Consecrate my will to His Will in a communion of Love. A sacrifice of my entire self and continual renunciation of me freely. I belong completely to God not myself. Putting one’s life in God’s hands in order to cooperate with Christ and in Christ for the salvation of our brothers. The will of God in regard to man is unescapably constant, it always seeks his salvation; and to be united to the will of God is to be united to his “saving purpose” and enter into the divine plan for the salvation of the world. The offering of self in perfect obedience associates the religious with the work and redemptive immolation of Christ.
In order to establish their lives in a continuous communion of love with God’s will and hence with God himself, some of the faithful freely and spontaneously bind, themselves to him by consecrating their wills to him.
Their love is not satisfied with adhering to the divine will only when there is an obligation to do so, such as to observe the commandments or to accept circumstances dictated by providence; they desire to put their entire life at God’s disposal for whatever he wishes.
Here we see the vow of obedience, through which “religious. . . offer God a total dedication of their own wills as a sacrifice of themselves”. In practice this demands continual renunciation of one’s own will, not indeed through constraint but willed and freely offered to God “as a sacrifice of oneself,” in view of an infinitely higher good: unceasing communion with God.
Through his will, man controls himself and is capable of running his own life and making use of his freedom; therefore when he gives his whole will to God in an act of love, he is accomplishing a complete sacrifice of self. He no longer belongs to himself, he belongs to God, and he is no longer free to do as he chooses because he has chosen God as the one and only sovereign Lord of his life.
The vow of obedience is a perfect holocaust, in which the sacrificial offering of the whole man is carried out.
The will of God in regard to man is unescapably constant, it always seeks his salvation; God “desires all men to be saved” (1 Tim 2:4). It follows that to be united to the will of God is to be united to his “saving purpose” as the Council puts it (PC 14); it is to enter into the divine plan for the salvation of the world.
Through obedience the religious offers God the sacrifice of himself, following the pattern of Jesus Christ who came to “do the Father’s will” (ib.) and gave his own life for the salvation of men. The offering of self in perfect obedience associates the religious with the work and redemptive immolation of Christ.
The sacrifice of self through obedience has for its purpose putting one’s life in God’s hands in order to cooperate with Christ and in Christ for the salvation of our brothers. Each one achieves this end in proportion to the individual level of his union with the will of God.
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