YOUCAT Question n. 145 - Part III. Why does Jesus want there to be Christians who live their whole lives in poverty, unmarried chastity, and obedience?
(Youcat
answer - repeated) God is love. He longs for our love also. One form of loving
surrender to God is to live as Jesus did — poor, chaste, and obedient. Someone
who lives in this way has head, heart, and hands free for God and neighbor.
A deepening through CCC
(CCC 918)
From the very beginning of the Church there were men and women who set out to
follow Christ with greater liberty, and to imitate him more closely, by
practicing the evangelical counsels. They led lives dedicated to God, each in
his own way. Many of them, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, became
hermits or founded religious families. These the Church, by virtue of her
authority, gladly accepted and approved (PC 1). (CCC 919) Bishops will always
strive to discern new gifts of consecrated life granted to the Church by the
Holy Spirit; the approval of new forms of consecrated life is reserved to the
Apostolic See (Cf. CIC, can. 605).
Reflecting and meditating
(Youcat comment)
In every age individual
Christians let themselves be completely taken over by Jesus, so that “for the
sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 19:12) they give everything away for God—even such wonderful gifts as
their own property, self-determination, and married love. This life according
to the evangelical counsels in poverty, chastity, and obedience shows all
Christians that the world is not everything. Only an encounter with the divine
Bridegroom “face to face” will ultimately make a person happy.
(CCC Comment)
(CCC 920)
Without always professing the three evangelical counsels publicly, hermits
"devote their life to the praise of God and salvation of the world through
a stricter separation from the world, the silence of solitude and assiduous
prayer and penance" (CIC, can. 603 § 1).
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