Rome, Italy, May 1st, 2019
Mary, Mother and Teacher of Our Priesthood
Pastores dabo vobis, 82
Dear Fathers, Brothers, Seminarians, and Novices,
I have once more the pleasure of addressing all of you through this circular letter, just a few days from celebrating our Queen and Mother, the Most Blessed Virgin of Luján. This year, this celebration falls at the same time as the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Virgin of Luján Project, which has brought us such great goods and graces.
Without a doubt, the Virgin of Luján is intimately intertwined in the history of our Institute and our Marian identity. Her precious image in our religious houses, parishes, schools, homes, etc., silently but manifestly confesses that we are all hers and that from Her we hope for “her indispensable help in perpetuating the Incarnation in all things.”
Since our Institute is a clerical institute, wherein the majority of the members are priests or are preparing for the priesthood, the role of the Mother of God in our lives is fundamental. This is for two reasons: because we are priests and because we are religious missionaries of the Institute of the Incarnate Word. So, it is very important to deepen our devotion and, in holy abandon, to surrender more and more our priesthood into the arms of such an exalted Mother.
We, through participation in Christ’s priesthood, enjoy the ineffable and sweet privilege of being the predilect of the Virgin. Pope Benedict XVI pointed it out to us: “In fact, Mary loves them [priests] with predilection for two reasons: because they are more like Jesus, the supreme love of her heart, and because, like her, they are committed to the mission of proclaiming, bearing witness to and giving Christ to the world.” Therefore, we should make the most of the precious inheritance received from the Incarnate Word: our heavenly Mother.
The very story of the Virgin of Luján, with examples of her maternal and generous help of priests, illustrates how close we priests are to her Immaculate Heart. For example, in 1875, Fr. Jorge María Salvaire, a French Lazarist missionary in Argentina, had been imprisoned and condemned to death by the natives, and was freed after having made a vow to the Virgin of Luján to build a temple worthy of her, to spread devotion to her, and to make her story known everywhere until the end of his days, as he himself relates. Today, we owe him three great Works: the magnificent book in two volumes, “Historia de Nuestra Señora de Luján,” published in 1885 and upon which he had worked for 8 years (and in whose dedication he related his miraculous rescue), the pontifical coronation of the holy and venerated image in 1886, and the construction of the great basilica in her honor that we can still see today.
With other innumerable signs like this, the Mother of the Incarnate Word has always manifested her will to exercise her maternal function especially over “her sons the priests.”
1. The Virgin is our true and proper spiritual Mother
All saints of all times, from both East and West, have given great importance to devotion to the Virgin in a priest’s life, as an efficacious support on the way of sanctification, constant fortitude in personal trials, and a source of ever-new impetus for the apostolate.
That is why Saint John Bosco used to say to his followers, “devotion to Mary most holy is a great defense and a powerful weapon against the wiles of the devil. […] Mary assures us that if we are devoted to her she will count us among her children, cover us with her mantle and shower us with blessings in this world so as to gain heaven for us. […] Love, therefore, this heavenly Mother, turn to her with your whole heart.”
The Spiritual Father of our Religious Family, in his first Letter to Priests for Holy Thursday – a letter that, if you will, is programmatic for priestly Marian spirituality – said to us, “the Mother of Christ, … in a special way is our Mother: the Mother of Priests.”
The profound reason for our devotion to Mary as religious priests is found in the essential relationship that God in His Providence has established between the Mother of Christ and the priesthood of her Son, continued in us – that one and only priesthood in which we participate – as ministers of His Blood.
This relationship of the Virgin with the priesthood derives, above all, from the fact of her maternity. Because, the instant the Incarnation took place, Mary became the mother of the High Priest. Indeed, by the Word taking on human nature, the eternal Son of God fulfilled the necessary condition to become, through His death and resurrection, humanity’s only priest. And while Christ, when he came into the world, he said: “Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me. […] Then I said, ‘… I come to do your will, O God’”; the Virgin Mary showed an identical disposition saying, Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.
And so, our proper law exhorts us to “learn to be enclosed with Christ in Mary’s womb, where, at the moment of Incarnation, we were included. […] We too were conceived in the most pure womb of Mary. Therefore, she is our true and proper spiritual Mother.”. And there we must learn with Jesus “to depend totally and completely on God through Mary.”
