On the eve of the Day of Consecrated Life, Friar Fabián Martín inaugurates his first column with a lucid and provocative reflection: the increasingly silent temptation to live a consecrated life without God. Drawing from St. Augustine and contemporary ecclesial experience, the author invites us to return to the center, to the source, and to our first love.
I read an interview with Fr. Alejandro Moral, former Prior General of the Order of Saint Augustine, published in the magazine Vida Religiosa in December 2025. And one of his words gave rise to this reflection:
“In some places, we want a consecrated life without God, or we want a life that is too comfortable. It could even be said that it seems we want a consecrated life without vows in practice. ”.
And I agree, there is a silent temptation that runs through consecrated life today like a fine, almost invisible, but deep crack: wanting a consecrated life without God. It is not said that way, it is not proclaimed aloud. It is lived. It is organized. It is justified. It is administered. And, little by little, it becomes normalized. It is a subtle temptation, because it preserves the forms, the language, the habits; but it has been losing its center. Like a lamp carefully cared for, but disconnected from the source of electricity.
We want a consecrated life without God when we seek mission without adoration, fraternity without conversion, vows without passion, dedication without love. When the heart no longer burns, but we continue walking; when the mouth utters sacred words that no longer spring from a living experience; when the name of God is still present in the discourses, but absent in the nights of the soul.
St. Augustine would say it with harshness and tenderness at the same time: “You were within me, and I was outside” (Conf. 10,38). A consecrated life without God is, at its core, a life that has left itself to disperse into a thousand occupations, but has left the inner sanctuary empty. Much doing, little dwelling. Much talking about God, little remaining in Him.
A consecrated life without vows… even if they continue to be pronounced.
The immediate consequence of a consecrated life without God is a consecrated life without vows, at least in practice. The vows remain written in the constitutions, pronounced in the celebrations, remembered in the anniversaries. But they have lost their inner nerve, their original fire.
What is poverty without God? It is not freedom, but calculation. It is not dispossession, but fear. It is not trust, but an austerity without joy or a security disguised as simplicity. When God ceases to be the true treasure, poverty ceases to be a song and becomes a strategy.
What is chastity without God? It is not undivided love, but withdrawal, selfishness, self-satisfaction. It is not an expanded heart, but disoriented and disordered affectivity. Without a living experience of being loved infinitely, chastity becomes harshness or fragility, law without breath, promise without spring. And the risk is fatal: to seek other loves to which to give the heart.
What is obedience without God? It is not listening, but submission or negotiation. It is not trusting abandonment, but survival. It is not a common search for God’s dream, but self-affirmation. It is not a shared life and mission project, but individualistic plans and projects that exude self-promotion. When a voice that calls from the depths is not heard, obedience is reduced, at best, to fulfilling orders or skillfully evading them and, at worst, to adding to the ungovernability in consecrated life.
The vows are not sustained by the force of will or by institutional discipline. They are sustained by a love story. When that story cools, the vows are emptied. The words remain, but the meaning evaporates…
What sustains dedication if there is no experience of God?
If one does not have a concrete experience of God and His love, what sustains the practice of the evangelical counsels? Perhaps habit. Perhaps prestige. Perhaps fear of change. Perhaps an identity built over years that we no longer know how to abandon. But none of that can sustain a life given to the end.
The consecrated life is not born of an idea, but of an encounter. It is not born of a project, but of a voice that pronounces our name. It is not born of a moral ideal, but of a wound of love. St. Augustine confesses it bluntly: “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you” (Conf. 1,1). When the heart ceases to be restless for God, it begins to settle into surrogates.
Then consecrated life becomes functional, correct, even admirable from the outside. But it has lost its prophetic character. It no longer uninstalls, does not provoke questions, does not awaken thirst. It is like a well-built well, but without water.
The forgetting of the first love
In fact, we want a consecrated life without God when we forget our first love. Not because God has left, but because we have stopped looking at Him. Because we have replaced contemplation with efficiency, gratuity with urgency, silence with noise, our plans with the search for His will.
The first love is not an emotion of the past. It is a living memory that needs to be revived. When one does not return to the source, consecrated life becomes tired, irritable, defensive. Constant complaint, spiritual cynicism, nostalgia for what could have been appear. And community conflicts, countless.
St. Augustine would speak here of the divided heart, dispersed in the multiple, incapable of gathering itself. A consecrated life without God is a life not gathered, not unified, not reconciled. It is lived outward, but without a center. It is given, but without knowing itself inhabited.
Return to God: not to the structures, but to the source
The renewal of consecrated life does not begin with structures, nor with strategic plans, nor even with necessary reforms. It begins by returning to God, by returning to Jesus, by returning to the Gospel. Return to the concrete experience of being looked at, loved, called. Return to prayer as a place of truth, not as a functional obligation. Return to the silence where God pronounces His promise again.
It is not about doing more things for God, but about letting God be God again in our lives. To allow Him to disarm us, to make us poor, chaste, and obedient from within. Because the evangelical counsels are not sterile renunciations, but concrete ways of loving when God is the center.
When God returns to the center, poverty becomes trust again; chastity, fruitfulness; obedience, freedom. Then the vows cease to be a burden and become wings.
A final plea
Perhaps today consecrated life needs fewer explanations and more supplications. Fewer discourses and more amiable and serene presence. Fewer securities and more thirst nourished. Like St. Augustine, we need to say again: “Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new” (Conf. 10,38). And recognize that, every time we have wanted a consecrated life without God, we have ended up with a consecrated life without a soul.
How right was Saint Teresa of Ávila when she said, “God alone suffices.” Not as a slogan, but as an experience. Not as an idea, but as a fire. Because without God, consecrated life can survive for a time, but it cannot give life. With God, even in fragility, it becomes again a sign, prophecy, and promise for the world.
