The Social Witness of the Evangelical Counsels and the Renewal of Our Political Culture
Keynote Address to the Council of Major Superior of Women Religious (CMSWR)
September 18 2026
Dear Sisters in Christ,
Thank you for inviting me to be a part of the CMSWR National Assembly. Way back, when I worked with Cardinal James Hickey of Washington, I was privileged to witness the birth of CMSWR and over the years I have had the joy of your friendship. That is why it is a special pleasure for me to be with you again today. I also stand before you with deepest gratitude. You and those who came before you have taught our children, tended to the sick, welcomed immigrants, accompanied the dying, consoled the brokenhearted, and proclaimed Christ where no one else was willing to go. For that, the Church gives thanks. But gratitude alone is not enough. The Church also looks to you with hope.
The theme of your Assembly – “250 Years of Freedom: Daughters of the Church from One Generation to the Next” – invites us to reflect, not simply on our nation’s past, but on its future. It asks us to consider what kind of freedom we have inherited, what kind of freedom we are living, and what kind of freedom will we hand on.
As Americans, we rightly celebrate the extraordinary experiment begun in 1776. Few nations have done more to advance constitutional government, ordered liberty, religious freedom, and the dignity of the human person. We rightly give thanks for those who pledged “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor”[1] in the service of a daring proposition: that all men and women are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.
As we know, however, anniversaries are not merely occasions for celebration. They are moments of examination. The Scriptures are filled with commemorations – not because God fears that His people will forget dates, but because He knows they will forget who they are. Israel celebrated Passover not only to remember an event but to remember an identity. The Church celebrates the Eucharist not only to recall Calvary but to participate anew in the mystery of salvation.
Likewise, a nation’s anniversary should not simply remind us where we have been. It should compel us to ask where we are going. As we mark 250 years of American independence, we should ask ourselves: What has become of freedom? That question is not political before it is spiritual. It is not ideological before it is anthropological. It is not first about governments. It is first about the human heart.
A Time of Gratitude – and of Honest Examination
There is much for which we can be grateful. Over these two and half centuries, our nation has welcomed millions seeking opportunity and refuge. It has fostered amazing scientific, artistic, educational, and economic achievements. It has defended liberty at enormous sacrifice. It has inspired people around the world.
Yet love of country does not require blindness. Indeed, genuine patriotism demands the courage to examine ourselves honestly. We know that ours is also a moment marked by deep fractures. Political discourse has become increasingly hostile. Families are divided by ideology. Communities struggle to trust one another. Public institutions command less confidence than at any time in recent memory. Loneliness has become epidemic. We have more means of communication than any generation in history, yet many would say we have forgotten how to converse.
This is why the Church has always insisted that the renewal of society begins, not with structures, but with saints. Before there can be renewal of institutions, there must be renewal of persons. Before there can be civic friendship, there must be conversion of heart, and before there can be lasting peace, there must be reconciliation with God. This insight has animated Catholic social teaching from Rerum Novarum to Centesimus Annus, from Gaudium et Spes to Fratelli Tutti. The Church never separates social renewal from spiritual renewal because she knows that every social crisis is, at its deepest level, a crisis of the human person.
That conviction lies at the heart of my most recent pastoral letter, In Charity & Truth: Towards a Renewed Political Culture. I wrote it, not to offer a political platform, but to propose something much more demanding: an invitation to recover the virtues necessary for a healthy democracy and a reminder that political renewal is ultimately the fruit of moral and spiritual renewal. It is not simply a message for politicians. It is a message for the whole Church, and I daresay, for consecrated women.
Why Speak to Women Religious About Political Culture?
At first glance, the connection may seem surprising; one might reasonably ask: Why should women who have professed poverty, chastity, and obedience have anything particular to say about democracy, public life, or political culture? Should not religious life remain above politics? The answer, of course, is yes – and no.