So much so that “our priestly spirituality could be considered complete if it did not seriously take into consideration the will and testament of Christ crucified, who wanted to entrust His Mother to the beloved disciple and, through him, to all priests, who have been called to continue His work of redemption.”
But even more: this good Mother “was associated in a unique way to Christ’s priestly sacrifice, sharing His will to save the world by means of the Cross.” This is why Saint John Paul II declared, “She was the first and most perfect spiritual participant in His oblation of sacerdos et hostia. As such, she could obtain and give to those who participate on the ministerial level in her Son’s priesthood the grace of impetus in order to respond better to the demands of spiritual oblation that the priesthood requires: specifically, the grace of faith, of hope, and of perseverance in trials, recognized as stimuli to a more generous participation in the redemptive offering.”
Jesus’ words to His sorrowful Mother on Calvary: Woman, behold, your son speak without a doubt of the universal motherhood of the Blessed Virgin in the life of grace of each Christian. But we cannot forget the fact that these words were said to the beloved disciple who the day before, in the Cenacle, had heard from Christ’s lips the words: Do this in memory of me. That is to say, Mary is given as Mother to John, to whom Christ Himself had given the power to celebrate the Eucharist and who belonged, like the other Apostles, to the group of the first priests. Likewise, Saint John, being a priest, is given to Mary as her son.
“All of us, therefore, who receive the same power through priestly Ordination” to renew the sacrifice of the Cross, “have in a certain sense a prior right to see her as our Mother.”
And so, the words of Christ on the cross to the Apostle, Behold, your son, make the maternity of the Virgin take on for us a strength and a special dimension if we consider that they were said to the apostle-priest. In fact, it is very comforting for the priestly soul to think that when Jesus entrusted Saint John in a special way to His Mother’s care, He also entrusted us and the long generations of priests who will succeed us until the end of times.
But our Lord, in making this most excellent gift, also said to the disciple and in him to all of us: Behold, your mother. From which follows the natural and sweet obligation of every Christian to treat Mary as our Mother, to love her, to defend her. Nevertheless, we cannot omit the significant detail that these words were directed at a priest. “Can we not perhaps deduce from this that the ‘Priest’ is in charge of promoting and developing this devotion? That he is the primary one responsible for it?”
Let us always keep in mind that Marian devotion and working “according to the example of the Virgin Mary” is a non-negotiable element that follows and is included in the Institute’s charism itself. And this to the point that we have the distinctive element of professing a fourth vow of maternal slavery of love of Mary. Therefore, the full importance of this element should be appreciated so that it might be a constant source of supernatural fecundity for our Religious Family.
Our proper law does not exhort us in vain to “be apostles of Mary giving ourselves up to Her in a filial slavery of love, and doing everything ‘through Mary, with Mary, in Mary and for Mary.’”
As religious priests, as missionaries, as slaves, we enjoy a splendid and penetrating closeness to the Mother of Christ. So, it should be connatural in us to turn to her with exceptional hope and love. Because there is no need or care of body or soul that this Mother of Mercy is not ready to aid with efficacious assistance.
We also – like the Apostle John – should receive the Blessed Virgin “‘within the home’ of our sacramental priesthood.” That is to say, “love and venerate with a filial trust the most blessed Virgin Mary” who keeps nothing for herself. This “receiving Mary in our home,” explains John Paul the Great, “means making her a place in our life, and being united to her daily in thought, affection, and zeal for the Kingdom of God and for His worship. […] The priest always has to bear in mind that in the difficulties that he meets with, he can count on Mary’s help; he should commend his person and his pastoral ministry to her.” Because this affectionate and ineffably tender Mother is not distant; she does not forget about our affairs, but rather helps us in everything with great effectiveness, and even foresees our needs. How many proofs we have of what Mary’s imploring omnipotence can do!
For us who confess to be essential Marian, devotion to the Virgin is fundamental and a very handy recourse which gives us support during our entire priestly life and should make our ministry very fruitful. If we live our ministry united to Mary Most Holy, it will be guarded in her Heart and we will be able to remain, like Her, ready to serve all. In this way, it will be fruitful and redeeming, in all its aspects. Let us never forget that the Virgin is one of our great loves, and should therefore be the object of continuous attention and prayer.
The Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen wrote, “The priest has a deep love of Mary not only in his better moments, but even in his failings. He trusts in her intercession to combat his weakness. Then especially he looks to her for special attention, knowing that the child who falls most often is apt to get most of the mother’s kisses. If ever the Simon-nature dominates him; if there come moments when, like Demas, he has fallen in love with this present world; if he becomes known in the parish as a ‘golfer’ or a ‘swell guy’ or ‘one of the boys’ rather than a good priest, then he knows where he must go to help him find his Lord again. He must go to Mary.”
Therefore, the Magisterium of the Church exhorts us to have a tender, authentic, and personal devotion to the Mother of the Incarnate Word, since She “offers [us] a calm vision and a reassuring word.” And gently laying our head with her hands upon her Immaculate Heart – as only motherly pedagogy knows how – she teaches us “the victory of hope over anguish, of fellowship over solitude, of peace over anxiety, of joy and beauty over boredom and disgust, of eternal visions over earthly ones, of life over death.”
We don’t need anyone to tell us that the priestly vocation implies a participation in Christ’s sufferings. But I do want to stress that “to shorten the distance on the difficult road, to reduce roughness and overcome obstacles, Mary, Mother of the Eternal Priest and of all priests, watches over us, with the sensitivity of her heart and the power of her intercession. Never tire of turning to Her. Pray with humble insistence and complete trust. The Most Holy Virgin will hear your pleas. She will be the Stella Matutina, who at each awakening will cast an ever-new light before your steps.” In other words, “Be most devoted to the Virgin.”
We, as priests, should show the same love as Christ did for His Mother, with lively expressions of Marian devotion like daily consecration to Mary Most Holy, intimate colloquies with Her, confiding to Her all our daily efforts, difficulties, and joys, wearing the Scapular, having nearby an image of the Virgin which always reminds us that we are under her motherly gaze, praying the office of the Blessed Virgin in sabbato, and the thousands of other details that filial affection suggests, but above all, “the love of Mary is visibly manifested through the prayer of the Holy Rosary.”
2. May the Holy Virgin Mary be the form, mold, and guide of all our actions
“As we know, the Blessed Virgin played her role of mother not only in Jesus’ physical generation, but also in his moral education.” By virtue of her maternity, it was up to her to adequately educate the Child Jesus for his priestly mission, that is to say, for being a victim.
Similarly, Mary is present at the beginning of every vocation and accompanies it throughout the whole formative process. If this is true of all vocations, how much more of each member of the Institute of the Incarnate Word! Because long before we considered the religious vocation – and even before we were born – the Virgin of Luján already treasured in her Heart the sons that would one day be priests of IVE. And so, we can say that, without a doubt, the Blessed Virgin’s great love is behind our vocation. Therefore, this profound, concrete, and genuine devotion of which we have been speaking, should take shape and show itself already in the Novitiate and be reaffirmed even more during the time of formation in the Major Seminary, in order to gather all its strength and maturity during our ministry, and reciprocate our Mother’s preferential love.
This is what Canon Law prescribes, as well as our proper law: “The veneration of the Blessed Virgin Mary, including the Marian rosary, mental prayer, and other exercises of piety are to be fostered; through these, students are to acquire a spirit of prayer and gain strength in their vocation.”
We all know that Mary, as our Mother and Mother of the Incarnate Word, eternal High Priest, is the eminent educator of our priesthood. “She cooperates with a maternal [and active] love” in the training of all those who one day will become brothers of her Son, and who, in fact, will become his friends. Even more, She will do everything in her power so that they may not betray this holy friendship.
She is the loving Mother and faithful servant who knows how to form the priestly heart. And just like she looked after the Incarnate Word with motherly solicitude, in the same way she watches to see that we advance in wisdom, age, and favor before God and man.
Even though we have often said it to others, we should remember it ourselves: “Those who do not imitate the virtues of the Mother will not be devoted sons.” As priests, therefore, we have to look at Mary if we want to be humble, obedient, and chaste ministers, who can give testimony to charity through our total donation to the Lord and to His Church. Because, guided by the Most Pure Virgin’s maternal hand and in the heat of her Immaculate Heart, our soul becomes permeated by the aroma of Christ and our heart is penetrated with the same attitude [as] Christ Jesus.”
And so, the Directory of Consecrated Life explicitly declares: “She is the perfect model of a consecrated person. Every religious ought to contemplate and imitate her always.”
What do we as ministers or future ministers of Christ learn from Mary?
