Rome, August 1, 2019
Being in the world without being of the world
Directory of Spirituality, 46
Dear Fathers, Brothers, Seminarians and Novices:
On the 6th of August we will commemorate with great joy and solemnity the specific end of our very small Religious Family, the evangelization of the culture, that is, to transfigure it in Christ.
Such end brings the inevitable responsibility of being “in the world and, in Christ, assume all that is human, since ‘what is not assumed is not redeemed,’ but rather ‘becomes a new idol replete with all the old malicious cunning.’ As priests and spiritual directors, we must enlighten the temporal order and form lay people so that they can ‘direct temporal matters according to the plan of God.’ We must not take on ‘matter’ that is not worthy to be assumed, such as sin, error, lies, evil: abstain from every form of evil“ as stated in our Constitutions.
This magnificent task sets before us the august ideal of being – in imitation of the Incarnate Word – signs of contradiction in a world lacerated by secularization. Secularization which often becomes secularism, by the abandonment of the positive acceptance of secularity – the sound distinction and order between the temporal and spiritual spheres – not only threatens the Christian life of the faithful, but also gravely affects religious life.
For this reason, we are warned: Facing the world, to which Christ sends us as sheep in the midst of wolves; Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect.“
Living and advancing our specific apostolates in the crucible of present situations, which change constantly, and many times cannot be foreseen, we are not immune from falling into the temptation of “intoxication of immersion in the world” and at the same time, the weakening search for the one thing necessary, when it should constitute the witness of religious life.
I hope that a conscious reading of these pages contributes to the necessary vigilance and discernment of spirits which protects our consecrated life and enlivens us in giving a convincing witness to the world which shouts: We want to see Jesus!
1. The Church in the world
The Church is the Mystical Body of Christ. Meaning that, just as the Word assumed a human nature to accomplish the design of salvation He now chooses other human natures in order to extend that design through time, so that salvation may reach all men of all times. That is why we say that the Church is Jesus Christ continued, diffused and communicated.”
One of the most interesting observations our Lord made regarding His Body, was that it would be hated by the world, just as He was. The world loves the things of the world but hates what is divine. If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you.
Therefore, the most urgent problem that the Mystical Body of Christ currently suffers is the manifest tendency to bargain with the world. Secularism presents itself as a cancer which invades and attempts to destroy all of the body tissue of Church; that is, “the mutilation of the inalienable part of man, which affects his deepest identity: the religious dimension.” Consequently, we witness today, in a shocking manner, the advance of the “progressive eclipse of the sacred and the systematic elimination of religious values” as warned by Saint John Paul II.
The author Massimo Borghesi talks precisely about this “cancer”. He holds tat we are before a light and ethereal religiosity, without form, which far from opening what is human to God understood as another, instead it is an element called to “close” the world, to make finite existence bearable in the era of emptiness. For Borghesi, this new pseudo religion has as a characteristic the rejection not only of faith, but of reason, and sweeps away both Christianity and enlightenment, which in its fullest sense functions as an obscurantist belief: it is a cultural cancer in every respect.
This cancer has its own dogmas which present themselves precisely as non-dogmatic but possess the full force of belief and even of superstition; gay advocacy, hypersexuality, multiculturism or international legality are presented as unquestionable and unquestioned dogmas. None of them subsist rationally, and this is precisely the problem; seeking to liberate man from religion, postmodernism has liberated him from reason as well, and made him a clump of empty illusions, instant emotions and unending yearnings never to be satisfied. He is susceptible to manipulation and instrumentalized by the new religion which presents itself as non-religion.
On the other hand, according to this author, contemporary nihilism affirms that one must hide from an unpleasant world, that must be fled; a valley of tears for the culture that only accepts to cry of joy. God is not in His place, because He is too serious. The negation of the world which is far too serious and arduous, is followed by the creation of a virtual world: effort, sacrifice, battle, hope and faith in the future are remnants; indifference, hedonism, pacificism and faith only in what is instantaneous are established. The main victim of this is man, who ends mutilated and diminished in his humanity.
This view cannot but reproduce in our souls the profound and heartfelt cry of the great Polish Pope: “For the first time since Christ’s birth two thousand years ago, it is as if He no longer had a place in an ever more secularized world.”
For this reason, Pope Benedict XVI, firmly and with fatherly attention, warned: “Secularization, which presents itself in cultures by imposing a world and humanity without reference to Transcendence, is invading every aspect of daily life and developing a mentality in which God is effectively absent, wholly or partially, from human life and awareness.
