Consecrated life is a special gift given by Christ to many people who are living their lives with commitment responding to God’s love in a special relationship. It’s a life of integrity and honor, a blessing which we receive from God. It’s a journey with God and through walking with Him day by day, we nurture our vocation. It’s hard but heroic to choose poverty, obedience, and chastity in an era of money, power, and pleasure. It’s not just an alternative way of life style but a personal committed way of living in response to a call to witness and to mission. As religious, we seek to follow Christ with greater liberty and to imitate Him more closely in the footprints that was lived by our founders or foundresses. And here I would proudly say “YES” I have responded to God’s call and I am proud to be a Capuchin Tertiary Sister.
India is known for being the mother of ancient customs, traditions, religions, and cultural practices which is still being preserved even until this era. Religious practices and spiritual exercises are still at its peak in the life of each individual. Christianity in India had brought vast changes and especially the role of missionaries and their life witnesses had impacted the lives of many. From there spring forth the call to consecrated life in India which continues to bloom even until today.
“Unity in diversity” is the greatest motto which sounds in the hearts of each Indian. As people, irrespective of their religions or traditions, try to live in harmony and respect with each other and with their own religious practices. And now to be a religious in this epoch had called me to unlearn and to relearn my own myths and beliefs and to get rid of all my cultural biases which spring forth from the very nature of birth itself and I am called to embrace the culture of the Gospel, of reciprocity, circularity, and magnanimity. I was challenged to let go, to bend low, and to be with those whom I have met or who are in need. Years have brought me many experiences of joy, contentment, happiness, challenges, temptations, and of tears, yet what holds me as religious is the experience that “My God who has called me is faithful to me and here I have my sisters with whom we walk the road together”.
Breaking into the barriers, reaching out to the islands, walking around the streets, of encountering people had taught me to be born again, to embrace the inter-cultural, inter- caste indifferences, and to be a woman for all at all moments, of exchanging smiles, faith and hope, finding the meaning of struggling together with the needy, getting into their shoes. My religious life has enlightened me to live life simply and joyfully, generous in service, giving without limitations or conditions, loving who they are and not with how I want them to be. And I would sincerely say that it’s God who molds us to be a person for others if only we allow Him to work in us. And I am sure that in choosing religious life, I didn’t lose anything rather I have got my TC family and I am able to embrace the humanity as my fellow people. It’s not I have sacrificed many things or have given up many, rather it is I who have received many and which allowed me to live and to experience the joy of being born again as religious to live in diverse cultures.
