Final Profession

One night on retreat I was pacing outside, thinking about the very idea of taking my final, perpetual vows in religious life. Then I saw the big tree in the center of the retreat house's circular driveway and for some reason I addressed it:

"Well, what do you have to say for yourself, Tree, seeing as you're perpetually professed?"

So then I reflected on the perpetual profession of the tree. The tree receives the sunlight and the rain from God, but it doesn't agonize over what to do with these graces. It doesn't need to discern what to do with the rain and the sun. It doesn't need to journal about it, or wonder how someone with its particular Enneagram number or Myers-Briggs letters would handle them.

The tree has a form of life, or a rule, through which it already knows how it will use the sunlight and the rain. It will grow and flourish and provide shade for the driveway and for those who pray to Our Lady at the grotto across from the house. The tree is committed to its form of life, to its rule. It's perpetually professed.

(By the way, I am 5, INTJ.)