This secularization is not only an external threat to believers but has been manifest for some time in the heart of the Church herself. It profoundly distorts the Christian faith from within, and consequently, the lifestyle and daily behavior of believers. They live in the world and are often marked, if not conditioned, by the cultural imagery that impresses contradictory and impelling models regarding the practical denial of God: there is no longer any need for God, nor to think of him or to return to him. Furthermore, the prevalent hedonistic and consumeristic mindset fosters in the faithful and in Pastors a tendency to superficiality and selfishness that is harmful to ecclesial life.
The “death of God” proclaimed by many intellectuals in recent decades is giving way to a barren cult of the individual. In this cultural context there is a risk of drifting into spiritual atrophy and emptiness of heart, sometimes characterized by surrogate forms of religious affiliation and vague spiritualism.”
The manifestations of this secularist tendency vary within the Church.
“Contemporary man often had the impression that he no longer needs anyone in order to understand, explain and dominate the universe; he feels the center of everything, the measure of everything.” In the ‘believer’ this manifests itself by the rejection of authority. The Pope, the bishops, the pastors, religious superiors and priests in varying degrees are impugned because the general feeling is that those who have been clothed with authority are not holy enough. This can even be verified of those who exercise authority in the Church, to whom we can attribute what was said of Israel: Not all who are of Israel are Israel. Saint Thomas Aquinas also affirms it when he says: “our Lord has good and wicked ministers or servants,” for Christ himself prophesied: there will be wheat and weeds.
“The light of reason, exalted but in fact impoverished by the Enlightenment, has radically replaced the light of faith, the light of God.” Consequently, abortion, violence, divorce and gender ideology are all accepted and even defended by some, among whom, unfortunately, there are members of the clergy. No longer was a solid, moral phalanx thrown up against the spirit of evil. It was no longer what the Church believes or what the word of God cautioned; the individual conscience of and by itself –without reference to objective truth– became the sole standard of right and wrong. They try to justify their stance in the name of an interior religion or claiming “personal authenticity” or independence and put up a considerable resistance to missions.
Accordingly, Pope Saint Paul VI would say: “Thus one too frequently hears it said, in various terms, that to impose a truth, be it that of the Gospel, or to impose a way, be it that of salvation, cannot but be a violation of religious liberty. Besides, it is added, why proclaim the Gospel when the whole world is saved by uprightness of heart? We know likewise that the world and history are filled with “seeds of the Word”; is it not therefore an illusion to claim to bring the Gospel where it already exists in the seeds that the Lord Himself has sown?
Anyone who takes the trouble to study in the Council’s documents the questions upon which these excuses draw too superficially will find quite a different view.
It would certainly be an error to impose something on the consciences of our brethren. But to propose to their consciences the truth of the Gospel and salvation in Jesus Christ, with complete clarity and with a total respect for the free options which it presents –“without coercion, or dishonorable or unworthy pressure”- far from being an attack on religious liberty is fully to respect that liberty, which is offered the choice of a way that even non-believers consider noble and uplifting. Is it then a crime against others’ freedom to proclaim with joy a Good News which one has come to know through the Lord’s mercy? And why should only falsehood and error, debasement and pornography have the right to be put before people and often unfortunately imposed on them by the destructive propaganda of the mass media, by the tolerance of legislation, the timidity of the good and the impudence of the wicked? The respectful presentation of Christ and His kingdom is more than the evangelizer’s right; it is his duty. It is likewise the right of his fellow men to receive from him the proclamation of the Good News of salvation. God can accomplish this salvation in whomsoever He wishes by ways which He alone knows. And yet, if His Son came, it was precisely in order to reveal to us, by His word and by His life, the ordinary paths of salvation. And He has commanded us to transmit this revelation to others with His own authority. It would be useful if every Christian and every evangelizer were to pray about the following thought: men can gain salvation also in other ways, by God’s mercy, even though we do not preach the Gospel to them; but as for us, can we gain salvation if through negligence or fear or shame -what St. Paul called to be ashamed of the Gospel – or as a result of false ideas we fail to preach it? For that would be to betray the call of God, who wishes the seed to bear fruit through the voice of the ministers of the Gospel; and it will depend on us whether this grows into trees and produces its full fruit.
