San José, USA, September 1^st, 2019

“Love that is not born from the cross of Christ is weak”

Directory of Spirituality, 137

Dear Fathers, Brothers, Seminarians, and Novices, 

The mystery that identifies us, that of the Incarnation of the Word, is directly related to the mystery of the Cross that we will celebrate in a few days. 

Today as in the past, the Cross continues to be a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, […] Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

And so, the confession of Crist Crucified usually – and I would almost say that this is a norm of Christian life – brings the cross with it. 

“The thing about the Church that scandalizes,” said the Holy Father, “is the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word… This is the reason for persecution [… when we assert that] the Son of God came and was made flesh, when we preach the scandal of the cross, then persecutions will come, then the cross will come.”

And nevertheless, the Church’s fundamental task in all ages – and I would say, especially in our times – is always to lead souls to meet Christ Crucified, through the cross and the death that leads to resurrection. Because it is precisely on the cross that the soul is united with God. 

In fact, we were created for this union with God, and this union is achieved through the Cross and is consummated and sanctified on the Cross. It is a union that is sealed for all eternity with the Cross.

For this reason, not only all our efforts of evangelization should begin in and lead to the mystery of the Cross – to Jesus Christ crucified – but we ourselves must also penetrate the unfathomable mystery of the cross in our lives, if we are truly to be “a living memory of the way that Jesus, the Word made flesh, lived and behaved.”

But furthermore, as an Institute, we must be ready to embrace the cross in order to “relive and testify to the one mystery of Christ, above all in the aspects of His self-abasement and of His transfiguration,” as our proper law states.

This is what we want to do and what all our missionaries do in fact do, testifying that “Jesus is loved and served on the Cross and crucified with Him, and not in any other way.”

1. The Cross in our lives

“Model your life on the mystery of the Lord’s cross,” says the Rite of Ordination, and all of us who have been ordained remember that these words were once pointedly addressed to us.

And so, in accordance with the invitation that Christ once made to us, whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me, our vocation is none other than to die each day “in order to nail in our hearts the One who was nailed to the cross for us.” This implies “resolutely submitting to the carrying of the cross, if they decidedly want to find and endure trial in all things for God […] because they will be traveling the road denuded of all and with no desire for anything.”

For this reason, we were advised already in the novitiate “to live profoundly united to Christ in His passion, in order to return love for love, paying with deeds.” And then, in the seminary, we were taught even more the “meaning of the cross” and to put into practice “the radical self-giving proper to the priest” so that, “mysteriously participating in the cross of Christ, we collaborate in the building up of His body.” You will all remember the lasting fruit produced by the beautiful custom taught to us in the Seminary of making what we call “The Book of the Passion”: it is a concrete way to learn the “science of the cross.”

Saint John of the Cross, in one of the most sublime pages of Christian literature, explains, “Oh, that one could show us how to understand, practice, and experience what this counsel is which our Savior here gives us concerning self-denial, so that spiritual persons might see in how different a way they should conduct themselves upon this road from that which many of them think proper! For they believe that any kind of retirement and reformation of life suffices; and others are content with practicing the virtues and continuing in prayer and pursuing mortification; but they attain not to detachment and poverty or selflessness or spiritual purity (which are all one), which the Lord here commends to us; for they prefer feeding and clothing their natural selves with spiritual feelings and consolations, to stripping themselves of all things and denying themselves all things, for God’s sake. For they think that it suffices to deny themselves worldly things without annihilating and purifying themselves of spiritual attachment. Wherefore it comes to pass that, when there presents itself to them any of this solid and perfect spirituality, consisting in the annihilation of all sweetness in God, in aridity, distaste and trial, which is the true spiritual cross, and the detachment of the spiritual poverty of Christ, they flee from it as from death, and seek only sweetness and delectable communion with God. This is not self-denial and detachment of spirit, but spiritual gluttony. Herein, spiritually, they become enemies of the Cross of Christ; for true spirituality seeks for God’s sake that which is distasteful rather than that which is delectable; and inclines itself rather to suffering than to consolation; and desires to go without all blessings for God’s sake rather than to possess them; and to endure aridities and afflictions rather than to enjoy sweet communications, knowing that this is to follow Christ and to deny oneself, and that the other is perchance to seek oneself in God, which is clean contrary to love. For to seek oneself in God is to seek the favors and refreshments of God; but to seek God in oneself is not only to desire to be without both of these for God’s sake, but to be disposed to choose, for Christ’s sake, all that is most distasteful, whether in relation to God or to the world; and this is love of God.”

