Vows of Hope: A Laywoman’s Reflection on the Visitation Renewal

Nov 18

Each November 21, Visitation Sisters around the world renew their vows. The same words first offered decades ago — poverty, chastity, obedience — are spoken once more on the Feast of the Presentation of Mary. There is no spotlight, no fanfare. Just small communities of contemplative women, linked in quiet communion, renewing a promise to live for Love alone.

In 1629, St. Jane de Chantal exhorted her Sisters on this feast:

“Let us well understand its dignity; let us do it with heart rather than with mouth; let us renew our vows with a true and cordial affection of binding ourselves again to God, to our vocation and Rules… Our Lord will receive your oblation and sacrifice with a propitious eye and will fill us with many favors, with His grace, with the sweetness of the union of our souls with Him, and with glory after our death.”

Her words resonate across centuries, a thread of devotion reminding us that this ritual is not mere formality but a true offering — each signature in the vow book an echo of surrender.

The Feast of the Presentation of Mary celebrates a young girl’s offering of herself to God, long before she understood what her “yes” would require. It is a feast of readiness and trust — a reminder of Mary’s humble courage and of the Sisters’ daily fidelity. As a laywoman — a Visitation alumna, parent, and educator — I don’t profess formal vows, yet I live by a pattern of promises just the same. I don’t always have the energy or clarity to parent perfectly, and marriage over thirty years has taught me that fidelity isn’t about grand gestures but about showing up for the small, ordinary moments. This is my daily renewal of vows — to love, to forgive, to be present, even on days when my faith feels dry.

I’ve grown to understand that the Sisters’ vows don’t set them apart so much as illuminate what’s possible for all of us — to live with uncluttered hearts, to love without restraint, to say ‘yes’ even when we don’t see the whole road ahead. These are not small things. They are countercultural acts of hope. And in a noisy, anxious world, the gentle witness of the Visitation Sisters reminds me that the deepest renewal is not reinvention, but a return: to the God who calls, the love that endures, and the freedom found in trusting again. Watching the Sisters renew their vows reminds me that fidelity isn’t only for nuns. It’s for parents who struggle to keep patience, for wives who stay married through decades of change, for anyone who keeps showing up even when the spiritual flame feels dim. It’s a radical — classically Salesian — kind of ordinary hope.

In this Jubilee Year of Hope — and in a year when the Visitation Salesian Network of Schools has chosen to be ‘Anchored in Hope’ — their renewal becomes more than ritual. It is a sign for us all: to renew not only our promises, but our hope. To begin again with trust, to live lightly, to love deeply and to follow freely wherever God calls — striving daily to Live Jesus in all we do.