Prioress Christine Vladimiroff, O.S.B., accepted U.S. Catholic Magazine's 2002 U.S. Catholic Award on Oct. 15, 2002, on behalf of the Benedictine Sisters of Erie. Following are excerpts from her acceptance speech.
There is only one reason to be Benedictine — to seek God. This seeking God is the monastic vocation. This is not the seeking of God of a hermit. Benedict’s gift to the Church was the founding of the coenobium, or community way, of living monasticism. As Benedictines, we believe that this search for God is a communal journey. We hold that our lives with our sisters will reveal God to us, and that we will therefore be called, and enabled, to be our best selves in our relationships outside of the monastery. In the monastery we attend each other through the daily tasks of living — serving in the dining room, washing dishes, taking our turn to lead in prayer, caring for the sick, sharing cars. Benedict calls us to reverence each other. The only competition in the monastery is to strive to be the first to show respect and love for the other. In Chapter 72, the penultimate chapter of the Rule, he tells us that if we have lived the life well we will not do those things that satisfy us personally, but rather those that benefit the other. It is a journey from self-centeredness to God-centeredness — a journey from "me" to "us."
Building community is a radical activity in an alienated society. It is a prophetic statement to our dominant culture of isolation and individualism. We affirm by our lifestyle that God is the God of the gathering. It is an alternate vision of reality that contradicts society’s fear of the stranger. It replaces the paranoid suspect of the foreigner amongst us with acceptance and love. It is a clear affirmation that the human family is one. The model of the monastery family declares that interdependence is what we seek, and not the poverty of being in the world alone. A community, not an individual, is the bearer of the charism.
Every Benedictine monastery is also a place of hospitality that welcomes the guest as Christ. We create space in our lives and in our home for others to join us for a time. We want the love that we share as community to be such that our hearts are expanded to embrace the stranger, the traveler and those seeking sanctuary. Benedictine hospitality tells us not to close our doors in fear, not even with a threat of terrorism in our midst. It moves us not to shutter our windows as to appear unapproachable, but to welcome the poor. The gospel clearly calls us to not close our borders to those refugees who seek a new home among us. It is a national tragedy, a betrayal of the American experiment, to now have a mindset that is hostile to immigrants. Hospitality is never easy, but as Abraham welcomed into his tent the three visitors, it will also be for us a blessing and a revelation of God in our midst.
I do not want to romanticize the ease of community or the convenience of hospitality. But both are deliberate acts coming out of our Benedictine spirituality. Both are activities that call us to conversion in our own hearts and an effort to transform a cold and lonely world. It is our way of preaching a gospel of inclusion and mutuality that seems to be missing in our culture. It is a way of saying the diversity and uniqueness of others brings richness to our life together. Without the "other," God’s image is not complete.
Religious life forms us to move into the public forum of our world. We value what we can bring to the public debate. We have been formed to know that we have a part of the wisdom needed for this world to be someday where God reigns. We know that some structures, programs, and legislation keep people poor, keep children hungry, deny medical assistance and introduce violence in the name of the government. You and I have created these structures, authored these programs, and written and voted on this legislation. But structures, programs, and legislation, can be challenged and changed.
It is from our monastic heart, formed in community, that we work in the sanctuary movement, that we help now to settle the "lost boys of Sudan," as we did decades ago the Viet Nam refugees. It is with the same voice that chants the psalms that we will call for a change in the immigration laws of this land that separate families, that detain in prisons the poor who seek a new home among us.
Through attentive listening we hear the cries of the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the abused. We know the anguish of Third-World countries under the oppressive weight of international debt that victimizes the weak and the vulnerable. When invited, we will testify in Congress, in State Legislatures, and the United Nations. We will use public occasions to call us as people to greater care for the poor. Our liturgies will be intercession for the voiceless. When not invited, we will sign petitions and make our voices heard in demonstrations and marches and protests. Yes, we will even risk arrest. We cannot pretend to be bystanders or merely audience to the drama that is taking place while we live. We are asked by Scripture to be sentinels of God’s coming. We must cry out when there is danger. We must not accommodate to the comfortable but rather opt for the prophetic. That is our vocation. Prophets are "the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor," according to Abraham Joshua Heschel
Religious life is meant to be prophetic. In the most recent Apostolic Exhortation on religious life, the Holy Father writes: "The consecrated life has the prophetic task of recalling and serving the divine plan for humanity as it is announced in Scripture and as it emerges from an attentive reading of the signs of God’s providential action in history. (Vita Consecrata #73) The official Church is saying that religious life is seen as a special form of sharing in Christ’s prophetic office.
