Rome, November 1st, 2019
“In order to build the Kingdom, Jesus called men to make them disciples”
Directory of Spirituality, 118
Dear Fathers, Brothers, Seminarians, and Novices,
On Sunday, November 24th, the last of the liturgical year, we will celebrate the solemnity of Jesus Christ, King of the universe, a feast that was instituted relatively recently, and that soon gave martyrs to our Holy Mother Church: men, women, priests, religious, youth, and children who died to the cry of “Long live Christ the King!” (Viva Cristo Rey!)
These martyrs, like so many others throughout history, were valiant witnesses and luminous examples of generous and heroic surrender to Christ, publicly manifesting with their death their adherence to the Gospel.
We, who through the merciful Providence of God, have been congregated in our beloved Institute in order to consecrate ourselves to Him, which is the same as saying to consecrate ourselves to the Church, we understand that “faithfulness to Christ, can never be separated from faithfulness to the Church,” given that our finality has been, is, and will always be “to contribute to building up the body of Christ according to God’s plan” and according to what the Spirit has given us through the founder.
Then, since love for the Church – where “Christ himself is incarnate” – is the origin of the Constitutions and of all the Directories of our Religious Family, which expressly declare our engagement of submission to ecclesial authority, I want to briefly touch upon two points in this letter: 1) the reign of Christ in His Church and 2) our mission to be luminous signs of the realities of the Kingdom.
I want to dedicate this letter to all of you, the members of the Institute – priests, brothers, monks, seminarians, and novices – my brothers and friends, who in 42 different countries and in circumstances of the mission that are often challenging and extreme, are witnesses to a kingdom that is not of this world. Because we, the members of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, belong to the family of those who – for the sake of the kingdom of heaven – have abandoned all things, in order to testify to all that the world in its present form is passing away. Heaven and earth will pass away, but God’s words will not pass away.
1. The reign of Christ in His Church
“The Lord is King over all humanity in a strict, literal and proper sense since He received from the Father dominion and glory and kingship. He is King of kings and Lord of lords.” With these words, our proper law begins to speak about the royalty of Christ.
Such an assertion angers many who, flying the flag of liberalism, justify all sin in the name of liberty, as well as those false prophets of Marxism who exalt man for man at the cost of God’s imprescriptible and inalienable rights.
These men behave like those of whom Fr. Leonardo Castellani, SJ said: “They are men who ignore the profound perversity of the human heart, the necessity of redemption, and in the end, God’s universal dominion over all things, as Beginning and End of all of them, including human societies. They are those who say, ‘You have to leave everyone free,’ without seeing that he who leaves a criminal free is his accomplice. ‘You have to respect all opinions,’ without seeing that he who respects false opinions is a deceiver. ‘Religion is a private affair,’ without seeing that, since man is naturally social, if religion has nothing to do with the social sphere, then is good for nothing, not even in the private sphere.”
Against such an error, the Church does not hesitate to declare, “The foundation of this kingship is four-fold:
- “First, it belongs appropriately to Him as God, the Incarnate Word. Saint Cyril of Alexandria says, ‘Christ obtains the dominance over all creatures, not taken by force nor taken by any other reason, but by his very essence and nature.’
- “Second, it belongs to Him by virtue of Redemption, by right of conquest, since He bought us with His blood: You know that you were ransomed… not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.
- “Third, it belongs to Him because He is the Head of the Church and by the fullness of grace: full of grace and truth.
- “Fourth, it belongs to Him by right of inheritance: whom he appointed the heir of all things.
“His royal authority includes the fullness of the threefold power: legislative, judicial and executive.”
Nevertheless, we must say that, although He should reign in all spheres, whether private or social, His Kingdom does not belong to this world, but rather is an eternal Kingdom: of his kingdom there will be no end, and is universal: all power in heaven and on earth has been given to him; a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace. Therefore, “it is not like temporal kingdoms, which are won and sustained by lies and violence; and in any case, even when they are legitimate and upright, they have temporal ends and are full of and limited by the inevitable human imperfection.”
