Religious Life: An Enclosed Garden

On this day 42 years ago, the Vatican under Pope St. John Paul II published an important document, Essential Elements in the Church's Teaching on Religious Life, which clearly outlined the foundational aspects of Religious life in a time of uncertainty and confusion. The document listed nine components that identify a certain way of life as religious life and instructed consecrated men and women to stay faithful to this identity: "Fidelity to these basic elements ... guarantees the strength of religious life and grounds our hope for its future growth" (Essential Elements).  

 Our Novices recently studied this and spent time discussing each of the essential elements: consecration by public vow, communion in community, evangelical mission, prayer, asceticism, public witness, relation to the Church, formation, and government. Inspired by the study, the Novices drew a beautiful garden symbolizing religious life and represented each of the essential elements therein. This symbolic depiction and its description lies below.

​Religious Life is an enclosed garden
in which three large trees stand – they are the VOWS of
POVERTY, CHASTITY, and OBEDIENCE
– and their fruits are RELIGIOUS CONSECRATION.

The birds of the air that make their home in the trees of the
garden represent COMMUNION IN COMMUNITY,
and together their song makes a chorus of PRAISE.
They carry the fecundity of the garden, that is, the seed of
the WORD OF GOD, and by the wings of CHARITY,
spread it over the whole world, beyond the garden walls.
This scattering of BEAUTY, GOODNESS, and TRUTH is
EVANGELICAL MISSION.

​PRAYER is the stream of fresh, clear water running
through the entire garden, refreshing all the creatures
and watering all the plants that grow there.
It is the VITAL PRINCIPLE whose source cannot be
depleted, for it springs forth from the very life of God.

The toil and work of tending the garden is the way of
ASCETICISM, without which the weeds of
lukewarmness and the thorns of vice creep in to choke
love.

​Enclosing the garden stands the tall and sturdy fence, the
CHURCH, fixing its boundaries and determining its
shape; and, like a good Mother, protecting the life within
so as to enable it to flourish.

There is a door along the fence that opens into the garden,
through which one may enter to behold its beauty,
to delight in the fragrance of the flowers,
and to take rest in the shade of its trees.
Indeed, the beholder glimpses Paradise.
Such a sight fills the soul with FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, and
JOY…and this is PUBLIC WITNESS.

FORMATION is all the things that make the garden grow
in loveliness, that is, to make it resemble the Beloved:
the sunshine of DIVINE LOVE,
the dew of the WORD OF GOD,
the gentle rain of GRACE in the SACRAMENTS,
the rich soil of LITURGICAL PRAYER, enriched by
the fertilizer of SILENCE and CONTEMPLATION,
the symbiosis of LIFE IN COMMUNITY,
and the fungicide of MAGISTERIAL TEACHING.
​The plenitude of the garden is UNION WITH GOD.

​Set over the care of the garden is the gardener,
who, filled with a spirit of HUMBLE SERVICE, labors for
the love of the beauty of the garden. And this
guardianship represents GOVERNMENT.

​Mary, Immaculate Virgin,
whose pure heart never refused God
and was thus filled with every grace,
is the most perfect garden enclosed.
For by her unmatched holiness, virtues, and fiat,
she, above all creatures,
most perfectly resembles the Beloved.
She is, therefore, the Mother and Model of Religious Life,
and her beauty is the exemplar of all gardens.