Fundamentally, one learns from the Virgin to daily pronounce his fiat, and like her, be always available to God’s will: “in the humility of a hidden life, in the acceptance of sufferings for the sake of completing in their own flesh ‘what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions,’ in silent sacrifice and abandonment to God’s holy will, and in serene fidelity even as their strength and personal authority wane.” What a contradiction it would be to see the magnificent example of generosity in our Mother’s personal dedication and then sow stingily!
In the daily contact with the Virgin, one acquires “that maternal love, which should animate all those who, associated in the apostolic mission of the Church, collaborate in the regeneration of men.” And “as in [the Virgin Mary] were united virginity and motherhood, so, in the priest, there is to be unity of virginity and fatherhood,” in order to engender Christ in others. Saint John Paul II asked priests, “If the whole Church ‘learns her own motherhood from Mary,’ do we not need to do so as well?”
From the Virgin Mary’s haste to assist her cousin Saint Elizabeth we learn “docility and readiness in the execution of the Holy Spirit’s requests, […] always work[ing] against the temptation to delay, against the fear to sacrifice and totally surrender, and against the temptation to recover what we have given, seeking compensation or setting our hearts on things that are not of God.” Fulton Sheen, in a very real and concrete manner, says that the priest learns that there can be “no delays on sick calls, no tarrying while the family worries, but, like Mary, the priest ‘hastens’ – for nothing demands speed so much as the need of others.”
Contemplating our Mother in the mystery of the loss and finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple, we learn this great lesson: we should not wait for the lost to return: we have to go and search for them. Because if we are missionaries, we should “be driven by ‘zeal for souls’” and “not seek anything else except that the good of souls spreads and grows.” “In this sense, the new evangelization demands that the priest make his genuine presence evident. The ministers of Jesus Christ should be seen as present and available among men. For this, their friendly and fraternal integration in the community is also important.” Nothing is further from the example of our Mother than angry priests, shut up in an office and without close contact with souls.
In the mystery of the Wedding at Cana, the Virgin teaches priests that we do not belong to ourselves but to the Church. “About this, Optatam totius exhorts us, ‘Let them also be imbued with that truly Catholic spirit which will accustom them to transcend the limits of their own diocese, nation, or rite, and to help the needs of the whole Church, prepared in spirit to preach the Gospel everywhere.’”
In turn, true devotion to Mary keeps the priest from being the hireling a hired servant with fixed hours, assigned duties, parish limits, and no lost sheep. That is to say, it prevents us from being like those who seek their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ, who do not love Christ gratuitously, who do not seek God for God, who pursue temporal comforts, avid for profit and desirous of human honors. Because, for the true devotee of Mary, “on duty” does not exist, since “the soul that walks in love neither tires others nor grows tired” is everywhere “on love”.
The Blessed Virgin also teaches priests the meaning of compassion, which never breaks the bruised reed nor quenches the smoldering wick. The priest who leads an easy, unmortified life, who is self-raised above the needy, cannot bend to show compassion to others. “In this sense preparation for the priesthood must necessarily involve a proper training in charity and particularly in the preferential love for the ‘poor’ […] and a merciful love for sinners.” A love that is defined as the love of the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.
Also, from the Mother at the foot of the cross we learn to suffer in silence and, in fact, to give one’s life for the sheep. The Venerable American Archbishop expressed it this way: “If the good Holy Mother Mary, who deserved to be spared evil, could, nevertheless, in the special Providence of her Son, have a cross, then how shall we, who deserve not to be ranked with her, expect to escape our meeting with a cross? ‘What did I do to deserve this?’ is a cry of pride. What did Jesus do? What did Mary do? Let there be no complain against God for sending a cross; let there only be wisdom enough to see that Mary is there making it lighter, making it sweeter, making it hers!”
They say that Saint Luigi Orione used to pour out his heart to the Virgin out loud in moments of great cross, seeking her maternal protection. When the Oratory in Tortona was forcibly closed, he said to the Virgin, “Dearest and most venerable Mother, oh my Mother, who never abandons anyone, do not abandon me, your poor and youngest son! I truly cannot go on… Save me, oh dear Mother, save me with my youth and oratory. We are slandered and abandoned by all. I cannot go on alone… If you do not come, I will drown with my children. Come dear Mother, come and do not delay! Come, oh Mother, come and save us!”
