Simple or Solemn Professions and the vowed commitment to the evangelical counsels is a consecration of a religious person’s whole being to God and a momentous and deeply sacred event.
Those professing vows will be receiving many notes of support from the community, friends and families.
St. Francis de Sales would also congratulate you, as he did in a letter to a novice of the Visitation in 1622 as she made her profession.
LETTER XXXIII.
TO A NOVICE OF THE VISITATION.
Congratulations upon her profession.
ANNECY, 25th January 1622.
“AND so, my very dear daughter, you are now at last on the sacred altar in spirit, to be sacrificed and immolated, yea consumed as a holocaust, before the face ofthe living God. Oh may this day be counted amongst” the days that the Lord hath made ! “May this hour be an hour amongst the hours which God has blessed from all eternity, and which he has appointed for honour from all eternity ! May this hour be founded in the holy humility of his cross, and end in the most sacred immortality of glory ! How many desires will my soul make on this dear day for the soul of my dear daughter ! How many holy exclamations of joy and happy omens upon that beloved heart ! How many invocations to the most holy Virgin Mother, to the Saints and Angels, that they would honour with their special favour and presence this consecration of the spirit of my dear daughter, whose vocation they have obtained and whose obedience to vocation they have inspired !
How glad I am when I picture to myself that according to my hope they will announce to you in all truth that word of life-giving death : Ye, are dead, and your life is hidden with Christ in God : * for, my dear daughter, the truth of this word depends the truth of the event which afterwards they declare : But when Christ shall appear, who is your life, and the rest.
I salute your dear soul and am ever in union of spirit according to God most singularly all yours.”