Followup to "Radical Secularity?"

[[Dear Sister, yes, that was the piece I read that raised my questions. Thank you. The paragraph you added in the beginning was very helpful in clarifying things for me. But I still wonder about calling this a secular vocation. Aren't CV's required to say the Divine Office? Isn't this a requirement of religious life? How can it also be a requirement of a wholehearted or "thoroughgoing" secular vocation? It seems to me that there is some confusion built right into the vocation itself.]]

There are other posts here from awhile back explaining the secularity of the vocation in more detail so I would sugest you look at those. Check the label "sacred secularity" and that should get you to those. Regarding the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours, yes religious often say it (unless one is ordained this is a matter of proper law rather than canon law --- as canon 663.3 explains). However, the Divine Office is highly recommended for any Christian and some parishes do celebrate Morning and Evening Prayer  (Lauds and Vespers) regularly. Also, some parishes without priests use MP (Morning Prayer) as the framework for a Communion service. Additionally, some who cannot celebrate Office everyday add a sung Vespers to their Sunday services, for instance. While these practices have never caught on with the whole Church, the Divine Office IS the official prayer of the entire Church and is not set apart for Religious alone.

For this reason I would say that this is another of those areas that Consecrated Virgins are called on to model a sacred secularity for all those called to Christian Discipleship. It would be great if CV's could help make Office a regular part of the prayer life in their own parishes or dioceses, for instance. It could be done effectively with just a handful of people (just as it often is in small religious houses) and a simple format. CV's could, conceivably lead the way in finding resources, teaching the Office, etc. (Meanwhile, teaching just Night prayer (Compline) itself, which can easily be prayed alone and needs fewer resources would be a wonderful service to many who would love this particular hour to complete their day.)  I would bet that some Religious who tend to pray Office alone because their ministries demand they live apart from a convent setting, for instance, would join in regularly as well. It would be a great piece of breaking down the artificial boundaries between religious and secular (because prayer is NOT one of the legitimate boundaries) and help transform the life of the parish as well.

Be clear in all of this that secular is not synonymous with profane or irreligious. Every Christian, Secular, Religious, or Eremitical is called on to be a person of prayer. The graces attached to the vocation of consecrated virginity lived in the world make these CV's apostles of a sacred secularity and may in fact be calling them to assist the laity to discover that their own vocations are calls to an exhaustive holiness and prayerfulness. If CV's are truly called to commitments in the things of the Spirit and the things of the world a piece of this will certainly be calling all their brothers and sisters to the life of prayer of the Church in a way which breaks down unnecessary (and often all-too-worldly) boundaries and divisions.