Let us therefore preserve our fervor of spirit. Let us preserve the delightful and comforting joy of evangelizing, even when it is in tears that we must sow. May it mean for us – as it did for John the Baptist, for Peter and Paul, for the other apostles and for a multitude of splendid evangelizers all through the Church’s history – an interior enthusiasm that nobody and nothing can quench. May it be the great joy of our consecrated lives. And may the world of our time, which is searching, sometimes with anguish, sometimes with hope, be enabled to receive the Good News not from evangelizers who are dejected, discouraged, impatient or anxious, but from ministers of the Gospel whose lives glow with fervor, who have first received the joy of Christ, and who are willing to risk their lives so that the kingdom may be proclaimed and the Church established in the midst of the world.”
In fact, in many of the countries in which we mission we can confirm the worrying absence of religious practices along with indifference and ignorance of the truths of the faith. There is a sort of weakening of convictions which in many no longer hold the necessary strength to inspire their behavior. “As it is often said, religion has been privatized, society has been secularized and the culture has become secular.”
This is what made Venerable (and soon to blessed) Fulton Sheen say, “the current enemies of the Church are not the barbarians, schismatics or heretics of other times, but rather, the world in which the Church lives.” The Archbishop held that “During these 500 year cycles, the Church was attacked in different ways. In the first cycle the Church had to combat heresies centering around the Historical Christ: his Person, His Nature, Intellect and Will. In the second cycle it was the Visible Head of the Church who was denied. In the third cycle, the Church or Mystical Body of Christ that was split up into sections or sects. In our day, the attack is secularism and is directed against holiness, sacrifice and self-denial and kenosis. The new enemy of the Church is ecological; it pertains to the environment in which she lives.” He concludes with his sharp humor: “if the Church marries the spirit of the age, she will be a widow in the next one.”
Henceforth, before the so-called eclipse of the sacred, the growing need for a religious experience is evident, for we cannot deny that the nostalgia for the Absolute is rooted in the depths of the human being, created in the image and likeness of God. If the Church is not inconvenient to the pleasures and plans of the world, if in its words it only imitates the sayings in style, if it does not question its practices, if it does not challenge persons to make a definitive choice, if it preaches the ‘Christian civilization’ without Christ or boasts of a new Pentecost without seeing that it demands 30 years of obedience and a Calvary; if the Eucharist is a banquet but not a sacrifice; if it wants a glorious and secular priesthood but forgets its characteristic of victimhood; then it no longer is the Body of Christ. It must remember the admonition of Saint Paul to Timothy: there will be men who will make a pretense of religion but will fall short of it. Get away from them! Simply because they conduct themselves as enemies of the cross of Christ.
In addition, we must say that today the Mystical Body of Christ, as yesterday the adorable
Person of the Incarnate Word in the desert, also faces the prince of this world. This is made manifest in his continual attacks against its unity, spreading confusion, magnifying crevices and causing separations. The enemy today more than ever seems to be tempting the Church to abandon the high summit of the truth, where faith and reason reign, for the depth where the masses live with slogans and propaganda. The spirit of the world does not want the proclamation of immutable principles but opinions; it wants commentators, not teachers; statistics, not principles; nature, not grace. Time and again the tempter seeks to conceal the Church amidst the kingdoms of this world, that is, having a religion without the cross, liturgy without the world to come, religion to invoke politics or politics that become religion in order to give Caesar even what belongs to God.
Hence, it has always been and always will be proper to us to “offer abundantly and with generosity the riches of the Gospel to all men” so that, in all of the countries invaded by secularism, a new generation of believers may spring up.
Saint John Paul II foretold: “The great challenge that the Church faces consists in finding support points in this new cultural situation and presenting the Gospel as good news for cultures and for man the author of culture. God is not man’s rival, but the safeguard of his freedom and the fount of his happiness. God makes man grow giving him the joy of faith, the strength of hope and the fervor of love.”
We must work with fervent desire and constancy to “advance a renewed pastoral care of the culture, for the culture constitutes the place of a privileged encounter with the message of Christ. For, ‘faith that does not become culture is faith that has not been assumed entirely, not thought of in its totality and not lived with fidelity.’”
