality; I sensed that these were passions and desires that I shared, and that I wanted to participate in his mission. I felt that his Spiritual Directory was a way of life I had already felt drawn toward and that his passion for the Spiritual Exercises and media apostolate was exciting to me also.

Learning about this was timed perfectly with the discernment visit, giving me an occasion to reflect on my experience and what made me feel so strongly about my OMV vocation. Four years ago, my identification with the founder's charism seemed to be one reason among many that gave me enough certainty to leave everything and move to Boston, but looking back I now appreciate its importance more fully and understand the interior movements that preceded and followed my first encounter with the founder's charism and those that have continued since.

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.

Adventure in The Exercises

The word "exercise" used as a title for St. Ignatius of Loyola's spiritual methodology gives one the idea of challenge, rigor, and regimented repetition. While the outline for prayer and meditation does include those, it also has much more. It is, in fact, more of an adventure than anything.

The word 'discernment,' even for what is supposedly Ignatian-style discernment, is often used as a synonym for decision. But the two things could not be more different. Discernment in prayer is about relationship, and relationships are not problems that are resolved or issues that are decided, but entrances into mystery that cause us to stretch and grow. They are areas of tension and ambiguity, which inherently include discomfort exactly because of imprecision and indecision.


Thus adventure. The Exercises is about encounter; shedding everything non-essential that prevents encounter with God and initiation into the mystery of the Trinity, an encounter that can absorb me deeper and deeper and never be exhausted.

God's proposal to me during this novitiate has not been to solve the problem of the future or to reach a decision, but to embark on an adventure; to enter deeper into his mystery and discover myself more fully by sharing in my Creator's knowledge of me. 

When I begin contemplating the Gospel, I begin with a map and have some idea of where I want to go, but often I reach an unexpected fork in the road and have the opportunity to surrender to the Holy Spirit. I am the receiver of prayer, not the initiator; the follower on the adventure, not the leader. It has been a wonderful experience of learning to listen and follow.

It is a process of growing in knowledge and freedom: knowledge of myself and of God, of who he is creating me to be and how he is calling me to follow him; freedom of knowing God as the Master of creation and the One who draws all to fullness in himself. 

Contemplation of Things Divine

Now the perfection of the religious state consists in the contemplation of divine things. For Dionysius says (Eccl. Hier. vi) that they are "called servants of God by reason of their rendering pure service and subjection to God, and on account of the indivisible and singular life which unites them by holy reflections," i.e. contemplations, "on invisible things, to the Godlike unity and the perfection beloved of God."
                                                                                                                 Summa Theologica, Q 188, Art. 2, Obj. 1


The first and principal duty of all religious is to be the contemplation of things divine and constant union with God in prayer.
                                                                                                       Code of Canon Law, Bk 2.3, Canon 663 §1

    In one of our conferences this week, the novice master reminded us that the fundamental calling of religious is the contemplation of divine things, a calling that is prior to any institutional charism or apostolic work. Our focus all month has been receiving the gift of prayer, and this was another reminder that prayer is principally a gift from God that is initiated by Him, not me. It is also important for remembering that religious life is not dependent on nor defined by apostolic work. If a religious from an apostolic institute is incapacitated for any reason, they are still called to live their vocation to prayer.
     It is a matter of human habit to get wrapped up in having or doing and neglect the very fundamental state of being. In every spiritual life, the first call is to relationship with God and everything else follows upon that. Novitiate focuses on prayer for that reason; it is the beginning of religious life and the time of building a foundation on which every subsequent aspect of that life depends.

Everyday Heroes

"Thank you for your sacrifice."

That is something that every seminarian and religious aspirant will hear at some point, probably from a well-meaning person who spends a lot of time praying for vocations to priesthood and religious life. But it emphasizes vocation as the individual's choice and there is a real danger that if you hear it too often you begin to believe it and think, "Yeah, I'm a really great person for doing this and making a huge sacrifice to become a priest/religious."

True vocation is a gift from God, and the gift is given to people for all states of life. Yes, religious life and priesthood involve sacrifice, but so do marriage and single life. Each state of life places many demands on a person; people are called to growth in holiness in each, and that growth means suffering, trials of faith, learning to serve others before one's self, and seeking God's will in all things. And for every state of life, the grace given to live it outweighs any sacrifice on our part.

To those of us who have a religious community, people who come to church alone every week and do not have a family that supports them in faith are heroes. To people called to celibate chastity, married people who learn to sacrifice their deepest desires for their spouse or give up everything freely for children's needs are heroes. To those of us who can devote our time to pray and study the faith every day, people who give their time to take night courses in theology or become catechists are heroes.

That is why I pray for people to respond to God's call for their vocation to any state in life, for people to follow Jesus as religious, or priests, or married persons seeking to grow in holiness the way God intends for them. That is why when I meet discerners who are seminarians or religious aspirants or people preparing for marriage I want to say,

"Thank you for responding to God's call."


*Reflections from a novitiate conference on prayer and discernment