Yes, because the Church must never become captive to partisan ideologies. Consecrated life transcends political parties. The Kingdom of God cannot be reduced to electoral platforms. The Gospel judges every political system because it belongs to none of them.
But the answer is also no. For while religious life transcends politics, it never withdraws from the world. The evangelical counsels are not an escape from history – they are a way of redeeming history. Consecrated women do not flee society; they bless it. The Second Vatican Council described religious life as a sign that manifests the life of the world to come already present within history.[2] In other words, consecrated life is an eschatological witness. It reveals what humanity looks like when it is fully alive in Christ.
As you know, the evangelical counsels are not simply expressions of personal piety. The vows are indeed deeply personal but never merely private; they are proclamations, declarations of the Gospel in flesh, blood, and spirit. They proclaim to every age what genuine freedom looks like. They expose false freedoms, they unmask cultural idols and restore the proper relationship between the person, society, and God. That is why your vocation matters, not only to the Church, but also to the nation. Not because sisters hold political office or because convents function as think tanks, but because every authentic consecrated life becomes a living argument that another way of being human is possible.
America Needs More Than Better Politics
For some time now I have found myself reflecting on a simple but unsettling question. What if our deepest national problem is not that we have bad politics. What if the deeper problem is that we expect politics to do what only holiness can accomplish? We increasingly look to government to provide what families once provided. We ask for legislation to heal wounds that require forgiveness. We expect institutions to restore trust that can only be rebuilt through virtue. We seek policies to solve crises of meaning. Politics has become burdened with expectations it was never intended to bear. As Pope Benedict XVI reminded us, the State can guarantee justice in certain respects, but it cannot create love. It cannot manufacture virtue. It cannot replace moral formation within families, communities, and the Church.[3] Democracy depends upon virtues that democracy itself cannot produce. It depends on honesty, mutual respect, sacrifice, patience, and mercy. It depends on generosity in seeking the common good over private advantage.
Where are such virtues learned? They are learned through communities that embody them. This is one reason why religious communities remain indispensable to public life. Long before America debated civic education, sisters were forming consciences. Long before people spoke of “social capital,” sisters were building communities of trust. Long before commentators worried about polarization, women religious were teaching children to recognize Christ in one another. Their contribution to democracy has never consisted primarily in political advocacy. It has consisted in the formation of virtuous citizens.
The French historian Alexis de Tocqueville observed that America’s democracy depended less upon its laws than upon its moral habits.[4] Catholic sisters helped cultivate those habits. Their influence cannot be measured simply by the number of schools they built or hospitals they founded. It must also be measured by the millions of consciences they helped form. They built not only institutions – they built the moral imagination of a nation.
The Forgotten Architects of American Freedom
When Americans tell the story of freedom, they usually begin with the Founding Fathers. They remember Washington, Adams, Jeffreson, Madison, and Hamilton. Later they recall Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy and countless others who shaped our national life.
All deserve their place, but there is another story. It is a quieter, somewhat hidden story. It is the story of thousands upon thousands of women religious whose names will never appear in history textbooks, yet without whom the American experiment would have looked very different.
Who welcomed wave after wave of immigrants? Who cared for the victims of epidemics when others fled? Who taught generations of children not simply arithmetic and grammar, but honesty, sacrifice, discipline, and love of God?
Again and again, the answer is the same – women religious. They changed the nation because they first allowed Christ to change them. There is a paradox here that deserves our attention. Those who renounced worldly ambition often exercised the greatest influence upon society. Those who vowed poverty enriched countless communities. Those who embraced chastity enlarged the human family. Those who professed obedience became astonishingly creative missionaries. The world struggles to understand this paradox. The Gospel does not. Our Lord Himself taught us that whoever loses his life will find it. The evangelical counsels are nothing other than that teaching made visible.