God has created our souls for Himself. And He desires to unite them to Himself and to give them the immeasurable fullness and incomprehensible bliss of His own divine life, already in this life. This is the goal we are aiming at, and we should be persuaded that “the cross… is the staff wherewith one may reach one’s goal.” But the fact is that many souls stop on the way or, terrified, flee.

This should not happen with the members of the Institute, because the Cross is an essential part of the Christian life and “belongs in a particular way to the essence of the vocation linked to the profession of the evangelical counsels.” We should clearly realize that ours is a call to crucify the old man, not a call to have a good time. And so, it is very advisable “to be willing to die,” to go through the second and third conversion, and to apply the will to “loving the living cross of toils, humiliations, insults, tortures, pains, persecutions, misunderstandings, annoyances, disgraces, scorn, shame, slanders, death…;” and all this, “not with a childish spirit, but with a robust will.”

And indeed, that our lives be marked by the cross “is the greatest gift God can bestow upon His chosen ones on earth.” Because this is the way that “the progressive collapse of nature gives more and more room to the supernatural light and to divine life” and how we become “another Incarnation of the Word,” “other Christs.” Know also that, in general, God purges with greater intensity and more quickly those who have the disposition and greater strength to suffer.

Therefore, one should not retreat before the cross, or be afraid, or avoid it, but rather, ours is to advance with a valiant soul, without complaints, without stinginess, and without seeking consolations or rewards. And the more willingly we stretch ourselves on the Cross and let ourselves be nailed to it, the more profoundly we will experience the reality of being united to the Crucified One. “To take the cross God sends us,” says the Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen, “as He took the one given to Him, even though we do not deserve it, is the shortest way to identification with God’s will which is the beginning of Power and Peace: Power because we are one with Him who can do all things; Peace because we are tranquil in the love of Him who is just.”

To Doña Juana de Pedraza, a lady directed by Saint John of the Cross and who was perhaps tempted not to advance by the narrow way of the cross, the Mystical Doctor wrote: “You were never better off than now because you were never so humble or so submissive, or considered yourself and all worldly things to be so small; […] nor did you serve God so purely and disinterestedly as now, nor did you follow after the imperfections of your own will and interests as perhaps you were accustomed to do. What is it you desire? What kind of life or method of procedure do you paint for yourself in this life? What do you think serving God involves other than avoiding evil, keeping His commandments, and being occupied with the things of God as best we can? When this is had, what need is there of other apprehensions or other lights and satisfactions from this source or that? In this there is hardly ever a lack of stumbling blocks and dangers for the soul […]. What need is there in order to be right other than to walk along the level road of the law of God and of the Church, and live only in dark and true faith and certain hope and complete charity, expecting all our blessings in heaven, living here below like pilgrims, the poor, the exiled, orphans, the thirsty, without a road and without anything, hoping for everything in heaven? Rejoice and trust in God […]. Desire no other path than this and adjust your soul to it (for it is a good one).”

Our proper law points out that if “according to the plan of the most Holy Trinity, it was necessary for Jesus Christ to suffer in order to save all men, [that is to say, that] if in the actual salvific economy Christ’s Passion was necessary, then it will also be necessary for us to suffer. If there were another way to Heaven, Jesus Christ would have followed it, and moreover, He would have taught it. However, He did not. Christ went by means of the royal road of the Holy Cross, and He taught us to go by it as well.” Therefore, the Cross is nothing less than the way to heaven and, what is more, “it is the shortest and surest way.” And so, “Make no mistake: since it was necessary for Eternal Wisdom to enter heaven by the way of the Cross, it is necessary to enter after Him by the same way.”

