The future of religious life depends on different congregations, with different charisms, working together like a symphony, the president of the United States’ largest leadership conference for Catholic sisters has told the group’s members. Source: Global Sisters Report.
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents about two-thirds of the nation’s nearly 35,000 sisters, held its annual assembly in Orlando, Florida, last week.
More than 1300 congregational leaders and their guests attended.
Outgoing LCWR president Sr Vicky Larson, of the Presentation Sisters of South Dakota, told attendees in her August 12 presidential address that the assembly’s theme, “Many charisms, one spirit, one call” can best be seen through a musical lens. Good music requires the group to listen to each other.
“The Holy Spirit is asking us to lead by listening,” Sr Larson said. “Not indifferent listening. Not surface listening. But deep, contemplative, Spirit-led synodal listening – the kind that changes us.”
A song with only one note on one instrument would be “flat, lifeless and unrecognisable,” she said.
“Yet when we weave many different notes together – when melody meets harmony, something far more beautiful emerges,” Sr Larson said. “Something layered, textured and alive.”
The suffering world needs the melody and harmony of religious life, she said.
“Just as a choir or symphony brings together many diverse voices or instruments, each taking its turn to carry the melody – we need all charisms in religious life, as well as all people in all vocations around the world, to come together to create the integrated music of humanity.”
Even dissonance – when notes seem to clash against each other – is part of music, forcing patience as your ear waits for resolution, she said. Dissonance can be a problem or it can be part of the story the music tells.
“We live in a world filled with dissonance between people, political parties and nations,” Sr Larson said. “I believe that we can help the world learn to either create space to hold dissonance or else help the world move through it toward resolution.”
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LCWR presidential address: Religious life must find harmony amid change (By Dan Stockman, Global Sisters Report)