2. The priest and the world
All that we have said up to now, we priests, unfortunately do not see it from across the street. It too represents a real danger for us who are called to go to the whole world to be salt of the earth and not honey. Thus, we are not immune to the pressure of a secularist and consumerist conception of existence. That is why Saint John Paul II affirmed: “The present-day phenomenon of secularism is truly serious” for it not only affects individuals, but it also “affects religious life.” He strongly insists: “Do not allow yourselves to be possessed by the world nor its prince, the evil one. Do not conform yourselves to the opinions and pleasures of this world.”
As you know, in some environments of the post conciliar-period –due frequently to an erroneous reading of the magisterium of the II Vatican Council– the awareness of a true priestly identity was obfuscated and a tendency to ‘laicize’ priestly functions arose, parallel to the tendency to ‘clericalize’ the figure of the layman. For this reason, there were seminaries that sought to prepare its seminarians for social and pastoral activities, mistaken, they neglected discipline and the spiritual life, and many times the teaching of sound theology and catholic morality.
That is how today “some disciples of Christ have abandoned the Christ-life to be more suited to their secular environment. It is not the Christ-model that determines their lives; it is the mentality of their group. […] The ‘Christian presence’, which is often only a physical presence without the Spirit of Christ, only sweetens the world, but it does not reconcile it with God. Only the priest is capable of a double betrayal, he betrays God and the world. He betrays the world when he refuses to say a dialectical ‘No’ to its spirit, he betrays Christ when he is not concerned with the world’s sin. We must realize that the ‘Yes’ to the world and its values is very often preceded by a ‘No’ to Christ.”
It is important to note that everything we do in pastoral care, regardless of the laudable effort and the greatness of the work, remains without effect if it is not accompanied by our witness as religious intimately united to God. This is how the Gospel more easily reaches man: through the witness of life, selfless service and the language of the sacramental signs.
Thus, Saint John Paul II in a conference for religious, wisely said: “The lay faithful need the strong lifeblood received from the spiritual presence of religious, and would miss it if, by the intoxication of immersion in the world, religious would deny the Church the attribution of what is properly theirs. … The clear distinction (and not confusion!) and valuable complementarity (and not isolation!) of charisms and vocations continue to be of importance. The presence of religious amid temporal battles will never be fruitful in the long run (would it ever be so immediately?) if it detracts from the essential values, even the most humble, of religious life.”
Time and again, throughout the entire proper law of the Institute we are told: “we must learn how to be in the world “without being of the world.” We must go into the world in order to convert it and not to imitate it; to enter cultures not to convert ourselves into these cultures, but to heal them and to elevate them with the strength of the Gospel.” And again : “Being in the world” only makes sense when it depends on “not being of the world.”
In this sense, the mystery of the Transfiguration is an excellent example of how we should engage with the world. For “the Transfiguration is not only the revelation of Christ’s glory but also a preparation for facing Christ’s Cross,” which represents our pastoral work.
This magnificent mystery has as a backdrop the fact that Christ had not yet convinced His Apostles that He was a Priest-Victim. In fact, the scene takes place coming from Caesarea Philippi, when Peter confessed the divinity of Christ but denied His Cross, and thus Our Lord called him “Satan” (the devil always acts as an enemy of the Cross).
Christ took with Him the three most capable of understanding his death and future glory. Yet, they were overcome by sleep. As soon as they woke up they saw the glory of Christ, and Peter reacted saying: Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.
This is one of the reactions of the Church to the glory of the Priest-Victim. Peter wanted to make that glory permanent. Why go preach? Why go to the mission? It is better to consolidate ourselves. Why the nonsense about going to Jerusalem to be crucified? How many similar excuses are we capable of setting! It is wanting a glorious priesthood without that inglorious victimhood; without sorrow, enemies or struggle.
At times in the Church, many like Peter, want glory but no combat, penance or purification in the hands of God. In fact, some simply want ecstasy, without speaking of mortification, fasting and vigils. They want instant glory without the cross. They want the exaltation of feeling without the exaltation of the Cross. It is interesting to note that the Evangelist after the words of Peter, says: but he did not know what he was saying.
Christ makes them descend from the Mount, where labor awaited. Which is like saying that they go from the heights to the depths; from extasy to the pain. “The disciples who have enjoyed this intimacy with the Master…, are immediately brought back to daily reality.” At their arrival, they met with a boy who was possessed by an evil spirit, that many times attempted to kill him by throwing him into fire and water, and his father who has deeply anguished because the disciples were incapable of casting out the demon. Many see in this scene, the world which the Church must serve. Accordingly, we could say that on the heights of the Mount the apostles contemplated the Word and now, upon their descent, the Word made flesh whom they must serve.
