Margaret Mary Foley's, OSF Final Profession - Homily by Pat Klemm, OSF

The call to love God with all of our heart, mind and soul, is a universal call that goes back to the early Hebrew Scriptures.  It is a call intended for all people, and reflects God’s plan for each of us - that we be lovers of God and of our neighbors. It is not intended to be a call only for those who consecrate their lives to God in a community of religious women or men. This call, and God’s plan for our “welfare rather than woe” applies to all those whom God has created in love.  We are all created with a future of hope –a hope that tells us that when we seek God with our whole being, we will find God.

When we seek God we are responding to the God who first desires us. Seeking God is not something we do once - it is an ongoing, life-long process of love responding to love.  Our loving God wants to be in all of our lives, no matter what state of life we have embraced.

As universal as this call is, there are some who choose a life of community and service in response to the overwhelming gift of Godself to us. I believe that this truly is a choice, not a destiny. The responsibility is ours!  We can choose to respond to God’s call in whatever way seems best for us – we not only can, but we must!  Our response is certainly influenced by those we meet along the way, by all of our life experiences, and especially by our ongoing relationship with God. 

When a woman chooses to look at religious life, she enters into a process of personal and communal discernment. This process provides time for ongoing reflection and is helped by experiences that assist in discerning how she can best answer that universal call to God.  It facilitates continual growth in self-understanding and knowledge, but it is not an incubator for perfection!  The reading from the third Order Rule exhorts us to “serve, love, adore, and honor the Lord God as best we can”, acknowledging our human frailties and foibles.  

Margaret has been in discernment for a number of years.  She has taken the necessary time to grow into the person who today is making a mature choice for a life of dedication to God and God’s poor.  This process has not always been easy, but Margaret has always remained faithful to God’s call to grow in love. She has chosen to respond to God’s call by following in the footsteps of Saints Francis and Clare of Assisi. She has embraced a simple lifestyle and enjoys working with those who live in poverty.

Finally, finals! The words “final vows” are a bit of a misnomer because the vows that Margaret is taking today are not really the end of anything (except yearly evaluations!) Margaret has been living these vows for a number of years, plumbing their depths through study, reflection, her own personal experiences, and those of the committed women with whom she has lived. Her commitment today is to continue to grow in understanding of the vows and to live them in the realities that she will face all the days of her life.

Margaret’s vows are a gift to each of us, to the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Allegany, and to the entire Church. Her public commitment to God speaks clearly of the power of God in our lives. It challenges us to recommit ourselves to God in our own state of life – to live lives of love in response to the God who loves us.

And so we rejoice with Margaret today. We celebrate her commitment, and we thank her for her fidelity.  We pray for Margaret, that she may continue to be a woman of hope in a world so desperately in need of hope. We ask God’s blessing on her today and all the days of her life.

And we promise to love her and support her. We invite her to help us as a congregation move into an unknown future, aware of our blessed past - always faithful to the call to love God with our whole heart, mind and soul and our neighbor as ourselves.

Pat Klemm, OSF on the occasion of Margaret Mary Foley’s lifetime commitment.