Death and new life in religious communities today

BLINKING MY EYES, I THOUGHT I SAW HIM in the pew. Eleven years had passed, but I could envision my family all seated together, my dad smiling faintly as my classmate and I professed our first vows as Redemptorist missionaries. A heartbeat later, I was carried five years forward to the memory of my family stationed in that same pew during my presbyteral ordination, my dad folding his hands reverently in prayer. He would pass away a little less than three years after that crisp January morning. So, too, would Father Richard Thibodeau, C.Ss.R., a friend and mentor who vested me in the chasuble during the liturgy. 

Snapping back to the present moment, I found myself in the presider’s chair of Holy Ghost Church in Houston, a sacred place of cherished memories. No longer a newly professed missionary or a fresh priest with hands still fragrant with chrism, I was presiding in my role as provincial superior. My emotionally charged duty that morning: to solemnly accompany the faithful in a Mass of farewell as we Redemptorists formally withdrew from this mission after 77 years.

When the time comes to conclude a mission or withdraw from a ministry site, we in religious life experience these moments like a death in the family. These times of departure and withdrawal make us wonder if we, too, are coming to an end in our history. Many in religious life today must contend with the closure of ministries alongside the deaths of dear sisters and brothers who were part of an unusually large generation in consecrated life. These losses can leave us feeling like we’re gasping for air. Meanwhile, leaders like myself tread water in a sea of studies, strategic plans, actuarial charts, and other administrative tasks bundled into the starkly named phenomenon of  “managing decline.” 

What new life can we create with God?

It is in these moments, however, that we remember how Jesus took Peter’s hand before he could sink into the turbulent sea. Jesus gently corrects Peter—and us—in words meant to empower, not belittle: “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (Matt. 14:31). Never forget it was Christ who first breathed the Spirit into our charism and purpose. Our Lord never lets us drown in the storm but extends his hand to rescue us from the waters, guiding us, as he did in our baptism, from death to new life. The demographics do not lie, and signs of smaller, leaner religious communities are unavoidable. But if we take Christ by the hand, allowing him to pull us out of the sea, we will discover that the church and the world still need consecrated religious women and men. We can face difficult facts and demographic realities, but not without hope. The Spirit’s grace empowers us to ask, “Okay, Lord, what new life will we create together?”

In my first six months as provincial superior, I supervised our withdrawal from three parishes. Confronting sadness, confusion, and, at times, anger from the faithful who felt abandoned, these departures were moments of mutual grief, shared deeply by my confreres who had accomplished great things in these missions and had loved the people they served.

However, the passing of our elder members gives the most human face to these times of demographic change. During my two years in leadership, I have accompanied 11 of my confreres to their place of final rest, including influential mentors and heroes whose time seemed cut short. While we believe that for God’s faithful, “life is changed, not ended,” the emotional wake of these deaths is stirred deeper by the realization that few remain to take up the banner of mission these sisters and brothers courageously held aloft.  

Taken together, grief for the double loss of missions and missionaries provokes anxiety about the future as well as a reckoning with the past. Was all our effort for naught? Will anyone remember what we achieved together in the Spirit? Was it some failing on my part, such as a lack of faithfulness, that brought us to this harsh demographic reality?

Confronting this dilemma and its spiritual and emotional toll, I have reached out to souls wiser than me. Reflecting on their counsel, I have come to accept that these anxieties flow naturally from mourning over the loss of religious life as it once was. Nonetheless, these are the wrong questions if we seek pathways of hope. The first step toward new horizons begins by asking the right ones.

Let us grieve prophetically

Several years ago, I was fortunate to catch an episode on Krista Tippett’s “On Being” radio program entitled “Living the Questions.” It engaged the question: “How can we be present to what’s happening in the world without giving in to despair and hopelessness?” How can we honestly accept the sobering facts of our challenges without permitting them to extinguish our spirit? The conversation broke open the truth that both the world we long for and the world that breaks our hearts are, in their manner, realities. Our call is to live in the liminal space between these realities, holding fast to the many ways the Spirit has revealed God’s love, compassion, and healing mercy. There is a bolder way of naming the world we long for: the reign of God. 

Our consecrated life proclaims the reign of God as the living and true reality, the shining light that the darkness can never overcome. Our struggles in religious life come from the continual tension between the reality of the Reign and the reality of despair fomented in a world insistent on using exclusion and violence to create prosperity only for some and power for even fewer. Religious life lived with integrity, audacity, and creativity goes against the rising currents of a world that revels in disinformation and manipulation designed to keep us isolated from one another and blind to the suffering of those on the peripheries. 