We should realize that “our contemporary age,” as Pope Benedict XVI states, “has developed the hope of creating a perfect world that, thanks to scientific knowledge and to scientifically based politics, seemed to be achievable. Thus, Biblical hope in the Kingdom of God has been displaced by hope in the kingdom of man, the hope of a better world that would be the real ‘Kingdom of God.’ ”
For this reason, Saint John Paul II, citing his predecessor John Paul I, warns us to “take care not to confuse the Regnum Dei with the Regnum hominis, as if political, social and economic liberation were the same as salvation in Jesus Christ.” This is precisely what they do, those who identify Christ’s kingdom with a secular city where theology and piety are useless superegos or ideologies; or like those who expect the kingdom of reason completely detached from the faith as the new condition of the human race once it has attained total freedom.
As the Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen said, “[Christ] is a King Who failed in the eyes of the world, to win eternal victory in the eyes of God.” Therefore, Christ is “King of truth, of peace, and of love, his Kingdom, coming from Grace, reigns invisibly in hearts, and this lasts longer than empires. His Kingdom does not come from here below, but rather came down from there above; but this does not mean that it is a mere allegory, or an invisible kingdom of spirits. He says that it is not from here, but He does not say that it is not here. He says that it is not fleshly, but He does not say that it is not real. He says that it is a kingdom of souls, but this does not mean a kingdom of ghosts, but rather a kingdom of men.”
From what has been said, it follows that “the scope of His reign is twofold: personal and social. He reigns over all intelligence because He is the Truth, ‘and it is from him that truth must be obediently received by all mankind.’ He reigns over all wills because He is Goodness, ‘and further, by his grace and inspiration he so subjects our free will as to incite us to the most noble endeavors.’ In addition, He reigns over all hearts because He is Love. His reign is also a social one. ‘There is no difference in this matter between the individual and the family or the State; for all men, whether collectively or individually, are under the dominion of Christ. In him is the salvation of the individual, in him is the salvation of society.’”
So, “accepting Him or not is not indifferent, and rebelling against Him is extremely dangerous.” And because of this, “that ominous doctrine which attempts to build a society with no regard whatever for religion […] is rightly to be rejected,” as they do who announce “the two great lies of this world.”
One says: “Man, you are free; do not subject yourself. You are King; do not obey. You are beautiful; enjoy it; all is yours. Sovereign people, you should not be governed by anyone, but rather govern yourself. King of creation, science and progress put into your hands the entire earth. Erect and white animal, your body is beautiful, do not hide it. Your body is the source and vessel of a world of pleasures: drink them. Money is the key to this world: obtain it. Honors, dignities, command, are delicacies of the gods; fame is the ideal of great souls; science is the aristocracy of the soul. Fight! Carry off your part! Triumph! Cast the others out! If you are poor: attack the rich! If you are rich: exploit the masses!”
Now, “there is no doubt, therefore, that a ‘Kingdom of God’ accomplished without God – a kingdom therefore of man alone – inevitably ends up as the ‘perverse end’ of all things.”
And so the second great lie says: “Man, you are absurd, an enigma, a misery. Your birth is dirty; your life, ridiculous; your end, unknown. Deceived by the phantoms of beautiful things that happiness promises you, you run without knowing where, drifting through life, until making the great leap from which no one returns, into the night of the unknown. Your brother, at your side, is a wolf for you; your superior, above, a tyrant; the apostle who preaches to you, deceives and exploits you. You know nothing of anything; you can do nothing against your destiny. Your greatest ideals, your most beautiful dreams: love, religion, art, holiness… do you want to know what they really are? They are only sublimations of the instinct of sex that you carry in the subconscious. Life is not worth living.” And in this way they eradicate all hope from the human heart.
The truth is that “since man always remains free and since his freedom is always fragile, the kingdom of good will never be definitively established in this world. Anyone who promises the better world that is guaranteed to last forever is making a false promise; he is overlooking human freedom. Freedom must constantly be won over for the cause of good. Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself.”