A Pilgrimage to Camden Yards
As we celebrate this anniversary of American freedom, I find myself returning to another moment in our nation’s history – one that took place, not in Philadelphia in 1776, but in Baltimore in 1995. Some of you might remember that extraordinary October day when Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Standing in the Premier See of Baltimore, speaking to a nation approaching a new millennium, the Holy Father reflected upon freedom and his words have lost none of their urgency.
He observed that “Christian witness takes different forms at different moments in the life of a nation.”[5] The Church does not repeat herself mechanically from one generation to another. The Gospel never changes, but the way it addresses history does. He continued: “Sometimes witnessing to Christ will mean drawing out of a culture the full meaning of its noblest intentions… At other times, witnessing to Christ means challenging that culture, especially when the truth about the human person is under assault.”[6]
How beautifully that describes the vocation of women religious throughout American history. You have affirmed what is noble in our national experiment. You have also challenged what falls short of the Gospel. Not because you loved America less, but because you loved her enough to call her to her highest ideals.
Then came perhaps the most memorable words of the Pope’s homily: “America has always wanted to be a land of the free. Today, the challenge facing America is to find freedom’s fulfilment in the truth.”[7] That last sentence has become a kind of spiritual compass for our nation. Freedom finds its fulfillment in truth. The Holy Father continued with words every generation of Americans needs to hear anew: “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”[8]
That sentence, I believe, provides the key not only to understanding American freedom but also to understanding the evangelical counsels. For what are poverty, chastity, and obedience if not the joyful proclamation that true freedom is found, not in doing whatever we desire, but in becoming the persons God created us to be? It is to that social witness of the evangelical counsels – & to the unique contribution of women religious to the renewal of political culture— that I now wish to turn.
The Social Witness of Evangelical Poverty – Freedom from Possession, Freedom for Communion
When Pope John Paul II stood at Camden Yards in 1995, he reminded America that freedom finds its fulfillment in truth. To reiterate: those words are not just a commentary on democratic life; they are also an interpretation of the evangelical counsels themselves. For every evangelical counsel is, in its own way, a proclamation of authentic freedom. Each vow announces to the world that the human person is not imprisoned by instinct, appetite, or ambition. Each vow proclaims that grace makes us capable of loving beyond ourselves. Each vow declares that freedom is not the power to satisfy every desire but the capacity to choose what is good, true, and beautiful.
The world often sees religious vows as restrictions. The Gospel reveals them as liberations. This is especially true of evangelical poverty.
At first glance, poverty appears to be the least relevant of the three counsels to contemporary political life. It seems deeply personal, even hidden. Surely, one might think poverty concerns only the individual religious and her relationship with material goods. Yet history tells another story. Indeed, I would suggest that evangelical poverty has shaped the American experiment more profoundly than we often realize.
Poverty and the Illusion of Possession
Permit me to begin with a simple observation. Every civilization eventually reveals what it truly worships. Ancient empires worshiped military power. Some societies have worshiped bloodlines or national identity. Others have elevated race or ideology. Modern Western culture worships something far less dramatic but no less powerful: Possession. Not simply wealth, but possession.
Our economy rightly rewards creativity, innovation, and hard work. These are genuine goods. The Church has consistently affirmed the legitimacy of private property, entrepreneurship, and responsible stewardship. Yet the Gospel always asks a deeper question: Do we possess our possessions – or do they possess us? That question is not limited to economics; the temptation to possess is universal. It is as present in the chancery as it is on Wall Street. It is as present in the convent as it is in the corporate boardroom. It is as present in ecclesial ministry as it is in political office.
Whenever we begin to cling rather than to receive, whenever we grasp rather than offer, whenever we define ourselves by what we control rather than by whom we love, we begin to lose our freedom.
The vow of poverty exposes this illusion. The religious sister stands before the world and quietly says: My security does not come from accumulation, my identity does not come from ownership, and my future does not depend upon what I possess. My treasure is Christ.