Simply stated, if we focus on demographic decline as the cause of our grief, we will struggle to discern clearly how the Spirit calls us to animate our charisms today. Our call is to grieve prophetically, insisting on the values and virtues of the reign of God against the social and cultural tides that push against the principles of sacrifice, generosity, and compassion. When we recognize this tension within our grief, we quickly discover that the living Christ weeps with us. By joining our anguish with Christ’s—taking up our crosses as he said—we can follow our Redeemer to the place of Resurrection, where consolation comes from the Spirit who “is making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Helping professions report shortages

Another shift in perspective comes from looking at the current social landscape. I propose that our aging membership and the small number of new entrants are not dynamics particular to religious life. Taking a more global view, we discover that almost every other helping profession suffers from critical shortages in vocations. For example, a recent report from the Institute of Medicine called for an 80 percent increase in the number of registered nurses to ensure basic patient safety. Schools of all levels warn about the lack of qualified teachers, and communities across the country report shortfalls in those training to become first responders. 

Studies report that the emotional stress of many caring and service professions, coupled with inadequate compensation, makes it hard to recruit young people to these critical roles. Feeling economically left behind by earlier generations, many young people have adopted a coldly pragmatic, transactional view of the social contract. 

This creates an internal conflict in many young people I encounter in my ministry. Eager to connect on a human level with others, young people still profess a desire to be a force for good in their communities. However, distrust for institutions, especially a church still bearing the scars of scandal, naturally limits interest in religious life as a way to serve. Meanwhile, loneliness is recognized as an emerging health crisis, especially among young men. Teenagers spend less time with friends than they did just 20 years ago. 

Other social realities among the young also cause concern. One is economic nihilism, the practice of spending money on pleasurable things as soon as it is earned and saving little for retirement because there is little hope for the future. A reluctance to make lifelong commitments is manifested not only in fewer entrants to religious life but in fewer couples getting married.

Consecrated life completely opposes the cynical view that downplays our responsibility to our neighbors. It rejects hopelessness about commitments and the future.  Through our vows, consecrated women and men embrace Jesus’ instructions when he teaches, “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give” (Matt. 10:8). Lived intentionally and prophetically, our common life taps into springs of living water that can overcome the forces that have left arid and dying the fields of caring professions and ministry. This is good news and a firm reason for hope as we discern how to live our religious life in ways that attract young people to share in the mission. 

How, then, might we embrace this hope we have in the Spirit while helping young people discern a vocation to consecrated life? I offer four themes for reflection.

1.  Emphasize faithfulness

First, we do well to remember that although our charisms bear fruit through works of hospitality, charity, mercy, and prayer, our consecrated life is not rooted in the tasks we accomplish but by our faithfulness to the spirit underlying our mission. In The Law of Christ, the eminent Redemptorist moralist Father Bernard Häring noted, “The consecrated life is not primarily about renouncing the world, but about embracing Christ’s love in such a way that one becomes a living witness to His presence.” He concludes, “Love, not mere duty, is the heart of every vocation.”

Emphasizing love as the foundation of a call to religious life, vocation ministers cultivate young people’s innate generosity and hopefulness. Even when vocation ministers give substantial time to a prospective new member who later stops responding to messages or chooses another path, the Emmaus walk of accompaniment offers young seekers moments of vivifying grace. By introducing prospective new sisters and brothers to the beauty of God’s reign—especially its foundation in God-who-is-community—vocation ministers apply a healing balm to young souls wounded by dehumanizing algorithms, misinformation, and trendy pessimism. Even when a pool of seekers dwindles to just a few candidates, vocation ministry proves invaluable in advancing the broader goals of evangelization.  

Furthermore, if we see faithfulness as our primary goal, we find a treasury of hope because we discover that the vitality of our charism does not depend on the number of our members or their youthfulness. Regardless of age or capacity for activity, all professed members can give witness to the heart of our mission in Christ. 

2.  Connect grief to gratitude

As our senior sisters and brothers confront the loss of religious life as they knew it, another way forward is to connect our grief to gratitude. Paul reminds us, “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess. 5:16-18). An empowering way to demonstrate gratitude to our senior sisters and brothers is to invite them to share with us and with discerners their experience of what the Spirit has achieved through faithful living of the charism.

In my conversations with our senior missionaries, I learned that countless adventurous and innovative ministries went unnoticed in the days when there were significantly more members. Thankfully, there is still time to thank and celebrate our members’ legacies. I hope to distill these experiences into biographies or case studies that will open the eyes of younger confreres and lay partners to mission opportunities they might not yet see.

