Nov 19., 2022 / Features, General, Homilies, Soul Food, Vocation
“Remain in my love.”
Homily delivered by Fr. Adrian Danker, SJ
on Sr. Xiaowei Li, rc’s Perpetual Profession of Vows
on September 10, 2022
These are words parents might say when children depart for overseas studies. They might be what lovers say when committing to each other for life. You and I know these are really Jesus’s words to you and me as lover or parent, as friend and saviour. Today, they are especially meant for you, Sr Xiaowei.
Jesus expresses his love in deeds, not words. He himself is Love alive and Love in action. This is why He is God – because God is love.
For you, Sr Xiaowei, Jesus expresses His love to you in the most intimate of ways. It began when he gathered you to Himself to discern and live the vowed life. Today he gives you a deeper love to profess your perpetual vows.
Indeed, your years of religious formation and life have been a time of cleansing you to be his completely. He has given you a new heart and a new spirit as a religious of the Cenacle. He has removed that heart of stone and led you to the new land of religious life. He has given himself to you who he calls, “My beloved.” In turn, you learned to love Him more intimately as “my God.” We also hear these truths from the Prophet Ezekiel who reminds us that God has always loved you as his own since ancient times.
At the heart of all this is God’s desire for relationship with everyone. This is also God’s desire for you. So, root yourself in His love and enflesh your trust in God. Entrust yourself completely to him as you make your perpetual vows. With these vows, you express to all of us your total self-giving to God in deeds, not words. Yes, every word of the vow you will make come together as your sacrifice of love to God. Your vows then are really your self-sacrificing deed of love; it speaks louder than all the words said. Indeed, your ‘yes’ to remaining in Jesus’s love with perpetual vows are total, faithful and free. They are made in the hope of becoming Christ to all.
Your ’yes,’ Sr Xiaowei is that very selfless sacrifice of love Jesus commands us to live – to lay down our lives for your friends that include you RC sisters, your family and friends and for the many God will place into your care.
This is why we gather here. We want to tell you that we will remain with you in friendship. We do to support you as you deepen your ‘yes’ to live fully this love you and God share all the days of your life as a fully professed religious of the Sisters of the Cenacle.
Today we celebrate with you. However, we recognize a dying to ourselves we must make. To a lesser degree, we too are laying down our lives for you. We know we must die to our wants of hoping you will have more time for us, of you staying with us in Singapore when God may call you on mission elsewhere, of our relationship as family and friends because now God has chosen you as his beloved.
Yet, we rejoice as you surrender yourself to Jesus with your vows to follow Him wherever He leads you. We rejoice because we know this is possible because you and Sisters have co- discern over many years of your formation, growing and maturing in your vocation to be ready for today. Now, your Sisters affirm you are ready. Now, we witness your readiness for God and his mission. Today, all of us want to assure you that we will pray and support you as you readily and forever surrender yourself to the Lord.
These vows are not an end in themselves. A member of Courage, the ministry I work for, wrote that “love is a process, not an outcome.” So, it is too with these vows. They invite you and God to continue sharing love. This is why the Lord pours his Spirit into you. This Spirit that will continue to convert you more and more into the image of Jesus for the world. We pray we will witness how you will become more Christ-like over time, and others seeing Christ in you, will sing out loud, “See how Sr Xiaowei lives; she is indeed a Christian!”
Each time this happens, we will know, as many will too, the joyful truth we sang in today’s Psalm – God indeed “sends forth his Spirit and the face of the earth is renewed.” This is the mission ahead for you. You can only give what you have. So, share God’s Spirit with all.
Sr Xiaowei, today you have every right to delight and sing that song of joy, “O bless the Lord my soul, bless your name for gentle is the love of the Lord.” Make this your daily song of praise – praising God for all that has been, for all that is happening today but more so for all that will come to be. We will sing this praise too. Indeed, it is right and good that delight and praise are the feelings we have today.
They must be for as St Therese Couderc, your Foundress, once wrote, “The love of God desires to delight in all of us always.” And God’s delights in you, Sr Xiaowei, because today you enflesh what Mother Therese also wrote: “that surrendering oneself to God is more than to devote oneself, more than to give oneself, it is even something more than to abandon oneself to God. In a word, to surrender oneself is to die to everything and to self, to be no longer concern with self, except to keep continually turned toward God.”
Thank you for your “yes” to Jesus, Sr Xiaowei. You witness to us how the love of God leads us ultimately to love God one and to love all in God. Your witness calls us to go forth and do likewise in our lives and the world. Thanks be to God, indeed!
Shall we?
Preached by Fr Adrian Danker, SJ
At St Patrick’s School Chapel, Singapore 10 September 2022
