The gasman gets it

Someone recently came to do some work on our boiler. When I told him I'm a religious sister - you know, a nun - his face beamed, astonishment mingled with curiosity, and a strange delight. A nun? Wow! I've never worked for a nun before!

So, what's it like, being a nun? I assured him it was actually really good. His next questions were ones I've been asked many times before: how long had I been a nun (twenty-five years? Wow!) and why I became one. So I told him about falling in love with God, and becoming increasingly fascinated by Jesus; about feeling called to love more deeply and more widely, and the conviction that this was where God was calling me to live this. 

He nodded, and resumed screwing the cover back onto the boiler. I think we need more of this right now. Our world has become very weird, and... not so nice. 

This time I was the one thinking wow! He gets it! He hadn't rushed to tell me about any religious affiliation or upbringing, so I'm assuming he doesn't have one. But, even without the background and the vocabulary, he understood, at some unnamed, instinctive level, what religious life is about; what I am about. He got it.

Candlemas, which we celebrate today, is also the World Day for Consecrated Life. And I thought about my chat with the gasman today, when I saw this tweet from Pope Francis: You are in the world to witness that it is beloved and blessed by God. You are consecrated for the world, which awaits your testimony to achieve a freedom that gives joy, nourishes hope, and prepares the future.

Today is an invitation for religious to celebrate and give thanks for the joy and the privilege of our call; a call to give our lives for, and in response to, Love. But it's also an invitation to prayer - by us, and for us. And the prayer I'd ask of you, for me and my sisters and friends in religious life is that, individually and collectively, we live our vocation as fully, deeply and joyfully as possible, with hope and inner freedom. Because our world - weird and not so nice, beloved and blessed by God - needs more of this - more of us - right now.