EVANGELIC COUNSELS
The evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty, and obedience are the greatest expression of our love for Him and His Kingdom, to Whom we vowed, generously and without reservation, that capacity to love, that need to possess and that freedom to regulate one's own life (ET 7). Only the Lord is worthy of such a radical surrender.
VOWS
Chastity
We are chaste because Jesus was chaste.It is only in Him and because of Him that our consecrated chastity has meaning and value. Chastity means to love more: more love for God and more for our neighbor. "Let him who loves God love his brother also" (1 Jn 4:21).
Through consecrated chastity, we unite ourselves more perfectly to God. Transcending what is merely sensible and rational, chastity fulfill and lead us to a mystical and spousal union with the Lord. “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” (Song 6:3).
Obedience
In the desire to conform ourselves totally to Jesus, we assume for ourselves the same obedience. Like His, our obedience must also be from love: "... I love the Father and so I do what he has commanded me" (Jn 14:31) That is why the profession of the vow of obedience, far from being a heavy burden to carry, must be a free surrender of love of our will to the will of Christ: “He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”(Jn 14:21).
Poverty
God wanted to save humanity through poverty. Poverty is a choice of God's eternity. If God wanted to save the world through this way, how could we, his followers, choose differently?
We renounce not only great things, but also small things. We give up not only the futile things, but also those that we consider useful for ourselves or the community. Resembling the poor and Crucified Christ, we are exhausted even from the desire to possess and accumulate.
Availability
It is also called the Marian Vow for having in Mary the Handmaid of the Lord, its reason for being. This vow is a result of our Consecrated Obedience, and only in it we find its ultimate meaning. Through this vow, we want to imitate Mary in that attitude of total availability she had towards Elizabeth: “Mary set out at that time and went as quickly as she could into the hill country to a town in Judah” (Lk 1:39). It must put us in an abyssal and urgent way at the service of people, preferably of the poorest.
