One of the things that makes human beings particular, so different both from angels and from other animals, is that they can offer up to God not only their physical lives, but also their physical deaths. The spiritual offering of the body, in both life and in death. This is a testimony to the spirit in the human person, which makes us different from the other animals. Spiritually, the aspirations of the human person transcend the reaches of the corporeal world, and consequently, we can offer that world to God. But this offering is also a testimony to the dignity of the human body, that has the nobility of personhood. We can personally make the sacrifice of our lives, of our embodied life, to God, in a way that no pure spirit can do. I am my body, and in the body I can seek to live for God alone, to die in Christ and to live physically, in him, perennially. As St. Paul says, (Rom. 14:8): “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we belong to the Lord.”

These words point us toward a deeper mystery however: not only that we can live and die for God, but also that we are called to do so in Christ, by the virtues of his passion. St. Ignatius of Antioch not only reminds us of this truth. He embraced it emphatically. (Letter to the Romans, n. 7): “My love has been crucified, [he writes] and there is no fire in me desiring to be fed; but there is within me a water that lives and speaks, saying to me inwardly, Come to the Father. I have no delight in corruptible food, nor in the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became afterwards of the seed of David and Abraham; and I desire the drink of God, namely His blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life.”

Not only was St. Ignatius turned toward the Father, in death as in life, with a hope that transcended this physical world. He was also united to the blood of God, to the body of God, the body and blood of Jesus Christ, in which he found peace. Peace, for the spiritual animals that we are, bound up with life and with death, is found in the body and blood of Christ, who has promised to give us life, to redeem us, in the whole of our persons. And so, when someone such as Ignatius burns his life for God, gives his or her life to God radically, entirely, in life and in death, he or she is a living sign and a witness of that unique saving promise of Christ, of that life that has come to inhabit in us and for us. A sign of Christ’s power to redeem the world. And of course, to be such a living sign, is one of the principle meanings of our religious life.

Today, this morning, in Our Lady of Grace Monastery, in North Guilford Connecticut, one of our sisters in the Dominican Order, Sr. Ann of the Cross O’Reilly, makes solemn profession. This occurs discretely, behind a cloister wall, veiled, and hidden. The world does not perceive it. But it is an event that concerns us, and what we do here, fundamentally, today and every day. For every time someone gives her life to Christ so radically and unconditionally, it changes the Church. The Church is added to. And the victory of Christ is expanded in this world. And each time this occurs in the Order, our life and our mission as Friars preachers is added to.  The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. And the self-offering of our contemplative sisters in hidden worship and study and work occurs in Christ, the source of our lives, and as such, it contributes by its merits to the deep down hidden well springs of our life and our mission to communicate the truth. But in each case, in life as with our sisters, and in martyrdom, as with St. Ignatius, it is to the Lord that we belong, in soul and in body. The whole person, for Christ, undivided, in all things. That is our calling and to that we should attend, now and forever. In death and in life, poor, chaste and obedient. Is this not the least that love deserves?