We are asked to “be experts in the wisdom of the cross, in the love of the cross, and in the joy of the cross” and even to “have an intense desire for the cross” and to “pray for this grace… to suffer for His sake.” Now, “a science of the cross can be gained only when one comes to feel the Cross radically.” Does this cross not materialize in the suffering, fatigue, and hardships of each day, as well as in the humiliation of failure, the alienations and difficulties of daily life? Then why do we complain? There are even some who think that the “world stops” to attend to their needs, forgetting that “they are all comparable to knocks and rappings at the door of your soul so that it might love more” and that “he who seeks not the cross of Christ seeks not the glory of Christ.” Therefore, we have to make the most of them and persevere, firm in the vocation we received from the hands of the One who said to us through the apostle: may grace and peace be yours in abundance, and carry on “to supreme hope in the incomprehensible God.”

So, what should be our attitude towards the cross? We have already said something about this: it should be courageous, gallant, because this is the priestly attitude that is proper to the “third class of men” that we meditate on each year in the Spiritual Exercises. This calls for “an integral act of faith and total surrender [to Christ], with an explicit decision not to make a pact with, compromise with, capitulate with, negotiate with, surrender to or give in to the spirit of the world.”

But we should also realize that in the most interior trials – in passive purifications – what Saint Peter Julian Eymard said sometimes happens: “The good God is pleased to multiply difficulties. He brings to a halt, He nails down in impotence. Souls wish to act, but they cannot.” So, there is nothing more to do than what the Mystical Doctor of Fontiveros advised: 

• Patience and conformity: “Endeavor to bear them patiently and in conformity to God’s will, and not so sustain them that instead of being approved by God in this affliction he be reproved for not having wanted to carry the cross of Christ in patience.” And to do this so greatly despoiled of and detached from creatures that all hell will not be enough to disturb us.

• In silence: “It is impossible to advance without doing and suffering virtuously, all enveloped in silence.” Likewise, says the Teacher of the faith: “When something distasteful or unpleasant comes your way, remember Christ crucified and be silent. Live in faith and hope, even though you are in darkness, because it is in these darknesses that God protects the soul. Cast your care on God, for He watches over you and will not forget you. Do not think that He leaves you alone; that would be an affront to Him.” “Anyone who complains or grumbles is not perfect, nor is he even a good Christian”

• With tranquility: That is to say, “knowing how to be quiet”. “For it is clear that to disquiet oneself is always vain since it brings profit to none. And thus, even if everything came to an end and were destroyed, and if all things went wrong and turned to adversity, it would be vain to disturb oneself; for such disturbance hurts a man rather than relieves him. Instead, […] bear everything with equable and peaceful tranquility […]. [This means] that, in everything that happens to us, howsoever adverse it be, we should rejoice rather than be disturbed”. Therefore, “never, whether in adversity or in prosperity, cease to quiet your heart with deepest love.”

• With joy: “Rejoice habitually in God, who is your salvation, and reflect that it is good to suffer in any way for Him Who is good,” knowing that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.

• Considering the brevity of pain: “But everything is brief, for it lasts only until the knife is raised; and then Isaac remains alive with the promise of a multiplied offspring.”

• Persevering in prayer: “For since prayer is not wanting, God will take care of [the soul’s] possessions; they belong to no other owner, nor should they.”

• With faithfulness to our consecration: “Do not desire to know anything in any way except how better to serve God and keep the observance of your institute.”

Thus, the soul learns the science of the cross, which is science of love, because “Love that is not born from the cross of Christ is weak.” It is not a matter of loving the cross poetically, only with words or ephemeral desires. Ours is to be capable of great and even heroic sacrifices, as our vocation of religious of the Incarnate Word requires. Is this not what that phrase that we put at the foot of the crucifixes in our houses reminds us, “Así se ama” (“This is how to love” or “This is the way one loves.”)? Saint John Paul II said, “The Cross ‘is the most profound condescension of God to man […]. The Cross is like a touch of eternal love upon [our lives]’.”

