our purpose

Our Institute, just as every Institute of consecrated life in the Church, both religious and secular (cf. Canon Law, 573-606), has a universal and common end by which we wish to follow Christ more closely under the action of the Holy Spirit.  We dedicate ourselves totally to God as our supreme love, so that, contributing to the edification of the Church and the salvation of the souls, we may attain the perfection of charity, and by the charity to which the profession of the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience leads, unite ourselves in a special way to the Church and to Her mystery.

We, as every religious institute, also have a proper end, which is none other than the total consecration of our person, manifesting the admirable espousal established by God in the Church, a sign of eternal life in Heaven. In this way we will consummate the full gift of ourselves as a sacrifice offered to God, by which our whole existence becomes a continuous worship of God in charity.

This is manifested in the fact that we are a family, make public vows, and live a fraternal life in common; and the public witness that we must give entails a detachment from the world. To live according to the Holy Spirit, we must necessarily separate ourselves from the spirit of the world: The Spirit of truth… which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it (Jn. 14:17).

Finally, we have a specific and singular end, which is to dedicate ourselves to the evangelization of culture. Evangelization of culture means to work towards transforming “through the power of the Gospel, mankind’s criteria of judgment, determining values, points of interest, lines of thought, sources of inspiration and models of life, which are in contrast with the Word of God and the plan of salvation” (Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 19) since “the very power of the Gospel should permeate thought patterns, standards of judgment, and norms of behavior” (John Paul II, Sapientia Christiana, 1) for we cannot forget that the second Vatican Council has pointed out that the “split between the faith which many profess and their daily lives deserves to be counted among the more serious errors of our age” (Gaudium et spes, 43).

For this reason, we want to pledge all our strength “so as not to be evasive to the missionary adventure, to inculturate the Gospel in the diversity of all cultures… assuming all that is authentically human in order to be like another humanity of Christ, to carry out… the service of God and man” (IVE profession vows formula).