The Church follows Christ, its only spouse

  Today, September 5th, as our Church celebrates the Memorial of Teresa of Calcutta, Virgin, we are invited to first read and reflect on a passage from the first letter of apostle Paul to the Corinthians (7: 25-40), entitled "Christian Chastity". Our "treasure" which follows is from the decree on the renewal of religious life of the Second Vatican Council. Mother Teresa (1910–1997), known in the Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was a Catholic religious sister who devoted her life to serving the poorest and most abandoned people of India and founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950. She is best known for caring personally for the dying, homeless, sick, orphaned, and unwanted, seeing in each of them Jesus Christ Himself. Her special charism was to recognize and lovingly serve Christ in "the poorest of the poor," uniting deep prayer and devotion to the Eucharist with concrete acts of mercy—encountering Jesus in the Eucharist and then going out to encounter Him in suffering people. The Decree on the Adaptation and Renewal of Religious Life is a document of the Second Vatican Council addressing especially members of religious institutes and those responsible for their leadership and renewal, while offering principles important for the whole Church. Its primary purpose was to guide the renewal of religious life by calling religious communities simultaneously back to their deepest sources and forward to the needs of the modern world. Its central message is that authentic renewal begins with interior spiritual renewal—religious men and women must continually return to Christ, allow themselves to be transformed by Him, and through their consecrated lives become visible witnesses that God and His Kingdom are the ultimate treasure and destiny of the human person. The Letters of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians—First and Second Corinthians—were written around A.D. 53–57 to the Christian community Paul had founded in Corinth. Their primary teaching is that Christ must transform every dimension of Christian life. Together, the letters teach that belonging to Christ is not merely a matter of belief; through the Holy Spirit, Christians are called to become a new creation whose faith is visible in unity, holiness, sacrificial love, generosity, and care for one another. Taken together, these readings teach that Christian chastity, and especially consecrated celibacy or virginity, is not primarily a rejection of marriage but a wholehearted gift of oneself to Christ and a sign that He is our ultimate fulfillment and eternal destiny. In our first reading from Corinthians Saint Paul honors marriage while explaining that remaining unmarried for the Lord can permit a person to serve Him with a more undivided heart; similarly, our "treasure" from the Second Vatican Council's decree Perfectae Caritatis teaches that religious men and women embrace consecrated chastity because the Church belongs completely to Christ, her one true Spouse, and their lives visibly anticipate the life of the world to come. Together they teach that every Christian vocation—marriage, priesthood, religious life, or dedicated single life—ultimately calls us beyond possessiveness and self-centeredness toward an undivided love of God, while consecrated chastity bears a distinctive witness that no earthly relationship or possession can finally satisfy the human heart, because Christ Himself is our greatest treasure and our eternal fulfillment.