What is Religious Life?

What is Religious Life?

In reality religious life is not a "new" life but an intensification and perfection of what we already are by Baptism. A thing is perfect when it has attained its proper end, developing all the potentials with which it was endowed by God. Now, God has destined all men for the same end—Himself, and it is Charity alone which unites us with God. There is no difference between charity toward God and charity
toward neighbor. They are one and the same.

A Religious, then, is a baptized man or woman who because of her yearning that Christ's promises to her might be fulfilled, interprets those baptismal vows most strictly. She publicly and interiorly undertakes to tend toward the evangelical perfection of Charity.

Then what makes the religious state different from the married or single state?


It is the means the Religious Life brings into operation. Of the three states the religious life is the highest state since it is the perfect proof of love. "Greater love than this no man has than that he lay down his life." This is in essence what the girl who enters religion does--she lays down her ego-centric life and assumes another—a common religious life. The exterior change is emphasized by the habit but the interior change is not immediately apparent even to the religious herself, but is an on-going process brought about by the means religious life employs, and a personal, continuous effort on her own part to achieve perfection.

No religious is perfect, only obliged to constantly work toward it.