ON THE VOWED LIFE, PT. 2
If you have made a vow that binds you for life, you know the threshold it opens: a new world of joy, because you gave yourself away. Discernment in the Church doesn’t begin with self-fulfillment, but with oblation—offering your life back to God for God’s glory. And in the vowed life, as often as she dies, she rises.
ON THE VOWED LIFE, PT. 1
In my monastery there is a red leather book where brothers of SSJE handwrite their vows on the altar. Every page is the same—and no two pages are the same. In that paradox, I learned what a vow truly is: an impossible promise made in trust that God will supply the grace to keep it.