We are at the dawn of a new decade of the 21st century, with its horizon illuminating our world with expectancy and anticipation. Everyday we witness new discovery, inventions and realities of life, world and creatures. Science, technology, information, communication means, media and industry are growing at a pace that life has become easy, comfortable and handy, yet challenging with new dimensions and aspects. In such situation Religious life faces huge challenges to live to its call in glamorous, consumerist and hi-fi world. Within the ramifications of world a cultural and spiritual suffocation is felt in living out the prophetic and mystical dimension of religious dedicated life; which usually tends to be a life style of simplicity and austerity, prayer and devotion committed to service of the poor and the marginalized.
This means living in a world of interconnected and interdependence, where there is an aspiration of bringing up a holistic vision of one people, on one earth, in one world. Religious life at this cutting edge time must need to respond to the changing cultural patterns. Therefore it is the task of religious to empower and enable people, to grow, to change, to adopt and to find meaning amidst both the permanence and fallibility of earthly life. We as religious are called to be change agents and social catalysts. We need to be creative yet dynamic in bringing about change.
Our religious life is a way of living life in common, a consecrated living in service to God and his people filled with aspects of prayer, penance, renunciation and service. This life has two way mission – 1, personal interior life and 2, social community life.
Mystical dimension consist in the personal interior life. It is a way of being at tune with God, in mystic experience of prayer, devotion (bhakti) and sadhana. But faced with the world outside the walls of convent, our religious life seems meaningless /unfit. We become ‘poor in spirit’, thus we need to raise ourselves towards God to shed out emptiness/meaninglessness with God’s grace. A great deal of time and effort is needed to remove the vacuum we need to walk humbly with God. The over-spiritualized poor in spirit must be disposed with the virtue of humility towards God’s love and wisdom. Living out the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience is difficult if we are not connected to God. Thus we need desert experience in solitude. As mystics we must have the art to become fully aware of being - transformed, removed from unwanted elements and to go to our deeper self. This aspect is difficult, but it helps us to be more human, earthly and spiritual.
Prophetic dimension consists in living social community life. A life offered and dedicated in service to others. It is the other oriented life to see the life of other fruitful and flourishing. This call to be prophetic demands a constant listening and attentiveness to what the creative spirit of God is doing. It aims to give vibration of life, towards new aspirations of our age, responding to the cry of poor and marginalized for the significance growth of culture and spirituality.
Prophetic dimension is reading the signs of the times and it is challenging. It is a task to criticize, yet without de-energize people. It means to enable, empower and energize people to rise above their human and spiritual plight, to be sensitive to pain, hardships, suffering and injustice, to promote justice and compassion, to foster hope in the contradictions of life in pain and evil. Therefore as prophets we are called to bring about enrichment in people’s life to live it out in perseverance.
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