And so, on top of this confusion and the clouds of lies and deceptions in which we live, our hearts oppressed by the tribulations of the world and by our own tribulations, the Catholic Church, the imperishable Kingdom of Christ, stands like its divine Master, to give testimony to the Truth and to defend this Truth above all. On top of the tumult and commotion, with its eyes fixed on the Cross, solid in its experience of twenty centuries, sure of its prophesized future, ready to stand the test and the battle in the certain hope of triumph, the Church, by its very presence and by its very silence, is saying to all the Caiaphases, Herods, and Pilates of the world that that word of its divine Founder, I am a King, has not been in vain.
Dear all, we are well aware that many in the Church, always, yesterday and today, have not been equal to this reality, and that instead of the truth, they sow error or at least confusion, which is devastating. Regrettably, this is even seen in some priests. Nonetheless, we should never, through the fault of some men in the Church, be distrustful of the Church and of its essential and unconquered defense of the truth, as great men and saints from all periods of the bi-millenary history of the Church have done.
We profess, in effect, that the Incarnate Word Himself established His Church, which is His Mystical Body, united to Him by the Holy Spirit, when in Caesarea Philippi, he said to one of His apostles: And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. And when he bid them farewell, he reminded them: I am with you always, until the end of the age. And despite having been like a mustard seed in its beginnings, He promised to the Church, through beautiful parables and dazzling prophecies, the most unexpected privileges: it will have no end, it will be proclaimed to every nation, it will include all races, whoever enters it will be saved and whoever rejects it will be condemned, he who fights against it will be shattered against it, whatever it binds on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever it looses on earth shall be loosed in heaven, transmitting in this way His power to His Mystical Body, in such a way that its precepts are His and its orders are His.
It is because of this that our confidence in the Church is absolutely indestructible and the “scandals” of those priests who do not proclaim or defend the truth do not make a dent in our convictions. We know then, that the little seed that was the Church in its beginnings went on growing and enduring, and nothing has been able to conquer it, nothing has been able to sink it, no one has been able to destroy it. They crucified its divine Founder, killed its apostles, killed thousands of its members during the ten great persecutions that awaited it when it had barely begun, and they said many times that they had finished with her, and her enemies declared victory saying, “The Church is finished.”
And just as in other times the Church was attacked from without, “there is also the fact that attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church…” Unfortunately, many, hiding behind this appraisal of the undeniable current situation in the Church, predict her end and doubt, like other Pilates, that Jesus Christ reigns, and there are others who even argue that the Church is really the work of the devil. But all are broken before the infallible promise of the indefectibility of His Spouse made by her divine Founder: the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
In the face of this, it is good to keep in mind the wise observation that the Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen made in 1950: “What does all this prove,” he asks, “but that Our Dear Lord has espoused humanity as it is, rather than as we would like it to be! He never expected His Mystical Body the Church to be without scandals because He Himself was the first scandal. It was a terrible scandal for those who knew Him to be God to see Him crucified and go down to seeming defeat, at the moment His enemies challenged Him to prove His Divinity by coming down from the Cross. No wonder He had to beg His followers not to be scandalized by Him. […] If He permitted thirst, pain and a death sentence to affect His Physical Body, why should He not permit mystical and moral weaknesses such as loss of faith, sin, scandals, heresies, schisms, and sacrileges to affect His Mystical Body? When these things do happen, it does not prove that the Mystical Body the Church is not Divine in its inmost nature, any more than the Crucifixion of Our Lord proved that He is not Divine. Because our hands are dirty, the whole body is not polluted. The scandals of the Mystical Body the Church no more destroy its substantial holiness than the Crucifixion destroyed the substantial wholeness of Christ’s Physical Body. The Old Testament prophecy fulfilled on Calvary was that not a bone of His Body would be broken. His flesh would hang like purple rags about Him, wounds like poor dumb mouths would speak their pain with blood, pierced hands and feet would open up torrents of redemptive life – but His substance, His bones, they would be sound. So with His Mystical Body. Not a bone of it shall ever be broken; the substance of Her Doctrines will always be pure, though the flesh of some of her doctors fail; the substance of Her Discipline will always be sound, though the passions of some her disciples rebel; the substance of Her Faith will always be Divine, though the flesh of some of her faithful will be so carnal. Her Wounds will never be mortal for Her Soul is Holy and Immortal, with Immortality of Love Divine that came to Her Body on the Day of Pentecost as tongues of living fire.