Therefore, let us carry our cross in the footsteps of Christ poor, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Treasures that the soul cannot access “without entering the thicket of many kinds of suffering, finding in this her delight and consolation […]. The gate entering into these riches of His wisdom is the cross, which is narrow.”

And paraphrasing Saint Louis-Marie, let us say, “Evil spirits are united to destroy you; let us unite to crush them! The avaricious are united to make money and amass gold and silver; let us combine our efforts to acquire the eternal treasures hidden in the Cross! Pleasure-seekers unite to enjoy themselves; Let us unite to walk behind Jesus crucified!” And this brings us to the second part of this letter.

2. Relive and testify to the life of the Incarnate Word

For if each of us is called – and in fact, we promised this solemnly under vow – to be “a living memory of the way that Jesus, the Word made flesh, lived and behaved before the Father and before mankind,” it is natural that the Institute as a whole relive throughout its history the life of the Incarnate Word, who in His infinite wisdom chose “the humiliations of Nazareth and Calvary,” and therefore, the cross. 

Therefore, our Institute as well, in its mission and in its history, is marked by the cross. Our own proper law, throughout each of its documents, is marked by the sign of the cross, and this is decisive in relation to our place in the Church.

Indeed, the very charism of the Institute clearly expresses that the cross of Christ and being crucified with Him is not an element added to the charism, but an integral and essential part of the charism itself: “The specific charism of our Institute requires all its members to work in supreme docility to the Holy Spirit and according to the example of the Virgin Mary, so that Jesus Christ will be the Lord of all that is truly human, even in the most difficult situations and under the most adverse conditions.” This is concretized by bringing the grace of the Redemption to families, education, the mass media, the scholarly, and in all other legitimate manifestations of human life.

So then, our spirituality, the substance of our preaching, the source and convergence point of all our apostolic endeavors, and “the supreme Pulpit of the truth of God and of man” is found on the cross. But even more: our way of living fraternal life in common and our way of doing apostolate are shaped by the imitation of Christ’s self-abasement out of redemptive love: in humble service and generous dedication, in the free donation of self by loving to the extreme.

And this is so because as an Institute we are called “to relive and testify to the one mystery of Christ, above all in the aspects of His self-abasement and of His transfiguration.” This testimony cannot be separated from the scandal of the cross, because “the law of the Incarnation is a law of suffering,” and we should not forget this. 

If Christ Himself, during His earthly life, put radically into crisis “a certain messianic image, firmly established among some Jewish people, who expected a political liberator who would bring national autonomy and material well-being,” we should not be surprised that our Institute, which decidedly declares itself in “full and total rejection of the evil world,” which is determined to remain independent before the maxims, jeers and persecutions of the world, and which professes as a seal of honor “three Persons equal in majesty, undivided in splendor,” meets with opposition, rejection, or constant intrigues from its enemies who, as in other times, also today seek the Incarnate Word in order to put Him to death.

The Holy Father did not say in vain, “‘The problem that scandalized these people [the scribes and elders of Jerusalem] was what the demons shouted at Jesus: You are the Son of God, you are the Holy One. This, this is the center.’ What scandalizes about Jesus is His nature as Incarnate God. And just like they did for Him, ‘they lay traps for our lives.’ What scandalizes about the Church is the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word. Today also we hear it often said, ‘But you Christians, be more normal, like other people, sensible; don’t be so uptight.’ Behind this, in reality, is the request not to announce that ‘God became man,’ because ‘the incarnation of the Word is a scandal.’”

