Living for the Kingdom of Heaven

"Christ is the center of all Christian life. The bond with him takes precedence over all other bonds, familial or social."
~ ​CCC 1618

 In the presence of the Most Holy Trinity, the Sister professes her vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience to Jesus Christ, definitively witnessing to the reality of the preeminence of that bond with Christ which is the center of every Christian life. Bonded with Christ in a unique manner, the Church considers the life of the consecrated person to mirror in a special way the mystery of redemption. As the Catechism states referring to religious life, "To follow and imitate Christ more nearly and to manifest more clearly his self-emptying is to be more deeply present to one's contemporaries, in the heart of Christ" (CCC 932). It is for this that the religious Sister sets aside the loving bonds of family life, the attractions of the world, and goods of this life - to be "all things to all men" ​and to be love at the heart of the Church.
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"For the People of God has here no lasting city,... [and consecrated life] reveals more clearly to all believers the heavenly goods which are already present in this age, witnessing to the new and eternal life which we have acquired through the redemptive work of Christ and preluding our future resurrection and the glory of the heavenly kingdom." 
~ Lumen Gentium, 44