Yesterday I heard a homily about how progressive St. Angela Merici was because she founded a community of women that wore lay clothes and lived and worked among the laity. This was centuries, the priest said, before it occured to religious communities to cast off their religious garb and live with the people. What a load! The sisters would become the Ursulines didn’t wear religious garb because their group wasn’t a religious order.
Though convinced of her divinely appointed mission to lay the foundations of an educational order, Angela for seventeen years could do no more than direct a number of young women who were known as “The Company of St. Ursula” but who continued to live in the midst of their own families, meeting at stated times for conferences and devotional exercises. The many difficulties that hindered the formation of the new institute gave way at last, and in 1535, twelve members were gathered together in a community with episcopal approbation, and with St. Angela de Merici as superioress.
The Ursulines, it says, to this day are still faithful to the mission for which the order was founded, namely to educate young girls. St. Angela Merici and the Ursulines are not really the model of the orders that liberated themselves from the shackles of fidelity to their respective charisms. How could they be? They took up a habit and a rule and have remained faithful to their charism.
The orders that are thriving today have an identity. Don’t convince me that The CFR’s or the Nashville Dominicans aren’t “among the people” in the apostolates. Bah. That homily nearly spoiled my day.
Come on, people, let’s have some comments!
I found your thoughts very oldfashioned. I think that you need to relize that it is not the garbs that make the sister – – – it is her work for the Lord and God’s people. I think you need to seriously address some issues that you have in your own spiritual life. I really think something is lacking in your soul if a great homily like that ruined your day. Smile— because the Mass should have nurished you through the Word and the Eucharist. I will pray for you Sal… Do you think God will still listen to my prayers even out of a habit???
Pax- Sr. Berni
I remember as a child growing up being part of the schools in my diocese which had the presence of the I.H.M. sisters. At that time each of them wore every day the habit of the order. Each day everyone who walked through the school was aware that these women of God were teaching in the classrooms, real stalwarts of the school. It is disheartening to me that many, not only in the I.H.M.’s but in many other religious communities, are choosing to forgo wearing the habit as something that will allow all to recognize them as a consecrated relgious in favor of wearing plain clothes and small religous articles (usually pins or crucifixes) that are supposed to so identify them. Where have our witnesses to the Lord Christ gone? How are we, as the lay faithful supposed to recognize a Christian mother or a devout single woman by their way of life as different from a consecrated religious? I pray daily for all the sisters who taught me. They were and are real models of Christ’s love in the world. I just wish we could see it more clearly.
I was always suspicious about any Marine who felt uncomfortable wearing his uniform, and couldn’t wait to get out of it. That usually meant he was insufficiently committed to the Marine Corps, and more committed to himself. I think the same thing is true of religious who eschew wearing their habits. You are different from the rest of us, Sister — you’ve taken solemn vows to set yourself apart from the world. Why wouldn’t you want your dress to reflect that?
I don’t know a Catholic today (even the lapsed ones) who doesn’t lament the fact that most of the good sisters shed their habits for secular clothing.