Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today is a holy and memorable day for the Church, for the Diocese of Birmingham, and in a particular way for the Poor Clare community here in Hanceville. Today, the Church commemorates the memorial of St. Agnes, virgin and martyr, one of the four great virgins who remind us, one a month from November through February, of God’s deep and abiding love for us during the winter season. Still, St. Agnes, youthful in years was mighty in faith. On this day, we gather with reverence and joy for the first profession of vows of Sister Maddalena Marie of the Blessed Sacrament, welcoming family and friends to this celebration.

The prophet Isaiah gives voice to what the Church celebrates today: “I rejoice heartily in the Lord… for He has clothed me with a robe of salvation and wrapped me in a mantle of justice.” These words describe not only an interior joy, but a covenantal moment. Religious profession marks an entry, freely chosen and lovingly embraced, into a more serious and total configuration of one’s life to Christ. What began as an invitation has matured into a promise. What was first discerned is now solemnly offered!

St. Agnes of Rome stands before us as a luminous companion on this day. She was young in age and resolute in love. She belonged wholly to Christ. No power could separate her from Him. In her, virginity and martyrdom converge as a single radiant witness to her primary love, Jesus Christ. For her, Christ alone is worth everything. That same witness, though lived in a different form, is entrusted to you today, Sister Maddalena Marie. Your life, hidden with Christ in God, will proclaim to the world that Jesus is enough.

The Gospel of Martha and Mary draws us into the heart of the Poor Clare vocation. Mary sits at the feet of the Lord, listening, loving, adoring. Jesus tells us that she has chosen “the better part,” the one thing necessary. This is not a rejection of service – of waiting on Christ as an honored guest – but, even better, it is a revelation of priority. Before we do anything for Christ, we must first belong to Him. In the cloistered life of the Poor Clares, the Church safeguards this evangelical truth that adoration, silence, and loving attention to the Lord are not luxuries. They are the essential necessities for the life of the world. How many people have been saved through the prayers of those who live in cloister? How many people have come to know Christ because of the prayers of those who live in cloister? How many world calamities have been avoided because of the fervent prayers of the men and women who live in cloister? No one will know until we stand before the Lord!

Your charism, dear Sister, is both hidden and immense. In cloister, in community, and in perpetual adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament, you stand before the Lord on behalf of Holy Church and the whole human family. The world may never know your name, yet Heaven will know your fidelity. The Church depends upon souls who intercede without ceasing, who keep vigil before the Eucharistic Lord, who remind us that Christ is truly present and utterly worthy of our lives.

This path will require perseverance. It will require humility. It will require a daily begging for the grace of God simply to be His servant. There will be moments of consolation and moments of dryness, moments of light and moments of surrender in faith alone, yet the Psalm assures us today: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom should I fear?” To remain before the Lord, day after day, is to learn confidence, patience, and trust.

Above all, this vocation requires falling ever more deeply in love with Jesus, your Spouse, loving Him not merely in abstraction, but, more concretely, sacrificially and joyfully. Through the practice of the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience, you seek to imitate Christ, our Savior, more perfectly, not as an ideal, but as a lived reality. In doing so, you give glory to God and become a quiet but powerful sign of the Kingdom to the Church and to the world.

May God grant you the grace to witness His love in community through charity, forgiveness, and shared fidelity. May your hidden life speak eloquently of hope to a world often distracted, divided, and weary, and may you hear and answer the Lord’s call each and every day, renewing today’s “yes” again tomorrow, the next day, and until the Lord calls you home.

Sister Maddalena Marie of the Blessed Sacrament, may St. Agnes intercede for you. May Our Lady, the first and perfect disciple, keep you close to her Son. May St. Mary Magdalene, from whom you receive your religious name, show you how to love Christ more perfectly and completely. May those Poor Clares who have already gone to the Lord accompany you to keep you close to Jesus, and may Christ Jesus, Whom you adore and to Whom you now more fully belong, be your joy, your strength, and your everlasting peace. May God bless you all!