That is not merely a personal spirituality. It is a social proclamation. Every culture organized around acquisition eventually produces anxiety. If my worth depends upon what I own, I will never have enough. If my dignity depends upon my success, I will always fear failure. If my importance depends upon influence, I will inevitably view others as competitors. Such fears eventually migrate into public life. Politics becomes a struggle to secure advantage. The common good is replaced by individual preference.
Evangelical poverty interrupts that cycle. It reminds us that abundance is not measured by consumption but by communion, and that generosity creates wealth of a different kind. Evangelical poverty reminds us that societies flourish when people ask not first, “What belongs to me?” but rather, “To whom do I belong?”
St. Frances Xavier Cabrini: Freedom Beyond Security
No American saint embodies this truth more vividly than St. Frances Xavier Cabrini. When Mother Cabrini arrived in New York in 1889, she entered a nation experiencing extraordinary growth and extraordinary inequality. Millions of immigrants were arriving; many worked under dangerous conditions; and many had little access to education or healthcare. She herself possessed almost nothing. If we were advising her according to contemporary standards of strategic planning, we might have recommended caution. While there is wisdom in prudent planning – Mother Cabrini knew something that strategic plans alone cannot teach. She understood that Christian mission begins, not with perfect resources, but with radical trust. Her confidence rested not in financial security but in Divine Providence. That confidence liberated extraordinary creativity. By the time of her death, she had established schools, orphanages, hospitals, and charitable institutions across the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Yet what made her remarkable was not administrative brilliance alone – it was evangelical poverty. She had little because she feared little, she owned little because she trusted much, and she accumulated little because she gave everything.
In a culture increasingly tempted to confuse security with accumulation, Mother Cabrini reminds us that courage often grows precisely where self-protection ends. That lesson is not only spiritual but also profoundly civic. Mother Cabrini teaches us that poverty is not fundamentally about having less, it is about being owned by less. And perhaps that is one of the greatest freedoms a human being can ever experience.
Mother Mary Lange: Poverty That Restores Human Dignity
Permit to go home to Baltimore for just a moment. No reflection on women religious and the American experiment would be complete without remembering Mother Mary Lange. Foundress of the Oblate Sisters of Providence, Mother Lange occupies a unique place in both American and Catholic history. She was a free Black woman living in a society that systematically denied the dignity of many of God’s children. She encountered prejudice not only in civil society but also within the Church.
She could easily have concluded that hope was futile. Instead, she founded, educated, served and persevered. That is what evangelical poverty looks like. It does not begin with resentment – it begins with hope.
Mother Lange understood that poverty does not merely concern material deprivation; there is another poverty that wounds societies: the poverty of exclusion, loneliness, and believing that one’s life has no value. Her response was profoundly evangelical – she restored dignity through education, hope through community, and confidence through faith. How relevant her witness remains!
Today our political conversations frequently seek to reduce people to categories – black, white, rich, poor, conservative, liberal. But Mother Lange reminds us that before any of these descriptions comes another identity: beloved child of God. Once that truth is forgotten, politics inevitably becomes dehumanizing, and once that truth is remembered, even disagreement can become an occasion for charity. Her witness embodies precisely what I describe in my pastoral letter– a political culture rooted not in ideology but in recognition of the inviolable dignity of every person.
Poverty and the Common Good
There is another social lesson hidden within evangelical poverty. Poverty teaches stewardship. The Christian tradition has never rejected ownership, rather it has always insisted that ownership carries responsibility. Everything entrusted to us ultimately belongs to God. The vow of poverty becomes a prophetic reminder that we are stewards before we are owners.
Imagine what public life would look like if this conviction were widely shared. Imagine political leaders viewing authority not as personal achievement, but as entrusted service. Imagine business leaders seeing profit not as an end but as a means of promoting human flourishing. Imagine citizens understanding rights and responsibilities as inseparable. The common good would no longer appear as an abstract philosophical concept. It would become the ordinary practice of daily life.
