Vows or Virtue?

The VOWS –

as means to VIRTUE

Vows are only means to becoming virtuous. Virtue is the end of the religious who vows to be chaste, poor and obedient. As means, the vows serve the acquisition of virtues and thus are less important with regards to virtues. Unfortunately some mix them up sometimes – they confuse the vows as the end.

Jesus before fought with the Pharisees because they did something like this. The Pharisees also confused the means for the end. They thought and taught that the laws were more important. At all cost they were to be followed even if it means avoiding what is good to one’s neighbor. If one’s kid falls into the well, you cannot save him if it is the Sabbath. For the same reason you cannot make the paralytic walk, you cannot feed the hungry, you cannot heal the shriveled hand of a man or end a woman’s long suffering from hemorrhage if it is the Sabbath. The man was made for Sabbath. In this case the end was inferior to the means.

Don Bosco also was against this type of confusion. He said punishments are only means to correct the offender. If thus the boy repents even before he is punished, then the punishment is rendered useless. He said this because some superiors might wish to punish some boys for wrong motives of revenge because these boys spurned their authority.

Jesus and Don Bosco think in the same way because they both have the good of the person in mind – not anything else. The confusion only enters when other things are set as priorities over the person.

This is the reason why this confusion continues on in the post-modern world and why unfortunately (as I‘ve already insinuated) it has crept even into our religious circles.

Some religious have been very critical of confreres who break the rules in the guise of upholding the rules. They reached the point of being cruel to their brothers for the sake of the constitutions. Isn’t it strange because the same rules they uphold are supposed to safeguard love and mutual forgiveness that is to exist in community life?

When we reach heaven, we won’t anymore receive the Holy Eucharist because Jesus will be there in person. What more have we need of pictures when the one in the picture is already right in front of us? What more do we need vows when one is already virtuous? But that happens only when we are already in heaven. In the meantime let us keep our vows – but in their proper place only as means to becoming holy.