Sister Ida recognized her call to consecrated religious life when she was 17 years old (pictured), and joyfully gave her life to our Lord, teaching and sharing with us up to the day she died.
God works in wonderful and mysterious ways. When did God call me? God calls each one of us in person. In my own vocation it was a promise of “I love you, please love Me.” When the love of God dawned on me at the end of my retreat, I totally cut my ties to the world. I knew that this call and my answer to it are not temporary, it is forever. This is what consecration is all about. We realize what it really means that He loved us first with such a fantastic love and the only thing you can do is answer “Yes,” truly giving yourself to God! This is a love relationship. There is no lukewarmness, no compromise, it is total, it is a decision to live totally for God.
When I said, “I am giving you my life, Lord,” this was actually loving God back with His own Spirit. It was the sense of a definite “chosenness” by the will of the Holy Spirit, in the Father and the Son. Unless this special friendship was offered and given to me by the Holy Spirit, I would not be here. This is definitely a gift which comes from love.
God’s presence is the most important reality of our religious life. Our consecration means being a bridge, a means of union between Jesus and His people. We are called to the mission of the Son – to help others to know God. This is what we teach – that personal tremendous love of God for each person. We are the living example of that value; we put our lives where our mouth is.
We are showing the world what it is like to love God with an undivided love. We make God’s friendship real for others. Instead of anything being an obstacle or a block between ourselves and God, everything leads to Him…nothing and no one, not even the delightful creation of God, will be an obstacle between ourselves and God. In us they see people who really base our lives on this friendship and union with God and the value of eternal life.
God called me to be a religious woman who lives by faith, who loves God undividedly, and who gives her total self to God and to doing His will. He called me to this Community that is primarily a Community in love with God.