Tertullian compared the scandal of the Incarnation with that of the Cross, since the latter existed only because the former took place. He says, “For which is more unworthy of God, which is more likely to raise a blush of shame, that God should be born, or that He should die? that He should bear the flesh, or the cross? be circumcised, or be crucified? be laid in a manger, or in a tomb? […] Spare the whole world’s one only hope, thou who art destroying the indispensable dishonor of our faith. Whatsoever is unworthy of God, is of gain to me. […] The Son of God was crucified; I am not ashamed because men must needs be ashamed of it. And the Son of God died; it is by all means to be believed, because it is absurd. […] But how will all this be true in Him, if He was not Himself true – if He really had not in Himself that which might be crucified, might die, might be buried, and might rise again? […] Thus the nature of the two substances displayed Him as man and God, – in one respect born, in the other unborn; in one respect fleshly, in the other spiritual; in one sense weak, in the other exceeding strong; in one sense dying, in the other living. […] Wherefore halve Christ with a lie? He was wholly the truth.”

And so, just as throughout all of history there were many who were scandalized by the Incarnation of the Word and of His Cross: Luther, Hegel, progressive theologians, and all those who “interpret Sacred Scripture outside the Tradition and Magisterium of the Church,” so also throughout our history as an Institute there have been, are, and will be those who, behaving as enemies of the cross, are scandalized that we preach and live according to the sublime truth that the Word became flesh.

And so if we preach Spiritual Exercises where the soul asks, “I want and choose poverty with Christ poor rather than riches, opprobrium with Christ replete with it rather than honors; and to desire to be rated as worthless and a fool for Christ, Who first was held as such, rather than wise or prudent in this world,” and there are more and more young people who enter religious life, they say that we “brainwash” them, forgetting that it is God who “generously plants the seeds of vocation by grace” and that Christ Himself said, when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself. What attracts is not submission to death but rather giving one’s heart for love of God.

And if our priestly style is that of those who “give themselves because they possess themselves” and we hear as our own the call to proclaim the gospel to every creature, being always available for the mission and for bringing the grace of the sacraments to souls, then there will not lack those who, pasturing themselves, seek to hinder our work.

And if we say that “like all Institutes of consecrated life, we want to dedicate ourselves totally to the edification of the Church and the salvation of the world,” but “we do not insist on the missions on our own, but rather, it is the Holy Spirit who impels us to announce the great works of God,” because it is “He who guides the Church, who leads it by the paths of the mission, and who makes the whole Church missionary,” and this is why we feel with the Church and act always with Her, even so, we have been accused of “forced internationalism” and many other things. Nevertheless, it is the Church Herself who, through her Pastors, has entrusted the mission to us, at the present time, in 91 dioceses in the whole world. And the requests for foundations keep coming, even with all the detractions that the Institute suffers.

And if, in our Institute, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass – where Christ, Eternal High Priest, perpetuates the sacrifice of the Cross, and which is “the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed” – is celebrated “with unction but without affectation” conscious that “every liturgical celebration […] is a sacred action surpassing all others, [and] no other action of the Church can equal its efficacy by the same title and to the same degree,” we are looked down upon as “pre-conciliar.” There are foolish people (stulta) who still think that we are.

And if in our communities we live joy and fraternal charity, “observing common life, dependent upon the superior,” even when there are few members, they, with a grim and pessimistic view of consecrated life (that they themselves are not able to live) say, “do not make poetry out of fraternity” and discourage all attempts to strengthen religious “as to communal and personal fidelity […] according to the Rule” and consider it foolishness for the superior to strive “to assure the fidelity of the members to the charism of the Founder.”

To say nothing of the fact that we have the great grace to follow the teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas – according to the privileged place given them by the Popes, the Second Vatican Council, and the Code of Canon Law – and that this is the teaching that we receive and impart as the august task of evangelization requires and the Church commands. For this they tell us to be a little more “normal,” like other people, sensible, not so uptight. Meaning that we should not work so that the public and social life of nations be subject to God as their final end, but rather that we adapt Christianity to modern civilization, that we dilute the faith in the rational, that we convert the sacred in profane, that we transform theology in anthropology, that we dissolve the eternal in history; that we work, not for the Christianization of the world but for the mundanization of Christianity; not to evangelize the culture but to embrace it as it is, “without filters;” not to form upright, heroic men of firm convictions, but “open-minded” men; not to form men of “a solid mentality of faith” that enables them “to become servants of the Gospel and teachers of the people of God,” but rather simple commentators in whom the confusion of theology and philosophy or sociology or psychology reigns and who, “ignoring the living tradition of the Church… interpret in their own way the doctrine of the Church and even the Gospels, spiritual realities, Christ’s divinity, His Resurrection, or the Eucharist, practically emptying them of their substance and so creating new gnosis.”

