Religious Transformation

Wherein lies the charm of Cinderella, the poor unloved girl of ashes who was transformed into beauty and captured the heart of a prince? The Cinderella story echoes a truth in the hearts of all those who long to be transformed. For women, to become beautiful, good, and true in every aspect is a God-given desire which is never stilled in this life. Perhaps its cry echoes more insistently in the hearts of religious women. Nothing less than the purity of love will satisfy, for there is a real King who desires our hand in His Kingdom. The possibility of being transformed is no fairy tale, although the ease of a fairy godmother?s wand certainly is.

In reality, transformation takes place by participating in the life of the Holy Trinity. It consists in receiving all from God in love and in giving all back to God in love. If we desire to discard our clinging rags of selfishness and petty sin and don the white gown of a pure heart, a deeper participation in the life of the Holy Trinity is necessary. The Father, in an outpouring act of truth, gives absolute knowledge of Himself to His Son. Nothing is withheld in this whole and complete gift of self-disclosure. A consecrated religious is beckoned to give her entire self back to God through the evangelical counsels. All that we have, all that we are, and all that we ever could be are to be placed continually before Him. Every part of ourselves, both the good and shameful, must be revealed to Him, for what is withheld cannot be transformed.

The Son receives the Father's gift of Self with utter completeness. Every aspect of the Father's Person and nature are accepted. Nothing does the Son reject. So too the religious must fully receive all from God. The mundane and the spectacular, the routine and the challenging, the blissful and the sorrowful and all that lie in between are to be accepted as coming from the Father's permissive will. He uses each life event as an instrument to give form and shape to our souls. The Father and the Son, looking upon the beauty of the Other, together give the fullness of themselves again in a unified gift of love. Together they breathe forth the Holy Spirit. So too the religious who offers her entire self to God and who accepts all from the hand of God must do so in love.

Only love makes the gift of self- disclosure or the gift of self-surrender one of beauty. Only love has transformative power, for God is love. ( 1 Jn 3:16) This Love is the fullness of giving and receiving. If we abide in this complete giving and receiving, we abide in the very life of the Trinity and, Cinderella-like, are raised from ashes to become spouses of the King.