Connecting our grief to gratitude confidently affirms our belief that the Spirit still has much to accomplish through our way of life. By gathering young people to listen to the stories of our senior brothers and sisters, vocation ministers often serve an essential role in building these bridges between legacy and possibility. 

Father Henri Nouwen, in Turn My Mourning into Dancing: Finding Hope in Hard Times, counsels “holding lightly” to dreams and fears about the unknown. He writes, “You can be open to receive every day as a new day and to live your life as a unique expression of God’s love for humankind.” Taking each day as a gift and accepting that our share in the mission, however small, is a cause for joy may seem simple, if not naïve. However, by doing this, all members share in witnessing the true reality of the reign of God and, in so doing, can overcome the dissonance of the false and cynical reality that hardens the hearts of young people today. 

When speaking with vocation prospects, we cannot hide the truth that they will bear responsibility for caring for one generation of members while discerning new ways of living the charism. The invitation to us is to discover how to harness the power of gratitude for the accomplishments of the past as a springboard for new ideas for the future. 

However, rather than focusing on the structures and brick-and-mortar institutions that thrived in a different era, we give thanks for the lives touched, the souls healed, and the relationships restored. We direct our attention less on the things we are losing, and more on the treasury of wisdom that grows in value over time. Rather than recruiting replacements for existing commitments, the vocation minister’s fundamental mission is to invite young people to join their story to a living legacy of lives transformed by God’s mercy, compassion, and grace. 

3. Advocate for religious life in general

The next theme for reflection follows naturally from the first, as a personal commitment to our charism makes us advocates for consecrated life in general. Some consecrated religious have made the difficult decision not to pursue new vocations in their congregation or local units. These religious families of sisters or brothers testify to the monumental role that consecrated life has served in the past while making a compelling case for its importance for the future of the church. As we meet young people in a variety of contexts, we are called to give witness to the graces and joys that flow from the esprit de corps cultivated around a common charism and mission. Put simply, we are co-responsible not only for the vitality of our charism but for consecrated life in general. Even if someone is not called to our institute, we can implant the seed of apostolic life in common, trusting that “God will give the growth.” 

I am reminded of the witness of our Redemptoristine Nuns in Missouri, who, when the time came to close their monastery, did not see the moment as an end. Rather, they looked to the convents they helped establish in Thailand and the Philippines as a continuation of their story. Institutes, units, and orders that choose not to accept new members still live on in the legacy of lives changed; they can still bear witness to what the Spirit accomplishes through apostolic or contemplative life in common. In this way, these communities can continue to promote vocations to consecrated life.    

4. Nurture communal life

Finally, we will realize the hopeful potential of our future only if we boldly and frankly address the obstacles to zeal for our charism. Here, we confront an essential question regarding the health of our community life and apostolate: what sort of life are we inviting young people to share with us? Implicit in this question is the call to create the necessary space for honest reflection, interiorly and within our communities, on what is getting in the way of healthy common life and collaboration for ministry. As Dorothy Day wisely observed in Loaves and Fishes, this is fundamentally a question about “how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution that has to start with each one of us.” 

This can feel daunting. Too often, we diminish the importance of the communal aspects of our religious life, minimizing our common acts such as prayer and recreation. Yet, I am learning that these fundamental aspects of religious life are precisely what young people long for when they first show interest in our communities. It is never too late to make a personal recommitment to the communal life and charism that first inspired us to dream of serving God and neighbor.  

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I am hopeful for the future of my congregation and for religious life in general. Why? Because in an era that promotes fear of the other, consecrated life boldly proclaims the fundamental goodness of brothers and sisters who “dwell together in unity” (Psalm 133:1). Consecrated life may be foolish and naïve against a cynical and transactional view of our responsibility to our neighbors. But Saint Paul proclaims to every age that “the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God” (1 Cor. 3:19). It is natural and right to be saddened by the loss of brothers and sisters we love and the ministries for which we sacrificed. But this is neither a failure nor a judgment against the viability of religious life. Consecrated life, lived faithfully and intentionally, is wildly out of fashion in an era where trends point toward isolation and hopelessness. The Holy Spirit called us together to share the Lord’s dream of redemption and liberation in our time and place and believes that we can accomplish great things. Do we have as much hope in ourselves as the Spirit has in us? 

Father Kevin Zubel, C.Ss.R. is provincial superior of the Redemptorist Denver Province. Following his ordination in 2017, he served briefly in New Orleans before engaging in Hispanic outreach ministry in the Mississippi Delta Region and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.