It is interesting to note that in this scene, the valley is presented as a continuation of the Mount and that Our Lord willed it to be this way. For the Mount without the valley would be selfishness, and the valley without the heights of the mountain would only be drudgery and bitterness.
In the valley we see another part of the Church, represented by the nine apostles and the disciples. They represent what today we would call activists. They were not on the Mount of the vision, but they were deeply involved in the ‘problems’ of the valley; they were ‘committed to social matters.’ Yet, they were inefficient.
As soon as the father sees Jesus coming, he complains saying: I took him to your disciples, but they were unable to cure him. But they had done it before! Hence, when they see Jesus arrive, they too immediately ask him why they were unsuccessful in their intent, just as many others that say: ‘we love the poor, we want to help the afflicted, why do we feel so impotent?’ Because of your little faith.
That is to say, they fell into sterile activism, forgetting that activity for Our Lord must not separate us from Him who is the Lord of activity.
We must always have present before us, that all of our pastoral activities must be conceived and carried out by faith and many times accompanied by prayer and fasting. As members of the Institute of the Incarnate Word we are called to be visible signs and instruments of the invisible world, of the Transcendent. We have been called “to be salt… to be light of the world without being of the world.“
“When we lose sight of the luminous horizon,” John Paul the Great explains, “the figure of the priest is obscured, his identity enters into crisis, his particular duties are no longer justified and are contradicted, and his reason of being is weakened.”
Some believe that the priest only identifies with being “a man for others”. Every Christian is so. The priest too, but with the particularity of being a “man of God and for God”. In this sense, the Directory of Spirituality tells us: “All members of the Institute should perfect themselves, being in Christ ‘an eternal offering’ for God, and ‘a living and perfect victim to praise your glory.’”. The service of God is the foundation upon which we must build the genuine service of men, which consists in freeing their souls from slavery to sin and once again direct man to the necessary service of God.
Henceforth, our priestly ministry would be emptied of its content, if in our pastoral work for men, we should forget the soteriological Christian dimension. We are sent to all men to make them discover their vocation as children of God, to awaken in them a yearning for supernatural life. We are sent to urge the conversion of hearts, forming moral conscience and reconciling all men with God through the sacrament of penance.
“May it be clear that priestly service, if it wishes to remain faithful to itself, is an excellent and essentially spiritual service.”
Therefore, we confess once more that what properly pertains to us as members of this dear Institute, is “the primacy of what is spiritual over our thoughts, feelings, and actions. For it is God who effects within us to will and work for his good pleasure. The teaching of the Incarnate Word in this regard is clear: Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.”
That is the sublime and precious teaching of the Transfiguration. The love of God and neighbor are inseparable and our neighbor in the parable of the good Samaritan is he who ‘is in need’. The true priest-victim does not separate what God has united.
The first three apostles wanted to be ‘parochial’, excluding every social aspect. They are the ones that, remaining restricted to their parish boundaries and even to the boundaries of their office, reject a priori any additional apostolate. They are the ones which we often describe as having a ‘kiosk mentality’. The ones who forget that it pertains to us to “prolong Christ in families, education, the mass media, the scholarly, and in all other legitimate manifestations of human life” as well as the evangelization of the “modern Areopagus”.
The nine left were ‘committed to social matters’ without contact with the Transcendent God. They are the ones who want to go to the world, but to dissolve in the world. The ones “with the excuse of going to what is inferior, [and] wind up emptying the superior, and so, by ‘being in the world’ they level themselves out to the spirit of the world by emptying themselves and forgetting that Christians are in the world but are not of the world.”
These attitudes before the Transfiguration continue to be present in the Church, although they can always be avoided if we progressively go from Christ to the Church and from the Church to the world, and no the other way around.
The Magisterium of the Church cautions: “They are mistaken who, knowing that we have here no abiding city but seek one which is to come, think that they may therefore shirk their earthly responsibilities. For they are forgetting that by the faith itself they are more obliged than ever to measure up to these duties, each according to his proper vocation. Nor, on the contrary, are they any less wide of the mark who think that religion consists in acts of worship alone and in the discharge of certain moral obligations. This divorce between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age.”
