Consecrated Virgins: a new religious life

The Synod on Consecrated Life, which opens in Rome this week, will serve to emphasise the many different types of vocations that make up the Consecrated Life. Sr Elizabeth Rees here examines the lifestyle of the Consecrated Virgins.
THE NEW CODE OF Canon Law is now ten years old. One of its more innovative canons is no. 604, which restores the most ancient religious order in the Church "The Order of Virgins".
This canon describes autonomous religious life, a single vowed lifestyle which Christians have followed from the earliest centuries. The new code has officially inserted the Order of Virgins into the consecrated life of the Church, and so it has brought a new, yet very ancient, element into religious life for women. Its inclusion in the new code should encourage women who are searching for new forms of religious life.
A consecrated virgin lives an independent life within the Christian community, after being consecrated to God by her bishop in a public ceremony. Canon 604 concludes: "Virgins can be associated together to fulfil their pledge more faithfully, and to assist each other to serve the Church in a way that befits their state".
Each member of the Order of Virgins evolves her own lifestyle, with her bishop's approval. She has no set pattern of life and no community, although consecrated women in Britain who wish to do so dieet three times a year for mutual support and encouragement.
There are now over 100 consecrated women in Britain and similar numbers in other countries who follow this flexible yet challenging form of religious life. One of Britain's consecrated women, Elizabeth Rendall, describes her experience of autonomous religious life: "Our spiritual life is one of radical openness to the Spirit who is 'making all things new'.
"What characterises our spirituality is this acceptance of our personal uniqueness, our call to work with the "grain" of the Spirit, not tied or confined by (literally) man made laws. I find myself being compelled to live this new paradigm, this new way".
Christian virgins first emerged as a small, young minority among the widows.
St Ignatius, bishop of Antioch (d.107) greets "those virgins whom you call widows" in Smyrna, and St Justin ( d.165) writes of many celibate men and women from different classes of society who probably lived with their families. After 200 AD, consecrated virgins are described in Asia Minor, Egypt and North Africa.
In the fourth century, monasteries arose, and many virgins renounced their independence to join small or large groups. Virgins thus opened the way for nuns and other religious who live in communities consecrated to God.
In the following centuries communities continued to increase, while virgins living on their own in the local church began to decline, chiefly because life as a single woman was becoming increasingly dangerous in a violent society.
In the early 20th century some French and Swiss bishops again began to consecrate women, but when in 1927 other bishops asked the Congregation for Religious in Rome if they could do the same, Rome refused. However, Vatican II convened in 1962 and the bishops began to look to the early Church once more for models of ministry.
The rite was restored, as it was used in the early Church, in 1970. This was a considerable shift in the Church's understanding of religious life.
From now on, religious women could follow a life of solitary prayer from within their local community, responsible only to their bishop.
They could follow their call
ing outside the current structures of constitution, congregation, motherhouse, provincial and chapter.
The customs and traditions accumulated by religious life over the last thousand years could be replaced by a return to evangelical life in its simplest essentials: celibacy and a commitment to follow Jesus.
The machinery of government and administration evolved by religious congregations forms no part of such a simple lifestyle.
For consecrated virgins living in the world, religious formation is reduced to a fundamental simplicity.
The candidate is formed through living a life of service and solitary prayer over a period of time, until the bishop or his vicar for religious judges she is ready to consecrate herself.
To sustain such a life she relies on the basic nourishment of all Christian living: the prayerful study of scripture. She may also sustain her faith by sharing with other consecrated women.
The work of consecrated women today varies, although each one's task is primarily to be a person of prayer.
Elizabeth Rendall continues to describe the present and future ministry of Virgins living in the world: "Consecration sets us free to engage in ministry more totally. The form of ministry will be unique for each one and, at present, be limited because we are women."
However, some question consecrated virginity as a valid religious lifestyle because its members do not live in a community.
Vatican H acknowledged "various forms of religious life lived in solitude or in community". This represents a shift in emphasis from regarding monastic life as the basis of religious life to an earlier model. While preaching in Vicenza, in 1991 Pope John Paul II spoke of consecrated virgins living in the world in terms of their prophetic role: "They represent a sign of the better world towards which we are journeying".