Mélanie Pilon

Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi

Melanie grew up in Arnprior, ON. After high school she gave a volunteer year with the Regnum Christi Mission Corps, and then began discernment and formation with the Consecrated Women of Regnum Christi. She is now consecrated to Christ, and has made final vows of poverty, chastity and obedience within Regnum Christi. She currently serves with her community of consecrated women in Chicago, Illinois.

Vocation Story

 “The kingdom of God is like a treasure buried in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Mt. 13:44). My vocation is a gift – and as a gift it is not something I have earned or deserved, it has been given to me out of love, and I will never have the words to thank God for such a gift! From a young age I asked myself the question “what does God want for my life?” A seed was planted through the faith I received from my parents, and that seed was watered through the experiences I lived of my faith as I grew up.

At the age of 10 I can remember experiencing for the first time that Christ was truly my Best Friend; that He was real and that His friendship was what made me deeply happy. As I went through middle school and into high school I lived all that a normal high schooler from the Ottawa Valley lives, but very often I remember asking myself “is this it?”, “why doesn’t all of this satisfy me?” I loved high school – got very involved in and outside of school, worked hard, had fun, dated… but in the silence of my heart, there was one question that always seemed to come back: “Would it be that your heart is made for something else?”

After high school I decided to give a volunteer year with the Regnum Christi Mission Corps, an international program for young men and women to give one or two years to serve the Church. During my year of service in Chicago, Illinois, I lived with consecrated women. The more I opened my heart to the adventure God had in store for me that year, the more I realized that I was deeply happy and felt at home, even though I was outside of my own country and far from what was familiar to me. Through prayer, community life, spiritual direction and apostolate, God began to open my heart to the reality that there was a treasure He had placed there since before I could remember – the invitation to belong only to Him and spend my life so that others could know His love. The more I experienced His love for me, the more I began to realize that this treasure was worth “selling everything else for”.

At the end of my missionary year I entered the candidacy program with the consecrated women of Regnum Christi, and there I have discovered the life God made me for. It has now been 9 years since that adventure began, and I have since worked in 3 different cities in Canada and the United States, helping young people to know Christ and become His apostles. Christ really is the treasure worth selling everything else for, and the path on which He leads us will always be the one that leads to true joy.