They forget that ours is “the search, investigation, proclamation, and celebration of the truth, because we follow the Word that says: I am the Truth, because the ‘Truth… [is] the final end of the whole universe’ and this is why Jesus Christ became man: For this, I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth.” Our vocation as members of the Institute of the Incarnate Word “implies a solid Christian identity” and, I repeat, “an integral act of faith and total surrender [to Christ… with] an explicit decision not to make a pact with, compromise with, capitulate with, negotiate with, surrender to or give in to the spirit of the world.” And we want to live this attitude permanently, even though the cross follows from it.

What is more, similarly to the way Christ became man without ceasing to be God, our Institute is in the world without “belonging to the world” and works in the world in order to convert it, not to mimic it. As a matter of fact, at the present time, our Institute is present in more than 40 countries with very different cultures, and in each of them our missionaries work, not to imitate them, but rather, assuming all that is good and therefore assumable in them, to heal them and elevate them with the strength of the Gospel, doing, analogously, what Christ did: “He destroyed what was diabolical, took to himself what was human, and conferred what was divine.”

And just like the Incarnate Word who became like us in all things except sin, sin, error, and all of their derivatives are not assumable for us. Because two loyalties are irreconcilable, as Christ taught us: No one can serve two masters.

How could we say that we want configure ourselves to Christ and that the Institute as a whole is called to relive and testify to the mystery of Christ, where there is “no lie, falsehood, insecurity, secret, or hypocrisy,” but rather, on the contrary, everything “is transparency, authenticity, sincerity, coherence, and truth,” and fall into these false dualisms and into these destructive dialectics that seek to divide, separate, and oppose grace to nature, faith to reason, the Church to the world, realities that must not be destructively opposed, but united in an orderly fashion?

Yes, it is true: the Son of God came and was made flesh, and when this is what we preach, persecutions come, the cross comes, like the Holy Father said. But we “should not be ashamed to live with the scandal of the cross.” Rather, we should endeavor to present ourselves before God as men who have been tried, as workmen who have nothing to be ashamed of, as faithful announcers of the Word of Truth. And this “is the reason for the persecution.” Because it is clear that every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus [come in the flesh] does not belong to God.

Today, as in the past, the world keeps saying to the Incarnate Word nailed on the cross, come down from the cross now, and we will believe in You. Leave prayer for action, Spiritual Exercises for “group sharing.” Leave the mystical and the ascetical for “prophetic denunciation” and “structural change,” the demanding spirituality of the cross for the liberation of Easter; talk about justice only in reference to social sin, but when it is about personal sin, then emphasize mercy; do not preach the reality of the Last Things because this does not enthuse, talk about the Creed but not about discipline… and we could continue like this with a long list of aberrations that today are the manifestations of the cry of those scandalized that the Messiah would die on a cross. But the prophet spoke of these when he said, all shall be put to shame and disgrace who vent their anger against you; those shall be as nothing and perish who offer resistance.

Therefore, today as yesterday, the enemies of the Incarnate Word continue to be of three types:

• Some are like the priests who, together with the scribes and elders said, let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him. They want catechesis, but not mortification; they are ready to accept anything: the Eucharist, the keys of Peter, even the divinity of the Word, but not the cross. They assent – at least nominally – to the teachings of the Mount of the Beatitudes, but not to those of Golgotha. So they talk a lot about the teachings of Christ, but always without the cross: nothing of abnegation, no mention of sin or guilt, nothing of putting the old man to death; all without limits – otherwise, it is repression. 

