Lumen Gentium instructed that religious
are to live out the counsels in community to a greater degree in service to the
Church (living for God alone), and in doing so model for the laity what grace
can accomplish. Reflecting upon why God made us, which is to share in His life
forever, religious are only too happy to be a road sign for the rest of
humanity pointing the best way to love of neighbor. Paul VI, expanding on Lumen Gentium, alluded to this in Evangelica Testificatio, his Apostolic
Exhortation of June, 1971:
It is precisely for the sake of the kingdom of heaven
that you have vowed to Christ, generously and without reservation, that
capacity to love, that need to possess and that freedom to regulate one's own
life, which are so precious to man. Such is your consecration, made within the
Church and through her ministry—both that of her representatives who receive
your profession and that of the Christian community itself, whose love
recognizes, welcomes, sustains and embraces those who within it make an
offering of themselves as a living sign "which can and ought to attract
all the members of the Church to an effective and prompt fulfillment of the
duties of their Christian vocation...more adequately manifesting to all
believers the presence of heavenly goods already possessed in this world.
The religious
life, then, according to Vatican II, is to reveal the transcendence of God’s
Kingdom, which takes precedence over
all earthly considerations. The hierarchical Church for its part is empowered
“to make wise laws for the regulation of the practice of the counsels,” and ensure
that religious institutes, whose members were to respect and obey bishops in
accordance with canon law, develop and flourish in harmony with the spirit of
their founders.
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