Poverty forms precisely this disposition. The poor in spirit know that everything is gift so they become grateful. Grateful people become generous. Generous people build communities. Communities become capable of trust. And trust remains one of the indispensable foundations of democratic life.
The Poverty of Listening
There is one final dimension of evangelical poverty that deserves our attention and it is perhaps the most difficult of all: the poverty of listening. Modern society rewards speaking. The Gospel often rewards silence. The poor in spirit know they do not possess all wisdom. They approach others with humility. They remain teachable. They listen before speaking. How revolutionary that has become. Our public discourse often resembles parallel conversations in which no one truly hears anyone else. We are quick to diagnose. Slow to understand. Quick to criticize. Slow to accompany. Quick to assume motives. Slow to ask questions.
The vow of poverty quietly challenges this entire culture. It teaches us to empty ourselves – not only of possessions but also of self-sufficiency. This poverty of spirit creates the possibility of authentic encounter, and authentic encounter creates the possibility of reconciliation. The Church has always understood that peace begins, not with winning arguments, but with converted hearts. That is why evangelical poverty is indispensable to the renewal of political culture. It teaches us that the opposite of greed is gift, the opposite of possession is communion and the opposite of fear is trust. And these are precisely the virtues that healthy democracies require.
Yet poverty alone cannot sustain communion. If poverty frees the heart from possession, another evangelical counsel teaches the heart what to do with that freedom. It teaches us that freedom is fulfilled not in isolation but in love. It is to the remarkable witness of consecrated chastity that we now turn.
Consecrated Chastity, Holy Obedience, and the Renewal of the Moral Imagination
Evangelical poverty proclaims that our lives are not defined by what we possess; consecrated chastity proclaims something equally revolutionary: Our lives are not defined by whom we possess. At first hearing, that statement sounds strange to modern ears. After all, ours is an age that claims to prize relationships. We celebrate intimacy, companionship, and belonging. These are genuine human goods, willed by God from the beginning of creation. Marriage is one of the Church’s greatest treasures, and family life remains the first school of love, virtue, and citizenship.
Consecrated chastity does not diminish these realities. It illuminates them. It reminds the Church – and the world – that every human love finds its deepest meaning only when it is rooted in the love of Christ.
Far from rejecting love, the consecrated woman embraces a love so expansive that it refuses to be limited by possession. Her heart is enlarged, not diminished. Her capacity for communion is widened, not narrowed. This is why the Church has always spoken of consecrated chastity, not simply as renunciation, but as eschatological witness. It points beyond the present age to that future where, in the words of St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians – Our Lord and God will be “all in all.”[9] Yet before it points to heaven, it transforms earth. Nowhere is that transformation more urgently needed than in our political culture.
The Crisis Beneath Our Divisions
Much has been written in recent years about polarization. We speak often of ideological divisions, political tribes, culture wars, and social fragmentation. All of these descriptions contain truth, but they describe symptoms more than causes. Christians have always disagreed about prudential matters. The deeper crisis is that we increasingly fail to recognize one another as persons worthy of love. We encounter one another first as labels: conservative, liberal, traditional, progressive, educated, uneducated, etc. We sort people before we see them and we argue before we listen. The language of public life increasingly becomes transactional.
Pope Francis often warned against what he called the “throwaway culture.”[10] It is tempting to hear those words only in relation to abortion, euthanasia, or the poor, – and certainly they apply there with particular force. But the logic of the throwaway culture extends further. Whenever we begin to use people rather than receive them as gifts, we have entered its orbit. Whenever relationships become instruments for advancement rather than occasions for self-gift, we have forgotten the Gospel.
Consecrated chastity stands quietly but unmistakably against this logic. The religious sister reminds us that no human being is ever an object. No one exists for our consumption. No one exists merely to reinforce our opinions. Every person is first and always someone for whom Christ died. That is not merely a devotional truth – it is the foundation of every just society.
