This month, there’s a slight variation: Team member Dave Stewart SJ shares an edited version of the homily he gave this week at the Mass of team member Sr.Anouska’s Renewal of Religious Vows.

Sister Anouska made some significant choices for the Vow-Mass liturgy today which, of course, celebrates and affirms her most significant choice, and the choice that her order, the Faithful Companions of Jesus, makes towards her today. The first choice was printed on the invitation, citing the phrase of Saint Ignatius from his Spiritual Exercises; “we are created topraise, reverence and serve God our Lord”. That progressive trinity of attitudes and actions: praise, leading to reverence, leading to wholehearted service; is a description of religious life, indeed of the Christian life. It parallels another Ignatian trinity, so to speak – that wonderful progressive dynamic so beloved of Ignatius, of “know-love-serve”, a faith-statement that knowledge of God our Lord inevitably leads to love of God, and that the knowledge that leads to love will just as inevitably lead to a desire for service; service of God, in and through the people of God. Know-love-serve; praise-reverence-service, the invitation is always to grow more deeply into the reality of God to which the response is always one ofservice, the Magis, asking “what more can I do? What greater service can I render?”

“Now, it happened one day by the lakeside …”; the beginning of Luke‘s Gospel story of the call of two disciples, which Anouska chose for the gospel reading. Jesus was teaching an eager crowd drawn perhaps by curiosity at first, maybe a first-century version of celebrity culture. But Jesus, who was of course the best and most celebrated spiritual director that the world has ever seen, knew that people would come to see themselves as drawn by their deeper desires. Jesus then focussed on two people in particular, who were fishing, but not very well, it seems. Luke‘s gospel suggests that that Jesus had no prior knowledge of these guys yet he sensed something about them; or maybe he just simply thought that the qualities that a half-decent fisher man needs are much the same as he wanted in his team; diligence, perseverance and cheerfulness. In Saint Peter‘s case there was a sudden, instant realisation of unworthiness to which the Lord responded with a vision of a much larger reality, a much broader horizon, a ministry of infinite import. Luke in his gospel loves to present that characteristic theme of “small beginnings, great conclusions”. Saint Peter, at the moment of his first calling, saw only the smallness but his newly-appointed spiritual director, Jesus of Nazareth, began at that moment to get him to see the great conclusions that were now possible.

Saint Peter was being encouraged to dream a great dream; to develop, in another phrase of Ignatius, great desires. We are still in the midst of the ongoing renewal of religious life that recognises the changed social contexts of modern life, the ability to speak prophetically to this new context yet maintaining an authentic renewal of the original charisms of all of our religious communities. Yet it must also always be lived in the context of the dream, the eternal horizon, sub specie aeternitatis. The contemporary writer Colm Toibin tells how “this space I walk in now has been my dream space, the mild sound of the wind on days like this has been my dream sound”. Let us pray in the Vow-Mass today that Sister Anouska‘s renewal of religious vows will lead many to that dream-space, to feel that mild wind at our backs, whichis that knowledge, love and service of God our Lord, that dream that God so longs to share with all of us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Fr.Dave’s a Jesuit member of our FSPlus Team. He works also in UniversityChaplaincy at Heythrop, in vocations promotion and in spiritual direction. He is a founder-memberof CYMFed and lives in a Jesuit community in Clapham, S.London