3. Characteristics of our mission in the world
We must dedicate ourselves to the work of our apostolate, imitating Christ who “proclaimed the Kingdom of God.” A kingdom that “is not a concept, a doctrine, or a program subject to free interpretation, but it is before all else a person with the face and name of Jesus of Nazareth, the image of the invisible God.”
We must carry out our work with the intention of bringing men to God. Never forgetting that “true inculturation is from within: it consists, ultimately, in a renewal of life under the influence of grace.” As such, “authentic human development must be rooted in a new evangelization evermore profound; for the development of man comes from God, from Jesus as model, God and Man, and must conduce to God.”
Aware that “apostolate is a supernatural reality,” and as such, “its fruitfulness will depend upon our union with God and the Church, “our apostolate is to be done always ‘in the name and by the mandate of the Church, …carried out in the communion of the Church.’“
“The mere physical presence of a priest or a nun in serving the secular order, is not necessarily a ‘witness,” as Fulton Sheen would say. For this reason, our proper law explains that it pertains to us to live knowing that in our call to follow Christ more closely, the task total dedication to the mission consists first in personally bearing witness to the living presence of Jesus, mainly in the imitation of his radical self-emptying and humility, selfless service and in particular, in merciful love. This testimony must remain among us as the principal and primordial task to carry out above all others.
As priest-victims we must be convinced that our task is not to be critics of the social or economical order, but rather, to be prophets. Our prophetic mission implies giving clear and courageous testimony, in “a radiant and singular way, that the world cannot be transformed or offered to God without the spirit of the Beatitudes.” It pertains to us now and forever, to be ambassadors of Christ not placing anything before His love.
Therefore, we must shake consciences, preach in season and out of season, even when it is not what the world wants: Do not descry for us what is right; speak flatteries to us! We must be convinced that our holy religion is truly a help for the world if it contradicts it.
We do not ignore that “the new evangelization confronts the difficult obstacle of indifference. It seems that some are not interested in Christ and His Gospel and manifest a certain distrust toward the Church and her Magisterium. Those satiated with wellbeing, saturated with messages, allow themselves to be captured by what is immediate and useful, they live in a fragmentary manner, perhaps distrusting the Mystery that goes beyond what they see and enjoy. They postpone their reflection saying: We should like to hear you on this some other time, as the Athenians to Paul.
Nevertheless, religious indifference is not an impassable wall: self-sufficiency does not satisfy, technology cannot guarantee; on the contrary, it is many times the cause of anguish and the sustenance of the fears of modern man, full of questions and doubts. Without hesitation, we must proclaim Christ to all people.” It is an urgent task for all of us.
* * * * *
Dear all:
Seeing the pressing dangers, unceasing attacks and the evils that shake the Church today, must not lead us to be afraid for the Church. For “To carry out the will of the Father, Christ inaugurated the Kingdom of heaven on earth.” The kingdom of God truly signifies victory over the power of evil present in the world and over he who hiddenly is its principal agent: the prince of this world.
Let us march forward convinced of what the Incarnate Word himself assured: You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. And “As that remains which Peter believed in Christ, so that remains which Christ instituted in Peter.”
This means that we must not fear the vanishing of infallibility; or the dethronement of God, or the ceasing of transubstantiation, or the disappearing of the sacraments. We must be concerned that the world be led by error, that barbarism reign, the family perish, and moral law be eclipsed. For this not to happen, we must labor –”unafraid of persecutors who threaten the Church at all time”– as men whose vocation has no meaning outside of God and His promises, with great courage and firmness in our faith so that Jesus Christ may reign. He is the fullness of all authentically-human life and culture.
We must always remember that if we are religious of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, it is to dedicate ourselves totally to God as our ultimate love, to live given completely to the edification of the Church and the salvation of the world: whether given to contemplation on the mountain, or proclaiming the kingdom of God to the multitudes… yet, always obedient to the will of the Father who sent us.”
May the Solemnity of the Transfiguration find us evermore fervent in our intention to tirelessly proclaim Jesus Christ, fullness of all authentically-human life and culture, taking his grace to all men. May our effort be evermore generous in making faith become culture.
We commend to Mary, Mother of the Church, all of our missionaries who in so many parts of the world are men of God amid so many men without God. May She always lavish upon the Mystical Body of Christ, born of the pierced Heart of Our Savior, the maternal care and charity which she lavished upon the Incarnate Word.
I send you a big hug.
In Christ and His Holy Mother,
Fr. Gustavo Nieto, IVE
