Heart of Religious Life
Many of these expectations are external, even peripheral to the heart of religious life. And many of them come from our own ideas about religious life.
I can imagine saying to a religious (a question somewhat parallel to the one put to Jesus in the Gospel): "Tell me in plain words - are you a real nun?" I'd be speaking out of my own expectations. For one person, it might mean that if the religious are wearing a habit, they shouldn't; or, if they aren't wearing a habit, they should. Or it could have something to do with their apostolate. Or perhaps where they live.
Jesus answered questions about his own role as Messiah by going straight to the heart of the matter: "The blind see, the deaf hear ... doesn't that speak for itself? I am the Good Shepherd who gives his life for his sheep - isn't that the heart of being the Messiah? I am at one with the Father - what could be a better sign than that?"
What is at the heart of religious life? Poverty, the simplicity of life lived out in so many ways. Celibacy, the extraordinary kind of love that reaches out to more people than might otherwise have been possible. Obedience to the gifts of the religious community, the charism of each religious order that helps bring out the full colors of the many-splendored family of Christians.
How these spiritual commitments are expressed may vary, as it has for centuries, and I might have my own opinion on how they should be lived.
But the witness that religious men and women give can't be denied.
- Little White Book, Diocese of Saginaw