For You I Study

Abstract

We will then be busy teaching and forming young minds, taking care of the sick, uplifting the poor, and engaged in handing on faith to future generations. The Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata addressed to all religious called for renewed and loving commit­ment to the intellectual life as an integral part of the experience of life in the Spirit and the condition for apostolic efficacy. The following text has been frequently quoted, but it will do no harm to hear it again: "In addition to the service of oth­ers, within the consecrated life itself there is need for a renewed and loving commitment to the intellectual life, for dedication to study as a means of integral formation and as a path of asceticism which is extraordinarily timely, in the face of present-day cultural diversity. A lessened commitment to study can have grave consequences for the apos­tolate, by giving rise to a sense of margin­alization and inferiority, or encourag­ing superficiality and rash initiatives" (VC 98)