Being at a Final Profession Mass for the Sisters of Life is like entering into heaven for just a moment.
Being at a Final Profession Mass for the Sisters of Life is like entering into heaven for just a moment. (Sisters becoming Sisters of Life for life.)
There was such an opportunity today.
We’re not ready — we’re way too sinful to see more yet. But what a look in!
There’s a beauty.
There’s a peace.
I know so many were raised Catholic or in another tradition and have wounds and stories and worse. I know religion can feel like it’s for someone else, that it’s for someone more disciplined, or more pious, or more gullible. I don’t know what you think, but I know there are many thoughts. And much of the hesitancy, hostility, dismissal, and indifference to organized religion has a lot to do with those who profess to be believers in God behaving badly.
And I can’t promise you that you won’t ever see a Sister of Life behaving badly. They are human beings like the rest of us. But, based on firsthand experience, in just about every circumstance under the sun, odds are, if you encounter a Sister of Life, you are going to encounter some joy. And it’s a supernatural joy. It’s a joy that divine love makes possible.
(Cardinal O’Connor, their founder, told them that “There is no Sister of Life without joy,” and they take that mandate seriously. And it relies completely on God.)
This is critical to the pro-life movement — to American culture and civilization itself.
Look, we are a mess.
That was true before Roe v. Wade. It was true during Roe v. Wade. And it’s unmistakably true now.
On Wednesday, I got an e-mail with the subject line: “Abortion Had a *Great* Night.”
Abortion is a thing to celebrate for some. And frankly, it’s not just the most radical activists.
And the counter to this is not going to be political.
I read this week that Marjorie Dannenfelser, is assured by Lindsey Graham’s sister that she is pro-life. I hope it’s true. Women advocating for abortion never ceases to give me chills. That’s not what we were created for.
But it’s not going to change the face of the world.
The counter to this isn’t any one thing. It’s a way of living. And I see it in families and communities who do care and do look out for the vulnerable and do love in uncomfortable ways. And I certainly see it in the Sisters of Life. They were unmistakably founded in the wake of the Holocaust. I don’t say that to be hyperbolic. Cardinal O’Connor got the inspiration for founding this religious community of women while at the Dachau concentration camp.
Never again means every single life has to have value to us. Because God created him. Every single person.
I invite you to settle in and read what Mother Mary Concepta, the mother superior of the Sisters of Life, said toward the end of Mass. She thanked everyone who made the Mass possible (including the new archbishop, Ronald Hicks, who basically was named to New York and almost went blind — he’s been recovering from a detached retina, God bless him), with emphasis on the parents of the three sisters who took their perpetual vows. In thanking them for giving “our community and the Church the precious gift of your daughters,” she pointed to “your faith-filled love, sacrifice, and generosity” by which “you have shaped the hearts of these beautiful women of God.”
“It was first through you that they encountered God’s love,” she said, “enabling them now to respond in love with the totality of their being and a full gift of self to Jesus Christ.”
And she had a message that seemed to be a fact to console all of our hearts: “Know that God will not be outdone in generosity.”
Mother Concepta then directly addressed the three sisters making a bold fiat:
Sister Eden Marie, Sister Elena Marie, and Sister Maria Annunciata, who have counted all things as loss in order to gain Christ and to be found in Him: Thank you, dear sisters, for your generous “yes.”
The Sisters of Life always have their final profession Mass on the feast of the Transfiguration. Over on X, I saw a Dominican priest I know, Father Thomas Petri, O.P., cite Thomas Aquinas on the feast:
So what happens on Mount Tabor is not that Christ becomes something new. St. John Damascene says, “He did not assume what He was not; He manifested to His disciples what He was.” Christ allows the Apostles to glimpse who He is and who He has been all along.
The miracle, then, is almost the opposite of what we imagine it to be. The amazing wonder is not that the Lord shines in His brilliance for a few moments. The wonder is that the glory of God walked the dusty roads of Galilee unnoticed.
Think of the irony. The disciples were surprised by the light, but Heaven was astonished by His humility.
And if you looked closely at the Sisters’ profession Mass, even as it was a glorious event, you saw tremendous humility. Three women amazed by the love of God. Three women flabbergasted — and beyond grateful — that God would choose them for anything, never mind to be espoused to Him, knowing each “yes” to His will is impossible without Him every step along the way.
