Formation for Consecrated Virginity Lived in the World: Phase I

By Joyce Stolberg

Consecrated Virginity lived individually in the world (not in a convent) is both the most ancient and [revived since Vatican II] the fastest growing vocation for women in the Catholic Church today. Yet, proper formation for this consecration has often been inadequate and fragmented. In Formation for Consecrated Virginity, Joyce Stolberg endeavor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tara J. Stone
• Release date: Feb 14, 2023
• ISBN: 9781734914283

Book preview

AUTHOR'S NOTES

Feedback from multiple dioceses in the world pleads for a more comprehensive process of formation for candidates for consecration to a life of virginity lived in the world. (Consecrated virgins living in the contemplative cloister receive their own appropriate immersive preparation.) This book offers the first of three phases of a comprehensive process of preparation for this holy vocation. The series intends to present major aspects of formation, by topic, designed to support a flexible preparation process, including a year following Consecration, for discerners, aspirants, and candidates for the consecration to a life of virginity lived in the world, and for their mentors and formators.

This book is part of a larger process that is being developed by Joyce Stolberg and Therese Ivers, JCL in consultation with a group of virgins who are members of the developing Society of American Virgins. The comprehensive formation process is intended to be divided into modules, which will be placed on the Society of American Virgins’ website.

In order not to exhaust resources when the number of aspirants and candidates is small, it is also recommended that dioceses consider the possibility of inserting candidates for consecration into their ongoing diocesan deacon preparation programs, including classes in dogmatic, liturgical, and moral theology and in scripture classes; these are available in most dioceses.

This book is dedicated, with joyful and fervent prayers, to all those who are earnestly discerning the call to become spouses of Christ, consecrated virgins living in the world.

© by Joyce Stolberg 2020

411 Lakewood Circle Apt. C 1007

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Acknowledgments and Permissions:

Nihil obstat: Rev. Msgr. Ricardo Coronado Arrascue, JCD

Censor librorum

Imprimatur: Most Rev. Michael J. Sheridan, STD

Bishop of Colorado Springs

Permission to use matter presented by Cardinal Burke in Preface and Introduction: Granted by Cardinal Burke

Material from God Calls You by Name a Journey through the Rite of Christian Initiation Catholic Sacramental Preparation Process, by Joyce Stolberg: permitted and inserted by copyright owner and author, Joyce Stolberg.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I am Joyce Stolberg, the author of Formation for Consecrated Virginity Lived in the World: Phase 1. I received the consecration to a life of virginity at the age of 66, at the hands of Bishop Michael J. Sheridan in the Diocese of Colorado Springs on October 30, 2011, after having traveled a long circuitous route toward the realization of my holy vocation.

In 1963, I had entered religious life; since mine was contemplative in nature, I did not receive a formal college education. Those decades during and immediately following Vatican Council II were not robustly supportive of religious life in America. I left in the fall of 1974 with a need to reestablish my life, design a plan for post-high school education, and earn a living — all at once. My biggest trial, however, was spiritual. I still felt strongly called to be a bride of Christ and, on sincere discernment, felt no inclination or call to the married state. All through the flurry of work and study, in the background of my heart, I seriously wondered: had God rejected me as he rejected Saul from being king over Israel (1 Samuel: 15:26) or — are the gift and the call of God irrevocable (Romans 11:29)? Not even the study of pastoral theology assuaged my painful (nearly) 40-year journey through that dark desert.

Yet, even the desert night is afire with starlight. I found immense joy in carrying the light of Christ to others through teaching in the RCIA process, even as I worked full time in a hospital laboratory. Instructing in RCIA eventually led me to write my first book, God Calls You by Name, a Journey through the Right of Christian Initiation Catholic Sacramental Preparation Process, to publish it, and to achieve its placement on the Conformity List of Catechetical Materials.

Then morning dawned! I learned about the process of becoming a consecrated virgin living in the world, a consecration in which a virgin truly becomes a bride of Christ. God answered me: For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with great tenderness I will take you back (Isaiah 54:7). Yes, 38 years is a brief moment in God’s eternal eyes. I discovered my true vocation! I am meant to be a bride of Christ, forever, in a way that was not permitted in 1963.

ABOUT THE DRAWINGS IN THIS BOOK

I drew the pencil and ink sketches in this book. Many of them were actually crafted in the mid-1970s when I was undergoing crushing personal trials and life transitions. When I couldn’t pray, drawing the plants I saw in the woods actually became my prayer. Nature’s struggle between life and death, growth and decay, fruitfulness and barrenness, mirrored my own struggle between faith and futility. Drawing these metaphors of contrast gave me the strength to hope that God would bring to the stump of my tortured life a new vigor that will flour and bear fruit in due time. I am happy to share these drawings — and my struggles — with you.

Joyce Stolberg

PREFACE: WHAT IS CONSECRATION TO A LIFE OF VIRGINITY?

