THE VOWS (Evangelical Counsels) - A WAY OF LOVING 

“LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS I HAVE LOVED YOU,”  

                                                                                                       (John 13:34)

While all Christians are called to live the radicality of the Gospel, those who respond to the call of God to consecrated life are called to live this radicality in faith through the public profession of the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.  These vows, professed in our Congregation and in the Church, are our commitment to follow Jesus Christ poor, chaste and obedient in a religious community.  Entrusting ourselves to the power of the Holy Spirit our lives are consecrated entirely to God’s love, the service of others and to the whole of God’s creation through the mission of the Congregation.

                                                                      Our consecration commits us to putting on the mind of Christ 

and rejecting those values which are contrary to the Gospel. (Constitutions #41)

Where your treasure is your heart will be also (Luke 12: 34).

The vow of Poverty is our profound acknowledgment and confidence in God our Creator who has given us an abundance of gifts for the service of God’s mission.  We possess nothing and commit ourselves to share all that we have with our community for the good of the mission.   We strive to live in that complete spirit of detachment that holds to nothing, neither to persons, nor to things, neither to time not place … (Se Livrer- St Thérèse Couderc) The vow of poverty leads us to be in solidarity with all people, especially the poor, the marginalised, those searching for God, the poor in Spirit.

The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, 

who loved me and gave himself up for me. (Galatians 2: 20)

The vow of Chastity/Celibacy: is that total gift of self, body, mind and spirit to God through Jesus Christ who gave himself fully to us.  Consecrated celibacy is a total giving of our affective and creative energies to God so that we can love as Christ loves, see, hear and be moved to compassion as Christ is by ‘the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth’.  Consecrated celibacy makes us more available and interiorly free to go out to others in the spirit of Christ.

I seek not my own will but the will of the One who sent me. (John 5:30)

The vow of Obedience is at the heart of the mystery of Jesus Christ from his entry into the world until His return to the Father sharing with Christ obedience to His Father….So,  animated by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, we commit ourselves, personally and as communities, to listen attentively to the signs of the times in order to discern, with others, where the Spirit is leading us to love and embrace all people and creation wherever we are missioned.

The vows express the values that are constantly inviting us to contemplate the reality of the contexts in which we live. They are the filters through which we see and hear the needs of the people of God, especially of the poor, the marginalised and the planet.  New realities are constantly emerging that have consequences for how we understand and live the vows today, e.g. the call to an ecological conversion, to a Synodal Church, to reflect on the anthropological consequences of artificial intelligence, etc.  These realities demand an ongoing dynamic dialogue between our lives and the changing times. Being attentive to these developments and to the calls from the Universal Church challenge us to live, as religious women, that prophetic role in the world, witnessing to and inviting others to see that all is gift, sacred and interconnected, flowing from our Creator God.

Sr Patricia Byrne, London Community

All the photos are from Sister Cécile’s celebration of perpetual vows in Paris on 21 June 2025. → “Devenir sœur du Cénacle”