Religious Vows

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 What is "Consecrated Life"?

The term consecrated life refers to a state to which men and women take public religious vows to the evangelical counsels. By taking religious vows, such men and women seek a more perfect way. As Our Lord expressely stated, they are counsels for those who desire to become "perfect" (cf. Matt. 19:10-12, Matt. 19:16-22; Matt. 5:48; Mark 10). Such a life is considered an "act of supererogation", that is; above the minimum necessary for salvation.

Religious vows are the public Vows made by the members of the religious life – anchoritic, hermitic,cenobitic  and eremitic – of the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches, whereby they confirm their public profession of the Evangelical Counsels or Benedictine equivalent. They are regarded as the individual's free response to a call by God to follow Jesus Christ more closely under the action of the Holy Spirit in a particular form of religious life.  The religious vow, being a public vow, is binding in Church law. One of its effects is that the person making it ceases to be free to marry by making a religious vow – whether as a member of a religious community or as a consecrated hermit . Some may "recognize private vows", which must not be confused with private vows but are similar to public vows in Church law.

Although the taking of vows was not a part of the earliest monastic foundations (the wearing of a particular monastic habit is the earliest recorded manifestation of those who had left the world), vows did come to be accepted as a normal part of the Tonsure service in the Christian East. Previously, one would simply find a spiritual father and live under his direction. Once one put on the monastic habit, it was understood that one had made a lifetime commitment to God and would remain steadfast in it to the end. Over time, however, the formal Tonsure and taking of vows was adopted to impress upon the monastic the seriousness of the commitment to the ascetic life he or she was adopting.

The vows taken by monks, nuns and hermits are often variations of the evangelical counsels: Chastity, Poverty, Obedience, Conversion, Celibacey and Stability.