Sister Thea Bowman: The Freedom to Belong to Everyone
Permit me to illustrate this through the remarkable witness of Servant of God Sister Thea Bowman. Whenever I think of Sister Thea, I think first of joy. It radiated from her – even amid profound suffering of a terminal illness. Even while confronting the painful realities of racism – joy remained her signature. That alone should capture our attention. Joy is not naivete – it is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Genuine joy has extraordinary social power.
Born Bertha Bowman in Mississippi, she entered the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration as one of the first African American members of her community. Throughout her life she challenged the Church to embrace the richness of African American spirituality while remaining deeply rooted in Catholic tradition.
Notice how she did this – she never abandoned truth for popularity or charity for anger. She never confused prophetic witness with ideological combat. Instead she challenged, invited, and loved. When Sister Thea addressed the bishops of the United States in 1989, she did not accuse them from a distance – she spoke as a daughter of the Church with both honesty and affection. She called them – and all of us – to conversion, but she did so from within the communion of the Body of Christ.
That is a profoundly Catholic way of engaging culture. It reflects the logic of consecrated chastity. Because she belonged completely to Christ, she was free to belong to everyone. She could cross boundaries that others found impassable. She could speak difficult truths because people recognized that her words emerged from love rather than resentment.
How desperately our nation needs such witnesses today. Imagine conversations and political discourse marked by conviction without contempt. Imagine disagreement without dehumanization, or criticism animated by hope rather than hostility.
That is not sentimental idealism – it is evangelical realism. It is precisely what consecrated love makes possible.
Civic Friendship: A Forgotten Virtue
This brings us to one of my personal favorite themes from my pastoral letter, a theme I mentioned earlier: civic friendship. I find that expression deeply attractive, not because it is soft but because it is demanding. Friendship requires far more than agreement. Indeed, some of our deepest friendships exist precisely because they survive disagreement.
Aristotle understood friendship as the bond that enables political communities to flourish. St. Augustine deepened that insight by reminding us that every society is ultimately united by what it loves. Christianity transforms both insights through charity. Our unity does not arise because we think alike. It arises because Christ has first loved us.
Political communities require laws, but laws alone cannot sustain trust. They require institutions, but institutions alone cannot generate affection. They require constitutions, but constitutions cannot create virtue. Friendship remains indispensable. This is one of the Church’s greatest contributions to democratic life – the Church forms people capable of friendship. Not merely social friendship, but spiritual friendship. The kind rooted in humility, forgiveness, patience, and the shared pursuit of truth.
Women religious have quietly taught this for generations. You know from lived experience that authentic communion does not eliminate differences; it orders them toward charity. Perhaps one of the greatest gifts you can offer our nation today is precisely this witness: communion without uniformity, conviction without hostility, and truth without triumphalism.
Holy Obedience and the Freedom to Listen
If chastity teaches us how to love universally, obedience teaches us how to listen. No evangelical counsel is more misunderstood. To modern ears, obedience often sounds like surrender, loss of autonomy or suppression of individuality. Yet the Church offers a profoundly different vision – Christian obedience begins not with submission but with receptivity. It asks, “What is God saying?” Only then does it ask, “What must I do?”
That distinction changes everything. Our culture frequently equates freedom with self-determination. Again we hear the echo of Pope John Paul II: “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.” [11]
Holy obedience trains precisely that freedom. It forms hearts capable of discerning rather than merely reacting. How desperately our digital age needs this virtue. Social media rewards immediacy – discipleship requires discernment. Political rhetoric rewards certainty – Christian wisdom often begins with silence. Commentary rewards speed – prayer rewards patience. Our nation does not simply suffer from a deficit of information – it suffers from a deficit of contemplation.
Consecrated women remind us that the first responsibility of every disciple is not speaking – it is listening. Listening to Scripture, the Holy Spirit, the Church and even to those with whom we disagree. For sometimes the Lord speaks through unexpected voices.