We must do the same, following the Constitution’s express recommendation that order us to “suffer with her,” especially when it is a question of the crosses of the priestly ministry. Because although the Virgin Mary sweetens all our crosses, she does so chiefly with those that have to do with our pastoral work, which, as our proper law says well, “is a cross.” Let us never forget that from Her comes the indispensable help in perpetuating the Incarnation in all things.
But we must also “talk about her, honor her, glorify her, entrust [ourselves] to her, rejoice and suffer with her, work, pray and rest with her.” Otherwise, we run the risk that our devotion to the Virgin will become abstract, cold, and selfish, until finally becoming sterile.
At all times, we should nourish the true devotion to Mary, which is always “interior, trustful, holy, constant and disinterested,” getting practical results out of it for our life and priestly ministry, which is nothing other than “‘marianiz[ing]’ life.”
3. The Virgin of Luján Project
Devotion to the Virgin is central to our spirituality to the point that on repeated occasions our proper law synthesizes it as a “fundamental code,” saying: “Not Jesus or Mary; not Mary or Jesus / Neither Jesus without Mary; nor Mary without Jesus / Neither only Jesus, but also Mary; not only Mary, but also Jesus / Always Jesus and Mary; always Mary and Jesus […] Everything through Jesus and through Mary; with Jesus and with Mary; in Jesus and in Mary; for Jesus and for Mary.” Because a true relationship with Jesus Christ cannot fail to be accompanied by an authentic devotion to Mary, His Mother and our Mother.
Such a spirituality expresses itself not only in the profession of the fourth vow of Marian slavery, according to the spirit of Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, but also in desiring the presence of the Virgin in all our missions and activities, since we are convinced that devotion to Mary Most Holy is of an incomparable pastoral efficacy when it comes to attracting souls to Christ. From this follow the lively efforts that our missionaries all over the world make to spread devotion to Mary among the souls entrusted to them: through preaching, praying the rosary in the parishes, celebrating with great solemnity Masses and processions in honor of the Mother of God on her feast days, striving to get more and more souls to make the Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary, organizing pilgrimages to her sanctuaries, adorning with great decorum her altar, promoting the scapular, naming her Patroness of parish groups, etc.
And it is with this same certainty that devotion to the Blessed Virgin, the great evangelizer of the culture, has a great pastoral effectiveness and constitutes a force for renewing Christian living, that the Virgin of Luján Project, which has made the Virgin even more “ours,” emerged 20 years ago.
As you all know, the Virgin of Luján Project was born on January 1st, 1999, in an effort to give more glory to the Virgin. Furthermore, her image was chosen because she is the Heavenly Patroness of the country where our Religious Family was born and because we owe Her great goods and innumerable graces, like the gift of our vocation to the Institute itself, as our Founder attests.
Undeniable, this Project has been a splendid vehicle for promoting devotion to the Virgin of Luján. First of all, among our religious of so many different nationalities, and also among the souls entrusted to us in such distant countries as the Philippines, Tajikistan, Papua New Guinea, etc.
On this point, I want to note that devotion to the Virgin of Luján is not just something for “Argentinians,” but for the Institute as a whole. And this by the request of religious who at the time were mostly not Argentinian. Let us remember that the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments has recognized the Blessed Virgin of Luján as the official Patroness of our Institute. That is to say, the Virgin of Luján is our Patroness. And just like the great missionaries would always carry with them an image of the Virgin wherever they went, so should every member of the Institute not only have the Virgin of Luján, who begat him for religious life in this Institute, engraved in the depths of his soul, but our missions should also be presided by the Clean and Pure Conception of Luján.
Today, by the grace of God, most of our missionaries in more than forty countries have the consolation of being able rest their eyes each day on the sky-blue mantle of the Virgin de Luján. If at present there is a mission or religious house that does not have the Holy Image, it is desirable that those religious take all the necessary steps to be able to have one. Because she “teaches us to evangelize the culture, founded on our own values, but always being open to the universal ones.” And, furthermore, because the Virgin of Luján desires to extend her maternal protection to all peoples who invoke her. Therefore, I also encourage you to obtain holy cards, statuettes, medals, and other objects of piety, in order to promote devotion to her.