In her book, Finding the Treasure, Sandra Schneider, I.H.M., holds up two characteristics of religious communities that make them prophetic. She writes: "Contemplative immediacy to God and social marginality are the coordinates of religious life as a prophetic life form in the Church." Women religious live with this creative tension in our relationship to the Church and to society. This is not a recent phenomenon. Just read the histories of the religious communities of women in this country. We have struggled to find our place at the table, to raise our questions, and to have our voices heard. It is our fidelity to our identity as women, called to a special following of Christ, that sustains us. It is with a great love for the Church, and all it can become, that we stay in the dialog. It is with great sorrow and suffering that we find ourselves outsiders in what should be intimate conversations about our mission in bringing about the reign of God. It saddens us that law and tradition are used to diminish our presence and ministry.
In the Church we will work for greater openness and inclusion of all in the decision making process. For us the Church is the People of God and we are on a journey together. The gospel demands that we not be silent. Prophecy is about justice and judgment. It is about speaking our truth in love. Structures must facilitate the dialog that will bring wisdom and the searing fire of conviction to choices that we make as God’s people. The Church cannot bless or legitimize the marginalization of any class of persons or the silencing of dialog in its search for truth.
There are those in our Church who question activity for justice and systemic change by women religious. They understood our work when we taught their children in the schools. They saw us as angels in the hallways of hospitals with the sick. They admired our work in founding orphanages. And since education was out of reach for women we founded schools and colleges for them. We were the charity of God to the needy.
I see this option for a just world in great continuity with who we are from our founding times to the present. We women religious have moved into the 21st century standing on the accomplishments of our foremothers and we grow more determined to shape a world based on a vision of justice. The vision has been with us for many centuries. The prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures taught us to take care of the widow, the orphan and the stranger. Jesus is clear that in our last day we, as well as, the society we build, will be judged by how we care for the poor. (Matthew 25) Our Church has a unique and rich tradition of Catholic social teaching. In it we find a guide that calls us to responsibility and direct intervention in our world to bring about God’s reign. It helps us to challenge the social, political and economic systems that oppress — an arrangement of our lives that creates victims. It also calls us to a review of ecclesial structures and law that diminish the value of persons or narrow the vision of Church.
We stand at a time of polarization, struggle and divisiveness. The witness of community and the choice for the common good of all of God’s children are needed more than ever. We must be reminded religion is about our right relationship with God, with each other, and the very planet upon which we walk. Religion can so easily slip into myth and magic, and ignore the world we steward.
Individuals join communities to do together what they cannot do alone. It is out of our center as a monastery that we summon up the spiritual energy to call attention to what is not right in our world. It is through our prayer and community that we find the passion of our convictions to be radically concerned for the welfare of others. Is that not the heart of the gospel message of Jesus? It is through living and growing in community that we find the generosity of spirit, the consistency of commitment, and the integrity of heart, to change first what needs to be challenged in our lives personally.
If we do not have the integrity between how we live, who we are, and the prophetic proclamation, then there is no authenticity to what we say. It is out of contemplation that we move to action. It is out of prayer that we find our focus for God’s reign.
Religious communities also need to be capable of standing outside of the dominant culture so as not to be seduced by it. We profess to be counter cultural, but I fear, in our convents and monasteries, we have disproportionate influence in our lives of the dominant culture and a meager measure of alternative consciousness that we need to bring to the work of justice. From the outside we look like middle-class, aging women hanging on to privilege. We must strive to live in an authentic way the charism of our community. That is the only strength we have for the struggle for a just and peace-filled world. That is the only place from which we can call for an honest dialog with our Church.
Women religious in the United States have come to a new point in their history. Our founders were victims of ecclesial power struggles, and we lived in dire poverty. We founded institutions on a foundation of hope and they flourished. What our future will be does not depend on numbers of members, or the median-age of our community, or how many novices we have. What will decide our mission is whether or not we have the "creative fidelity" to our charism that the Vita Consecrata calls us to, to respond to the needs of our times. It also depends on the willingness of the Church and society to listen "with the ear of their heart." Women Religious have aged with grace. And the best is yet to come.
Reprinted with permission from U.S. Catholic magazine. Published by Claretian Publications. For subscriptions or more information, please visit www.uscatholic.org or call 800-328-6515.
Prior to her election as prioress, Sister Christine was President and CEO of the Second Harvest network of food bank, headquartered in Chicago. Presently she serves on numerous boards and committees, including a presidential appointment to the Food Security Advisory Committee. Recently, Sister Christine was elected chair of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, Region IV.