Dominican Spirituality
What is religious life?
Religious life is essentially the total self-gift of a person to Christ and his Church for the love of God and his people. As the Second Vatican Council taught: “Through Baptism a person dies to sin and is consecrated to God. However, in order that he may be capable of deriving more abundant fruit from this baptismal grace, he intends, by the profession of the evangelical counsels in the Church, to free himself from those obstacles, which might draw him away from the fervour of charity and the perfection of divine worship. By his profession of the evangelical counsels, then, he is more intimately consecrated to divine service” (Lumen Gentium, 44).
The evangelical counsels are: obedience, chastity and poverty.