My Beloved Is Mine and I Am His

By Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C.

Brideship, writes Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C., is “not a popular word” in the context of the consecrated life—thanks to the saccharine, pseudo-mystical treatment it has often received in the past. Yet this treatment and the adverse reactions to it flow from a lamentable misunderstanding of Divine Revelation. In the Church, as Pope St. John Paul II describes in Vita consecrata, vowed women religious are “a special eschatological image of the Heavenly Bride and of the life to come.”

Identifying the four elements of brideship as presence, focus, service, and surrender, and their roots in Scripture and manifestation in religious life, Mother Mary Francis echoes these profound words: “We are the spouses of Christ. We are covenanted people called to do this for Christ and his Church.”

When the Bridegroom came, he found the wise virgin ready to enter the wedding feast with him. (Matthew 25:10)

Describing with poignant and heartfelt conviction the beauty of brideship in the covenant of religious profession, My Beloved Is Mine and I Am His is a beautiful treatment of the wondrous height, depth, and breadth of God’s love for the soul he chooses as his own.

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Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C., (1921–2006) was abbess of the Poor Clare Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Roswell, New Mexico. Her many books, essays, poems, and plays circulated her contemplative wisdom to a worldwide audience, making her one of the twentieth century’s most popular spiritual authors. Her works include A Right to Be Merry, Come, Lord Jesus, and But I Have Called You Friends.

Paperback: 162pp.

ISBN: 978-1685951597