“Like St. Clare of Assisi, I must decide how to live my faith and to keep listening to God,” shares Sister Abisola Clare Adelakun.
Sister Abisola Clare is discerning transfer to the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, having received resounding acceptance to walk her new path with the community by the leadership council.
With a wealth of life to draw from, Sister Abisola Clare shares this reflection.
Vocation is a gift from God to the world, as it is for each of us. We are part of the greater faith community, but our faith journey is an individual one. Each one of us has her own life to populate, inhabit — and live to the fullest — drawing strength, inspiration and renewed life from God, the source of all, who has called.
I realized also that there is a call within a call. God’s sacred call is deeply rooted, nurtured in peoples’ hearts to serve Christ in all his creatures. People are God’s image, Christ-like, with vigor, efficacy, hurdle and clampdown. The same people are the body of Christ in God’s hallowed place, together for the mission of Christ irrespective of how and where.
This invitation from God allows people to be generative and lifegiving. Naturally, prayer is to our spiritual life as breathing is to our physical life. Strength grows when we dare, unity grows when we pair, love grows when we share and relation grows when we care.
Psalm 111 speaks to me: “I will thank the Lord with all my heart in the meeting of the just and the assembly. Great are the works of the Lord; to be pondered by all who love them.” This has been one of my sustaining quotes. I find myself living my faith as usual but finding newness, too. Everything appeared to me differently, turned out to be new spirit in God’s direction, dimension, magnitude, proportion, height, capacity and encounter. God is alive and accessible in each individual. The presence of the Eucharistic Jesus in the FSPA Adoration Chapel and the commitment of the sisters’ and partners in mission challenged my faith, focus and growth. It is encouraging my passage of transformation.
There is no perfect human society, no perfect human religious community, but happiness is being with good friends and enjoying profound relationships in the allowance of trust. I feel the certitude, credence and reliance placed in me which is productive and revealing.
There is integration in heterogeneity. I identify with the ethnic inclusiveness. I am experiencing freedom and, at the same time, intensifying the disciplined Gospel-based life in a religious community.
The sisters respect our differences. We grow in living daily personal and communal prayer, relating the fruits of prayer with every one, sharing meals together at table, discussing, hearing, listening, believing and reckoning to tales.
The lived life of Franciscan Sister of Perpetual Adoration Thea Bowman, who went home like a shooting star, encourages me to keep striving, deepen my enthusiasm, try portraying Jesus in my daily, chosen commitment.
FSPA are eucharistic people implanted, imbedded, tactful, intuitive, keen, perceptive and warmhearted among the people. They are friendly, opening their doors to welcoming college students, chorale, individuals and groups. They encourage team work with all and collaborating with clergy, religious and lay men and women. I have seen respect for the staff members and partners in mission. I see how they value kids, self, nationalities, colors, races, cultures and language. When you call or need the attention of FSPA, she abandons whatever she is doing and responds immediately to your own exigency or necessity.
The treatment, relationships and what feels like therapy from FSPA is allowing people to be themselves, bringing out the best in oneself, seeking opinions from individuals without doubt and distrust, respecting people’s values to live their authenticity in order to have faith and moral-filled religious living commitment.
Each perspective that I hold is vivid. I see this as green life, blooming, flourishing in my religious calling.
Living communities have both happy and unavoidable moments, but the unpreventable times lead to deep and profound connection in reality as one religious community rooted in God … passage to maturity, growth and conversion.
Inside any skepticism that emerges to me, I seem to discover certainty. In future days, finding myself believing nothing and doubting everything, I am rest assured of the feeling of the presence of Eucharistic Jesus in perpetual adoration and qualitative friendship of this religious community.
And I see, in vivid, living color, my beckoning to all of this. Brown was the color of St. Francis’ and St. Clare’s habits. It is the color of the earth and soil. This has invited me to cultivate a self-effacing and unassertive, unvarnished lifestyle in everyday life.
I am called by Saints Francis and Clare of Assisi to live a down-to-earth, practical and impassive opinion of my daily reality of truth, no matter the crucifixion, shame, accusation, dishonor and stigma, it places on me.
Without personal encounter with the Lord there is no faith, there are no beautiful attitudes in serving God in his creation.
O se o Jesu, a o ma yin O, Olorun ayo wa; thank you Jesus, we’ll praise you. The Lord of our joy.