Consequently, it is key that, from the Novitiate, we steep ourselves in the story of the Virgin de Luján, that we promote the study of the books of Mons. Juan Antonio Presas, the greatest historian of the Virgin de Luján, putting them at the disposition of our religious and of her devotees, so that from knowledge is engendered love. On the other hand, it is also necessary to promote devotion to her through praying the novena, distributing holy cards with the prayer to the Virgin, solemnizing her feast day, organizing her coronation where it has not yet been done, etc. That is to say, we must be true apostles of the Virgin de Luján, transmitting to others our love for Her in different ways, while always respecting to the utmost the particular devotions the faithful in the mission.
For this reason, this upcoming May 8th, and within the year of the 20th anniversary of the Virgin de Luján Project, we will very solemnly celebrate the Holy Mass in honor of our Heavenly Mother in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore here in Rome.
There, in the name of all, we will present gifts to the Queen of the Institute that we have been preparing this past year with the Sisters Servants of the Lord.
These gifts are the republication five literary treasures – already out of print – that refer to our Mother, the Most Pure Virgin de Luján:
– The first is “Nuestra Señora de Luján – Estudio crítico-histórico – 1630-1730,” published by Mons. Juan Antonio Presas in 1980, for the celebration in Argentina of the 350th anniversary of the arrival of the holy and miraculous image of Our Lady of Luján to its shores. This volume encloses three prior studies of the author, actualized and augmented by many more documents.
– The second is the two volumes of the “Historia de Nuestra Señora de Luján,” written by Fr. Jorge María Salvaire, mentioned at the beginning of this letter. This work was part of the vow that Fr. Salvaire made before his miraculous liberation from imminent death. According to the experts, the Historia of Fr. Salvaire, “is immeasurably superior to all other [works] of its genre from the end of the last century.”
– The other three writings, which will be in a single volume, are the documented edition, with photographs, of the two oldest historical accounts of Our Lady of Luján: that of R. P. Fray Pedro Nolasco de Santa María, entitled “Historia de Nuestra Señora de Luján” and written in 1737, and that of R. P. Fray Antonio Oliver, entitled “Historia verídica sobre el origen, fundación y progresos del Santuario de la Purísima Concepción de Nuestra Señora de la Villa de Luján con la Novena a la Santísima Virgen” and published in 1812 by Fr. Maqueda. We have also added a speech, later published as a scientific article in 1967, by Dr. Raúl Alejandro Molina – member of the National Argentinian Academy of History – entitled Leyenda e historia de la Virgen de Luján, which has marked a before and after in the investigation of the Miracle of Luján.
It should be noted that the different chapters of the two volumes of Fr. Salvaire’s work, as well as the sections that divide the documented edition of the ancient chronicles, and the work of Mons. Presas have been illustrated with magnificent oil paintings by Sr. María de Jesús Sacramentado, who very generously put her artistic gifts at the service of this work. She also did a beautiful painting of the Servant of God “Negro Manuel” Costa de los Ríos, as he is described in the historical study elaborated by Mons. Guillermo Durán.
Finally, holy cards of the Virgin of Luján with a prayer to Her composed by one of our members, will be distributed. This prayer will be prayed by all of us together in front the Image of the Clean and Pure Conception of Luján in order to renew our consecration to Her, invoking her Patronage over our Religious Family, as well as to thank her for our vocation and for the numerous vocations she is pleased to continue sending to our Institute, to entrust the vocation and priestly ministry of all our members to her maternal protection and to ask her that she make it abundantly fruitful, and lastly, to pray for the swift and successful achievement of several projects that are in progress in the Institute as a whole.
* * * * *
Within days of the beautiful feast of the Virgin of Luján, my fervent prayer is that all the members of our Religious Family will be faithful to the precious inheritance that the Incarnate Word has bequeathed to us: our Lady, our Mother, in her advocation of Mary of Luján.
May Mary, the “forma Dei,” also form Christ in our souls with those mysterious and intangible touches of maternal love. May her intercession convert the water of our lives in wine and wash with her tears the Blood of the wounds opened on the cross. May she also obtain for us the grace to receive the gift of our priesthood with grateful love, fully appreciating it like she did in the Magnificat; the grace of generosity in our personal dedication, in imitation of her example of generous Mother; the grace of purity and fidelity in the commitment of celibacy, following her example of faithful Virgin; the grace of an ardent and merciful love in the light of her testimony of Mother of mercy.
Sending you a big hug, in the Incarnate Word and His Mother, the Virgin of Luján,
Fr. Gustavo Nieto, IVE
General Superior