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton: Listening into Mission
St. Elizabeth Ann Seton is a compelling example of one of these unexpected voices. When she lost her husband, she could not foresee the future. When she entered the Catholic Church, she encountered misunderstanding. When she accepted the invitation to Emmitsburg, she had no blueprint for what would unfold. Again and again, she listened, she entrusted herself to Providence, and she allowed obedience to become creativity. This is one of the paradoxes of religious life. The world often imagines obedience producing conformity, but history demonstrates the opposite. The most obedient saints are often the most astonishingly creative. Their obedience did not shrink their personalities – it liberated them. Because they were no longer preoccupied with self-construction, they became available for God’s surprising designs.
Might something similar be true for societies? Perhaps communities become creative precisely when they recover the humility to listen before acting. Perhaps political renewal begins not with louder voices but with quieter hearts.
The Sisters Who Built America’s Moral Imagination
As we approach the close of this reflection on chastity and obedience, I would like to step back and consider the larger picture. Historians often describe women religious as builders of schools, hospitals, orphanages, and charitable institutions. All of that is true. But I often wonder if their greatest accomplishment lies elsewhere.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of American women religious has been the formation of the nation’s moral imagination. Before children learned algebra, they learned mercy. Before they learned history, they learned gratitude. Before they debated political questions, they learned to examine their consciences. Before they became voters, they became disciples.
What an extraordinary contribution to democracy. For democracy ultimately depends not merely upon informed citizens. It depends upon virtuous citizens. Freedom cannot survive if detached from moral formation. This was precisely Pope John Paul II’s warning at Camden Yards. A democracy severed from moral truth cannot long endure. The great work of women religious has always been to keep those truths alive – not merely in books, but in hearts. And that, I would suggest, is a great act of patriotism. For to form saints is also to form citizens capable of sustaining freedom. Yet, if the evangelical counsels have shaped the moral imagination of our nation for the past two and fifty years, an important question remains: What kind of witness is required for the next two hundred and fifty? It is to that question – and to the mission entrusted to you as daughters of the Church from one generation to the next – that I now turn.
The Next Two Hundred and Fifty Years
What kind of witness is required for the next two hundred and fifty years? That is the question before us – not simply as women religious, not simply as leaders of institutes, not simply as members of the Church, but as disciples who have been entrusted with a particular grace for a particular moment. The answer, I believe, begins with an ever-new embrace of the heart of your vocation.
As you know so well, the world does not need religious women who are merely efficient. It does not need religious women who simply preserve institutions and manage ministries. The world does not need religious women who are afraid of the future because they are overly attached to the past, nor religious women who abandon the riches of the past because they are overly impressed by the fashions of the present.
The world needs women who have been seized by Christ. It needs women whose lives bear unmistakable witness to the truth that God is real, that holiness is possible, that sacrifice is fruitful, and that love poured out in communion with Christ can transform the world.
This has always been the genius of consecrated life. The great witnesses of religious life were never primarily remembered not because they were successful by worldly measures. They were remembered because they were faithful. They did not ask first, “What will make us relevant?” They asked, “What is Christ asking of us?” And because they asked that question, they became profoundly relevant. They were not seeking influence – they were seeking fidelity. And fidelity became influence. They were not trying to make history. They were simply trying to serve Christ. And history was changed because they did. The story of Catholicism in the United States cannot be told without the witness of women religious. Their witness was not built on power – it was built on presence. This is one of the great prophetic gifts that women religious offer the Church today: the witness of presence in an age of distraction. We live in a culture that often values visibility over virtue, influence over holiness, and recognition over sacrifice. The world tells us that what matters is being seen. The Gospel tells us that what matters is being faithful. Jesus Himself gives us this paradox – “And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”[12]
The hidden life matters. The quiet act of charity matters. The prayer offered in chapel matters. The hours spent accompanying a struggling person matter. The patient fidelity to community life matters. The unseen sacrifices made out of love for Christ matter.
