Real living consists in laying down your life.
Promises day in Madonna House brings deep blessings for us all. Here is an article Fr. David wrote about it in 1992.
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One of the great festive days at Madonna House each year is June 8. For some time now, our people have been making their promises of poverty, chastity, and obedience on that day, the anniversary of the blessing of Our Lady of Combermere’s statue.
Promises’ Day has always been a great public event here. Relatives are encouraged to come, and, in recent years especially, they have been coming in great numbers to celebrate the gift of their children to God and of God to their children in this vocation.
There are undoubtedly great graces at work just to enable a young person today to make this kind of commitment for a year or two. (Our members make promises for one year, then for two years three times before perpetual promises are taken.) But there is nothing quite so striking and so daunting as that final commitment.
The words used for the occasion are as follows: “For the glory of God, and because I desire with my whole heart to respond to the call of Jesus Christ to preach the Gospel with my life, I,[full name], hereby promise, with the help of Our Lady, to live in poverty, chastity, and obedience forever according to the Madonna House spirit and Mandate.”
You can feel a ripple of excitement, joy, and nervousness run through the congregation whenever someone lays down his or her life for the Church in this way. Perhaps in more than a few souls some questions arise.
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Commitment
Is this the right decision? How can one know for sure? Can a modern person really commit such an act of total abandonment, given all the uncertainties of life today?
Of course, married couples make this kind of commitment from the very beginning of their life together. The bond of conjugal union is such that only a permanent commitment does justice to its power and its dignity. Sexual union is the God-given help to assist in that deeper union of persons that God creates through the mystery of married, sacramental love.
In either case, there is a narrowing down of one’s options to a very specific person or group. In a sense, all other possibilities are thrown into the abyss of faith. One simply trusts that through this relationship, or in this community one will discover all the infinite treasures of wisdom and knowledge that come to us through Christ.
What you discover through a commitment of this kind is that real living consists in laying down your life, in imitation of the Lord Jesus, for this one: this woman, this man, this child, this family, this community.
After God, and in God, the one so dedicated can say to the one (or ones) he loves, “You are my life now. I have no other.” At least not any other who will take precedence over the beloved. This kind of self-offering doesn’t happen overnight. It seems that most of us have to grow into it over the years, even if we have already said our final “yes.”
What are the signs that we are truly moving in this direction of total commitment in imitation of the Lord? I think there are several.
First, an end to daydreaming. Daydreaming, that is, about other lives, other possibilities, what might have been, etc. Now one’s dreams focus on possibilities within the sacred relationship that God himself has established. You can see it in their eyes.
Some of our young (and not so young) members will eagerly scan the latest batch of guests who come through the door. Perhaps they are thinking, will he be the one? Can she be the girl of my dreams?
Oh, it is usually just a fleeting thought. It soon passes and is forgotten amidst the various demands and duties of community life. Or does it pass so quickly?
What an effort of grace, prayer, and just plain living it takes to really accept that here, with this group of people, I will discover what my heart has always longed for: communion in love, acceptance, unity with God.
And that brings me to my second point. Another sign of having arrived in the “land of true commitment” is a personal encounter with Jesus Christ within the ordinary circumstances of life.
This is necessary because most of life, in the grind of permanent commitment, is pretty ordinary. There’s lots of repetition and monotony amidst the occasional sprinkling of excitement and impassioned creativity.
Now and again, while walking back from the chapel after daily Mass, one or the other of our (usually younger)members will ask me a question: “Father David, did anything exciting happen in your life today?”
Now that is one question that really stymies me. Not because I don’t want to answer it, but because I’m not sure just what frame of reference my companion is coming from.
I usually delight in giving an answer something like this: “Oh yes! I got up this morning and did my sit-ups exercises. Then I washed up and spent an hour in prayer. Today’s reading was from Leviticus. Then I rode down in the van from Carmel Hill while listening to the weather forecast. I also saw five different kinds of birds between there and the main house.
“At breakfast I had a bowl of porridge and one of yogurt, not to mention brown bread. Afterwards, I went to work, where I edited three articles for Restoration and wrote my mother a long-overdue letter(Hi, Mom!).
“Later in the day I saw two people for spiritual direction, got in a 45-minute walk, and wrote two more letters. Then I went to Mass. Now I’m walking with you!”
Once, when I gave such an answer to a young friend, he proceeded to try and throw me into a snowbank. (Fortunately, he was a little smaller than I, so no harm done.) I think he thought I was kidding or being cynical. But I wasn’t. The ordinary routine of life is such a joy for me now that I am older, and wise, and all that.
I really do find a great joy in the routine of the everyday because I have begun to see that it is leading —imperceptibly often, yet always surely — to a deeper and deeper union with the servant Christ, the humble Christ, the Christ of Nazareth.
This is the way the Lord has given me to die with him so as to rise with him each day. And I love it, even when it “kills me!”
Funny thing. I find myself more and more at one with all people everywhere who laydown their lives in similar mundane ways. It is a communion of spirit I never dreamed possible, yet always longed for. I think it is not unlike that of Christ himself with all humanity. Talk about a hidden treasure!
Along with this, there is another vast change that occurs within one’s soul: resentment is changed into gratitude. There is a time in one’s life (and this can comeback to haunt us all through the years) when our basic unhappiness with self is projected onto those with whom we live.
You know how it goes. If only he would change. If only she weren’t so miserable all the time. If only such-and-such would stop complaining and start doing his share. If only so-and-so weren’t so demanding. And on and on.
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Togetherness
There comes a day (and it comes more than once, by God’s mercy) when we just get tired of living this way. We realize that no one, but no one can stop us from really loving. That no one can really take away our joy — unless we let them.
One of the real struggles in community living here at MH is the temptation to rampant negativity.
When you live all the time with 150 people or so, even 150 usually well-meaning Christian people, in a somewhat simple country setting where you are trying to cooperate in many ways … work together, talk together, eat together, plan together, pray together, play together, use vehicles together, sleep in dorms together, and get up in the morning together… there is always something to complain about!
Nothing is ever entirely to one’s liking. It is a mathematical and a human impossibility. The thing is, what does one do with the situation? Answer: to survive in the long haul and to enjoy it in the meantime, one must simply PRAISE THE LORD!
Thank you, Lord, for this person who tries me by his/her very presence, style of walking, and tone of voice. Thank you, Lord, for all these fervent opinions with which I, lamb that I am, strongly disagree.
Thank you that I have to check with seven people in four different departments before I can even make a move concerning my need to drive one kilometer to the post office and come right back. And so forth.
We praise the Lord not for the trials, exactly, but rather because they strip us, a little, of self. And that’s exactly what we long for, d-e-e-e-p down, is it not?
Nothing like community living, nothing like family life, nothing like a two-year-old child (who is exactly like me in my willfulness) to bring me up against my self — and then into the arms of God for mercy, grace, and help. At least that’s what’s meant to happen. Thank you, Jesus!
All this and more awaits those who are moving towards some sort of commitment at Madonna House. And I am thinking, too, of the brave souls who will make their marriage vows in the presence of God’s Church at about the same time. It is through the narrow door of this very specific love that all the treasures of the Kingdom await us.
Let us continue our journey—those who have already said their “yes” and those who are about to — with confident faith. It is the Lord himself, and his Blessed Mother, who will see us home.