• Others are like the soldiers who, after they divided his garments by casting lots, then they sat down and kept watch over him there. They are spectators who do not want to get involved, who believe in God in some way, but without passion; they believe in God as in an idea, not as a Person; they are involved in the world but not with redemption. “Like the scribes whom Herod consulted as to where Christ would be born, they knew, but they did not go.”

• And others are like those who, at the foot of the cross, demanded the crucifixion because He had said, I am the Son of God. They ridicule His sacrifice or are indifferent enough to play dice in the shadow of the cross. They do not adhere with all their strength to good and to truth, they do not fight against evil and lies, and they end up working for the latter. They close their eyes to reality, they close their ears so as not to hear, they do not want to think so as not to understand, and they brand as “exaggerated,” “lacking in prudence,” “extreme right,” those who defend the purity of the faith.

And under similar pretexts, how often throughout the history of the Institute have they treated us like the Crucified was treated! And they themselves end up leaving, like those prophets that the Scripture speaks of, who prophesy lies and their own deceitful fancies. For it is about them that the psalm prays: My foes will all be disgraced and will shudder greatly; they will flee in sudden disgrace.

Nevertheless, our Institute is persuaded that today as ever, our mission in the Church is to proclaim before the world that the Word became flesh and to announce to the four winds the redeeming power of the cross in all of its depth and breadth, without trimming it, lowering it, emptying it, or avoiding the consequences that it will bring us. Far be it from us to be ashamed of God Incarnate Who died on the cross for us!

Because what “the Church and the people expect from our Institute and from each of its members is a fervent worship of the truth. And even at the price of renunciations and sacrifices, seek always the truth that must be communicated to the rest, without selling it, without ever concealing it out of the desire to please men, to amaze, or out of the desire to show off. In our Institute, truth is never rejected. Do not obscure revealed truth through laziness in seeking it, through convenience, through fear. Do not leave off studying it. But rather, serve it nobly without subjugating it.”

Because only the Incarnate Word can save men and nations, since He is the only one who has the words of eternal life.

Because “only in the mystery of the Incarnate Word does the mystery of man take on light… [He] fully reveals man to man himself.”

“Because no one can lay any other foundation than Christ, the Rock.”

Because the modern deviations that reduce the whole mystery of the Incarnation and of the Redemption to empty and bloodless imaginations are wicked inventions.

Because Christ Himself who said, whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it, is the same who said, whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels. From which it follows that we would have, by great grace, “martyrdom for fidelity to God.”

This is the spirit that animates us, this is the faith that we profess, and if it degenerates into another one, we commit to begging our Lord to eliminate our congregation from the face of the Church.

* * * * *

Dear all: 

In the light of the Incarnate Word who gave His life on the Cross for our redemption, we cannot but give our lives “to love and serve Jesus Christ – His Body and His Spirit – and to help others love and serve Him. We want to love and serve the physical Body of Christ, the Eucharist, as well as His Mystical Body, the Church.” Because God thought of us for this: to reveal the Son of God come in the flesh, Who died and was raised for us, and to permeate cultures with the fullness of His Gospel, “even in the most difficult situations and under the most adverse conditions. This is our program. This is our path: that of the Cross, which is the same one that the Incarnate Word chose for Himself. And it is there, in the mystery of the Incarnate Word nailed to the Cross, where the secret of all spiritual fruitfulness is to be found.

Let us always move forward, with our faith and trust fixed in Him who said, Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father. Yes, in the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world. I am with you always, until the end of the age.

May the Blessed Virgin grant us the grace of a holy “familiarity with the Word made flesh,” to fully cleave to the Word, to live for Him, to be governed by Him, to understand from Him what we should do for Him, and to live embracing His Cross. Today and always, may we be tireless preachers of the Gospel that brings salvation, since for this the Lord has brought us together in this Institute.

I send a big hug to all. In the Incarnate Word and His Most Holy Mother,

Fr. Gustavo Nieto, IVE