End of Religious Life?
Unprecedented numbers of people have left religious life. It is a time of great shifts.
But just as I appreciate people who served for a time in the Peace Corps - sometimes a long time, sometimes a short time - and all the good they did, I can appreciate the good done by religious who have left and the good that religious life has done for them. And although some communities can die out, for the most part the good done by those communities continues ... for the long haul.
After the first couple of centuries, more communities begun in any stage of the Church's life have died out than are still alive. it's the nature of religious life.
But religious life is like the shoot from the stump of Jesse. From days of religious life in the past to religious life in the present, religious communities are always being born - shoots here and there, and blossoms.
Religious life is preaching the Word of God - not in word so much as it is in a life lived - and the Word of God continues forever.
- Little White Book, Diocese of Saginaw