Editorial

75 years of religious commitment challenges today’s culture of blips

Recently, I attended a celebration of a friend’s 75th Jubilee of her religious commitment through the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience, and I ponder…

In our culture today, so much happens in flashes and blips!  Watching a movie, or even a commercial, can leave one’s eyes swirling in their sockets! 

Multitasking seems to be the new sought-after skill for employment. 

I have heard that five years is the average length of employment in any one job. 

Many families do not even find time to share a meal together on a regular basis. 

Relationships are often short-lived.  Many are conducted through social media rather than the sit-down-with-a-cup-of-tea visits that were once normative.

So I look at my sister-friend, and I ponder. 

I am in awe of the idea that someone can get up each morning for 75 years and renew her contract to live the life she committed to live 75 years ago. 

I marvel at the integrity and consistency of her actions each day that express that life. 

I listen to the ways in which she has learned to deepen the relationship she has with God over so many years of saying “Yes!” to invitations to be more in love, more of service, more the agent of change that first attracted her in her youth. 

I am grateful that this woman, who has been a teacher in the classroom and in our world, continues to teach those of us who walk with her on this journey of commitment that perseverance is, indeed, a gift for us and for our world. 

Commitment is a decision, a conscious decision, which requires renewal every single day. 

That decision is not to be stuck, but to be open to growing ever more into the wholeness of the persons we can be: an integration of mind and heart, body and spirit, left and right brain. 

From the position of wholeness, we could all be effective agents of change for the “better” of our world.

Sr. Mary Ann Farley, SNJM
Fig Tree Board moderator

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