THE CONSTITUTION ON The Sacred Liturgy (Sacrosanctum Concilium) December 4, 1963, simply decrees: The rite of the consecration of virgins contained in the Roman pontifical is to be revised (#80). Pope Paul VI fulfilled this mandate, restoring the Rite and the vocation in 1970.

Our late Holy Father, Pope St. John Paul II, in his Post Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, Vita Consecrata (1996), declared:

It is a source of joy and hope to witness in our time a new flowering of the ancient Order of Virgins, known in Christian communities ever since apostolic times. Consecrated by the diocesan Bishop, these women acquire a particular link with the Church, which they are committed to serve while remaining in the world. Either alone or in association with others, they constitute a special eschatological image of the Heavenly Bride and of the life to come, when the Church will at last fully live her love for Christ the Bridegroom (Vita Consecrata #7).

Those who have dedicated their lives to Christ cannot fail to live in the hope of meeting him, in order to be with him forever. Hence the ardent expectation and desire to be plunged into the Fire of Love which burns in them and which is none other than the Holy Spirit, an expectation and desire sustained by the gifts which the Lord freely bestows on those who yearn for the things that are above (cf. Col 3:1). Immersed in the things of the Lord, the consecrated person remembers that here we have no lasting city (Heb. 13:14), for our commonwealth is in heaven (Phil 3:20). The one thing necessary is to seek God’s Kingdom and his righteousness (Mt 6:33), with unceasing prayer for the Lord’s coming. (Vita Consecrata #26)

A woman who is resolved to maintain the state of virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of God, inspired by the sacred virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is consecrated through a blessing, which is an ancient sacramental (not a sacrament), to a life of virginity by her local bishop. She is mystically married to Jesus Christ and is dedicated to the service of the Church. She is constituted a sacred person. While human marriage is the sign of Christ’s love for the Church, the consecrated virgin leaps joyfully beyond the sign to embrace the reality of Christ’s nuptial love, and in the process, she becomes the sign of the eschatological reality, a witness to the life of heaven in the midst of the world. This is a consecration conferred on her, not a vow made by her: therefore, consecration to a life of virginity for the sake of the Kingdom of God is irrevocable.

There is no dispensation from this consecration. (Annulment is a separate issue, akin to the annulment of a marriage.) Once one has become the spouse of the King of the universe, any attempt to enter a human marriage is adultery. St. Basil of Caesarea declared concerning an unfaithful virgin, The heavens are astonished at this, and the earth is horribly afraid, says the Lord, for the virgin has committed two evils; she has forsaken Me, the true and holy Bridegroom of holy souls, and has betaken herself to an impious and lawless destroyer of body and soul alike. That is why this text, either used alone or combined with other suitable works, strives to offer an option for the appropriate preparation of women who desire to be consecrated to a life of virginity within the Catholic Church. Admission to any consecrated religious life is gradual, now requiring at least nine years between initial entrance and perpetual profession; yet there remains available a process for dispensation from that profession if it becomes necessary. The consecration to virginity, which is irrevocable, should also require a flexible age and experience-appropriate preparation according to the needs, maturity, and circumstances of the individual virgin. Cardinal Burke explained:

9. The Introduction [to the rite] makes clear that the Rite effects the consecration of the virgin who presents herself and, thereby, constitutes her a sacred person in the Church. Once consecrated, once constituted a sacred person, the virgin has the grace of manifesting the love of the Church, the Bride, for her Bridegroom, Christ, and the grace of foreshadowing the heavenly wedding feast of Christ and the Church. The virgin does not consecrate herself as the religious does through the profession of the evangelical counsels. Rather, she presents herself to be consecrated by the Church.

10. How does the Church constitute the virgin a sacred person? The Introduction makes it clear that the consecration is accomplished by the supreme grace of God, by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, which the Church implores and for which she asks with insistence.¹

The consecrated virgin is a sacred, though secular person, living an ideorhythmic lifestyle (literally, life according to her own rhythm), responsible for her own care and upkeep, yet taking on prayer, penance, and intercessory and service responsibilities that mirror those of deacons. She wears no distinguishing garb (at least in the United States), although her clothing and her whole being should radiate virginal modesty and chastity. She is truly a consecrated person and should be included in diocesan activities related to consecrated life. Consecration to a life of virginity is eloquently described in the introduction to the Pontifical Rite which directs the celebration of its conferral.

Once the consecration has been conferred, it cannot be taken back. From the early centuries of the Church, the difficulty of the unfaithful consecrated virgin was confronted. The virgin once consecrated remains consecrated. Hence, the Bishop should not proceed with the consecration of a virgin until he is assured that she is firm in her resolve to give her virginity to Christ for the rest of her life. (Burke 2008:10, René Metz, La consécration, p. 39) At the Council of Elvira in the early years of the Fourth