Some time ago, a woman was sharing with me her experience of faith as a born again Christian. She attributed part of her recent enthusiasm to popular series the Chosen, which depicts the life of Jesus through the eyes of his disciples. In addition to helping her imagine what the life of Christ and his followers might have been like, she attributed to the show a newfound love for reading the Gospels since she now realized that what is written actually took place some 2000 years ago. She ended the conversation with a comment about how she wished that, similar to the disciples, she could sell everything and spend the rest of her life following Jesus.

Knowing that the woman was actually a fallen away Catholic, I found her comment ironic. What she was unaware of is that within the Catholic Church there are indeed people who have sold everything and given away all their possessions to follow Jesus; we call this the religious life. As the first number in Vita Consecrata states: “In every age, there have been men and women who, obedient to the Father's call and prompted by the Holy Spirit, have chosen this special way of following Christ”. They, too, have left everything behind in order to be with Christ and put themselves as he did, at the service of God and their brothers and sisters. At once a privilege and a responsibility, the religious life is, for those ‘chosen’, a call to “embody the Gospel ..bringing anew the living presence of Jesus" (VC 9), which, we pray by God’s grace may inspire our brothers and sisters to live their discipleship to Christ with renewed enthusiasm.

- Sister Teresa