One expression of the total consecration of our lives to God as cloistered religious is our permanent separation from our families. For the sake of a closer clinging to God alone, we relinquish even the good of spending time in the homes of our family members and joining them for family  gatherings and holidays. This is truly a sacrifice for us, and perhaps even more so for our families themselves. But as in every aspect of our life, God always gives the grace to do what He asks, both of us and of our families. Our families, and in a particular way our parents, have a special participation in our vocations, as they support and truly make their own our self-offering to God. One of the most beautiful and moving fruits of our vocation is to see how joyfully and generously our parents come to embrace it as in some way their vocation too. Sometimes this joy is experienced only after an initial period of time, but is then all the sweeter.

Our task as religious is not to become “detached” from our families in the sense that we no longer care about them. Quite the contrary, we are called to allow the Lord to draw our natural love for our family into our supernatural love for Him so that they truly become one love, which by His divine gift strengthens and deepens the familial bonds. We experience genuine joy in receiving visits from our own families and from one another's families. And they in their turn find joy in seeing their daughter or sister belonging entirely to God and finding her place in her new religious family, not in competition with her place in her family of origin, but as a continuation and perfection of it. The union of minds and hearts in our religious community extends to union with those close to us: it is the union of those seeking God. “All are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28).