Mother Concepta continued:
Today with you we are brought to Mount Tabor, where we see the glorious face of Christ shining through your radiantfaces.
The veil is thin, and we experience Heaven in a real way today through your perpetual profession of vows.
The design of the cathedral itself invites us to contemplate the garden of Heaven as envisioned by the architect. You see it in the flowers and the foliage that adorn the top of each column, and even on the ceiling. And you see it in the sweeping upward lines and vaulting that gives the impression of endless vertical space.
Thank you for bearing with me. If you find yourself at St. Patrick’s in New York or in a house of worship anywhere anytime soon, find something that’s pointing you to God.
I mean this post to nudge a vocational reflection/renewal for anyone who considers themselves pro-life. I think that’s why the Sisters of Life were invented — inspired by God. Enter in deeply if you are a Christian. Walk with us in solidarity for the cause of protecting vulnerable human life, whatever your religious beliefs.
Mother Concepta went on Thursday to recall the words of Cardinal O’Connor at a similar Mass in 1999:
These sisters have been given the very special grace to recognize that in a very real way, Heaven doesn’t begin after death. Heaven offers its possibilities here and now on this earth. Together with the sacrifices, together with the suffering, together with the crucifixion of Christ that made it all possible for us. If they become incarnate, as it were, united with the Word made flesh, with the very being of Christ, in a very real way, they move into a Heavenly kingdom.
These sisters entered religious with so much joy, so much love and wanting even more joy and more love and have been given the grace to understand that here they are carrying out their destiny, here they are fulfilling the reason for their being.
The cardinal goes on to say to all of us:
It shouldn’t be singular, it shouldn’t be an exception, that we want to look at the face of Christ, the Son of God, and live.
Live with Him.
Live in Him.
Be caught up in Him.
And be transfigured into Him.
This is why we were all created.
Every one of us here.
God has given different graces, different charisms to carry out that fundamental vocation — the vocation to eternal glory. The vocation to be so intimately united with the Lord Jesus that we are transfused into His very being.
This is our vocation.
This is the work that we have to do: To know, to love, and to serve God here and to be happy with Him forever in the next.
And so these three sisters inspire each of us present today to seek the face of Christ anew, to ask for courage in responding in love to His invitations to follow Him more closely.
Do not be afraid.
God wants to give you more love and more joy as you seek His face and give Him permission in your life.
Thank you, sisters, for illuminating the path to Heaven for us.
And allowing us to share in the joy of your “yes.”
Look, the pro-life movement includes the Sisters of Life and it includes people who do not consider themselves believers in God. There are strictly scientific reasons to not end the life of an unborn child. Follow the science, as has been said in other contexts. But for the rest of us, we had better convey something of the love of God if we are ever going to end abortion in America.
That’s the work so many people do outside of the noise of political debates. They are there to care for the pregnant woman who needs someone. That someone may be you. As a friend, neighbor, grandmother, handyman, court-appointed special advocate, foster parent, adoptive parent, mentor . . . we all have a role to play. And maybe more than one.
Do not be afraid to say “yes” to a new kind of love. Whomever is president. Whatever the political parties are saying and possibly betraying.
I’m on the board of a ministry for families who are or have fostered or adopted, Springs of Love. I saw one of the communities trying to get something started making fidget toys for a foster-care agency as a service project (this is what the agency said they could use). Fidget toys isn’t a big deal. But it’s something. (I saw over the weekend a miscarriage bereavement ministry looking for Our Lady of Sorrows chaplet rosaries — that’s uber Catholic, I know. The idea is to know that Mary is with you in your pain — she suffered the worst sorrow, she knows the ache of losing a child. Anyway, they can be ordered on Amazon. And so they were. Most of us can do something small like this as a starter.)
And perhaps you can pray for whatever children find them in their hands — and probably throw them down the line. And maybe a fidget toy nudges you to graduate on to more of a commitment.
God will not be outdone in His generosity. And yet, He is calling us to enter into it more deeply, to let Him act in us. To be more like Him. For the love of the world, which He created out of love. For each and every one of us. We can choose to reject. Or we can choose to participate, for the salvation of our aching souls and every person who longs to be who he was made to be. To love and be loved.
You can watch the Sisters of Life Final Profession Mass on the St. Patrick’s Cathedral YouTube page. I urge you to.
