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August 22, 2016Dear Karla,
I searched and searched quite a while for the word that seemed most particularly for you. Let me begin with what I finally found in the first few verses of Psalm 132, but let me adapt it immediately to David’s favorite daughter rather than to David himself who was the original subject:
Remember, O Lord, in Mary’s favor, her humility;
how she swore to the Lord and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob,
“I will not enter my house or get into my bed;
I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids,
until I find a place for the Lord,
a dwelling place for the mighty One of Jacob.”
Our dear Mother, Queen of heaven and earth, was a person whose heart was always ready, a person whose readiness made her full of purpose, decisiveness and energy. She spared no effort to find a dwelling place for the Lord and that dwelling place was herself. With what joy Mary must look upon you this day, Karla, seeing similar energy, purpose and decisiveness, seeing a daughter after her own heart.
Remember, O Lord, in Karla’s favor,
her humility---at least her efforts at humility!
How she swore to the Lord and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob,
“I will not enter my house or get into my bed;
I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids,
until I find a place for the Lord,
a dwelling place for the mighty One of Jacob.”
It is this same wonderful spirit that our Holy Father, Pope Francis, wants to stir up in contemplatives by his recent letter:
“Dear contemplative sisters, without you what would the Church be like, or those living on the fringes of humanity and ministering in the outposts of evangelization? The Church greatly esteems your life of complete self-giving. The Church counts on your prayers and on your self-sacrifice to bring today’s men and women to the good news of the Gospel. The Church needs you! It is not easy for the world, or at least that large part of it dominated by the mindset of power, wealth and consumerism, to understand your particular vocation and your hidden mission; and yet it needs them immensely. The world needs you every bit as much as a sailor on the high seas needs a beacon to guide him to a safe haven. Be beacons to those near to you and, above all, to those far away. Be torches to guide men and women along their journey through the dark night of time. Be sentinels of the morning, heralding the dawn. By your transfigured life, and with simple words pondered in silence, show us the One Who is the way and the truth and the life, the Lord Who alone brings us fulfilment and bestows life in abundance. Cry out to us, as Andrew did to Simon: “We have found the Lord.” Like Mary Magdalene on Easter morning, announce to us: “I have seen the Lord!” Cherish the prophetic value of your lives of self-sacrifice. Do not be afraid to live fully the joy of evangelical life, in accordance with you charism.”
This immense mystery of the hidden life so powerful in its secrecy! And yet how can we doubt its power when we look at Mary’s hidden apostolic fruitfulness both in her life on earth and in all the good she has done for our world from heaven. It will be your life of prayer and your vows lived faithfully that will enable you to be like her, a beacon of light to this world. Your obedience lived in the self-sacrifice Pope Francis speaks of can become a grace of surrender for someone struggling to find God in this world. Your chastity by which you dwell intimately and undividedly with the Lord will make you an instrument of his inclusive love to others. Your stability by which you become bound to your community for better or for worse until death will touch others with a longing for the heavenly community, a longing which lies deep in every human heart. Your fidelity to the monastic way of life, particularly to poverty, will gradually detach you from false sources of security as you grow in dependence on the Lord, and it will enable you to battle with a true heart against the principalities and the powers of this world, that is, against the Evil One. This will be your way in this world, Sister Karla, and your gift to the world, beginning with your family.
Let another contemplative, St. Teresa Benedicta, assure you of this in a passage written in one of the world’s darkest hours:
“Are you now alarmed by the immensity of what the holy vows require of you? You need not be alarmed. What you have promised is indeed beyond your own weak, human power. But it is not beyond the power of the Almighty---this power will become yours if you entrust yourself to him…The world is in flames. The conflagration can also reach our house. But high above all flames towers the cross. They cannot consume it. It is the path from earth to heaven…The world is in flames. Are you impelled to put them out? Look at the cross. From the open heart gushes the blood of the Savior. This extinguishes the flames of hell. Make your heart free by the faithful fulfillment of your vows; then the flood of divine love will be poured into your heart until it overflows and becomes fruitful to all the ends of the earth. Do you hear the groans of the wounded on the battlefields in the west and the east? You are not a physician and not a nurse and cannot bind up the wounds… Do you hear the anguish of the dying? You would like to be a priest and comfort them. Does the lament of the widows and orphans distress you? You would like to be an angel of mercy and help them. Look at the Crucified. If you are nuptially bound to him by the faithful observance of your holy vows, your being is precious blood. Bound to him, you are omnipresent as he is…You can be at all fronts, wherever there is grief, in the power of the cross. Your compassionate love takes you everywhere.”
I invite you to enter this tremendous mystery, Sister Maria Karla.
Sr Karla Goncalves
Simple Profession of Vows
August 22nd, 2016