Our world is suffering from a crisis of wisdom. We know how to communicate but often not how to listen. We know how to connect digitally but struggle to encounter one another personally. We know how to extend life technologically but struggle to understand the meaning of life spiritually. The world does not need more noise – it needs women who know how to be still before God. This is why your witness is so necessary, now and always. The world needs women who remind us that silence is not emptiness but encounter; that contemplation is not withdrawal but preparation for mission; that prayer is not an escape from the world but the deepest way of loving the world.
Your communities are, in many ways, schools of humanity. The evangelical counsels are not relics from another era. They are prophetic signs for every era, just as we have seen. This witness is needed not only outside the Church. It is needed within the Church. The Church needs women religious who can help us recover the beauty of communion in an age of fragmentation. We need your ability to build bridges, to accompany, to listen, and to remind us that the Church is not a collection of competing interests but the Body of Christ. This is why Pope Leo XIV, in continuity with the great tradition of the Church, has called us again to a renewed confidence in Christ and in the mission entrusted to His Church.
The future will not be built by those who merely defend Christianity as an idea. The future will be built by those who embody Christianity as a way of life. And this is where women religious have always excelled. You have shown the world what the Gospel looks like when it becomes flesh.
Every generation of consecrated women has faced uncertainty, but they had confidence in Providence. And that is the invitation before us today. Not nostalgia, fear, or retreat, but hope. Christian hope is not optimism. Optimism says, “Things will probably get better.” Hope says, “Christ has already conquered, and therefore we can move forward even when the path is difficult.” Hope is the virtue of those who know that God is always doing something new.
The great temptation in times of transition is to measure the future by the standards of the past. We ask questions like “Will there be as many members as before? Will our institutions look the same? Will the Church occupy the same cultural place?” These are understandable questions, but the deeper question we need to ask is: “Will we be as available to Christ as the saints who came before us?”
God has never depended upon numbers – He has always depended upon surrendered hearts. The history of salvation is filled with moments when God accomplished great things through those who appeared small in the eyes of the world.
Conclusion
So, dear sisters, do not underestimate the gift that you are. Measure your vocation by fidelity, by love, and by whether, through your life, someone encounters the mercy of Jesus Christ. Because at the end of the day, the Church needs religious women who make Christ present now. Women who, like Mary, say yes. Women who, like the saints, trust Providence. Women who, like generations of sisters before them, place their lives completely into the hands of God.
The next two hundred and fifty years will bring challenges we cannot yet imagine. But the Lord who called you is already there. The Lord who sustained your founders and foundresses is already there. The Lord who carried the Church through every age of uncertainty is already there. Therefore, we move forward – not because we know exactly what the future holds, but because we know Who holds the future. And that is the deepest witness of consecrated life: A life so completely given to Christ that the world can no longer doubt that He is alive. Thank you for your fidelity. Thank you for your courage. Thank you for your witness. And above all, thank you for reminding the Church and the world that when a human heart gives itself entirely to God, God can do infinitely more than we could ever ask or imagine.
[1] Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776, National Archives, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
[2] Lumen Gentium, Chapter 6, no. 40
[3] Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, June 29, 2009, 15; Deus Caritas Est, January 2006, 13–14
[4] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Henry Reeve (London: Saunders and Otley, 1835), 17:3–4
[5] St. John Paul II, Homily at the Mass in Baltimore, October 8, 1995 (Baltimore, MD: Archdiocese of Baltimore, 1995), 1.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] 1 Corinthians 15:28
[10] Laudato Si’, Ch. 1, §1, n. 22., Vatican News, “Pope at Angelus: ‘Poor in spirit’ requires us to overcome throwaway culture,” January 2023.. Vatican News, “Pope: economics without ethics leads to ‘throw-away’ culture,” November 2019.
[11] St. John Paul II, Homily at the Mass in Baltimore, October 8, 1995 (Baltimore, MD: Archdiocese of Baltimore, 1995).
[12] Matthew 6:6