“Coming to one of the major scandals,” continues Fulton Sheen, “let it be asked: ‘How could a wicked man like Alexander VI be the infallible Vicar of Christ and head of His Mystical Body the Church?’ For an answer, go to the Gospel text where Our Lord changes the name of Simon to Rock, and then made him the Rock on which He built what He called ‘My Church.’ Our Lord on that very occasion made a distinction very few ever think of: He distinguished between ‘infallibility’ or immunity from error, and ‘impeccability’ or immunity from sin. Infallibility is inability to teach what is wrong; impeccability is inability to do what is wrong. Our Lord made the Rock infallible, but not impeccable.”
“The Pope has the deposit of the faith, he has the infallible mission and sanction of it; the Pope is Jesus Christ teaching, Jesus sanctifying, Jesus Christ governing His Church. […] The false Shepherd,” said Saint Peter Julien Eymard, “does not have the voice of the Church; he does not have the charity, the holiness; he preaches himself, he only works for himself, he is usually prideful and impure. By these signs one can always recognize an intruder, a schismatic, a rebel; it is the wolf in the sheepfold, from whom one must flee.”
Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, the Son of God, and sovereign King of the entire globe, reigns in His Church. “The Church is Jesus Christ continued.” And “all activity of the Mystical Body is directed towards ‘spreading the kingdom of Christ throughout the earth for the glory of God the Father, to enable all men to share in His saving redemption, and that through them the whole world might enter into a relationship with Christ.’ ”
Which leads us now to the second point that I would like to touch upon here.
2. Our mission to be luminous signs of the realities of the Kingdom
Because “the teaching of the Incarnate Word in this respect is clear: seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well,” we, the members of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, know ourselves to be called to incarnate in our lives the values of the Kingdom that does not belong to this world, but that transforms the world from within. For this reason, we seek to do so with radical availability, living according to the way of life that the Son of God made His own when He became flesh, that is to say, a life of service in chastity, poverty, and obedience, attempting by it to give testimony to the Transcendent, and in this way, to remind people that there exists something more in this world than just what can be seen. A transcendent and spiritual vocation exists, and a destination to which each person is called by God. This is why we commit ourselves to be before the world “a concrete imprint that the Trinity leaves on history so that in this way, all mankind will discover an attraction and longing for the divine beauty,” as our formula of profession runs, using the apt expression from the magisterium of Saint John Paul II. We are persuaded that such a testimony can only be given walking on the narrow way of the cross in the company of Christ Crucified. It is in this sense that we affirm that “pastoral work is a cross for us, not an escape.”
Far from us the temptation to reduce her mission to the dimensions of a simply temporal project, to reduce her aims to a man-centered goal; the salvation of which she is the messenger would be reduced to material well-being; putting the emphasis in the activity, forgetful of all spiritual and religious preoccupation, or in initiatives of the political or social order.
For us, just serving Christ is to reign because heaven and earth will pass away, but His words will not pass away, since He is the only one who has words of eternal life. Even more, because we confess His royalty and primacy over all creation, we understand that “All missionary and apostolic work is based on the conviction that Christ must reign.” For this reason we hold as the most honorable of offices dedicating all our strength so that the kingdom of Christ be installed and consolidated in souls and in nations, and spread throughout the whole world, striving to “extend the Incarnation ‘to all men, in the whole man, and in all of the manifestations of man,’ in accordance with the teachings of the Magisterium of the Church.”
So then, following the Petrine Magisterium, for us the kingdom of Christ can only be achieved by the grace and power of the love of God in us. “Charity, and only charity will save the world,” said Don Orione. This “continues to be the high road for evangelization.” Therefore, continues our proper law, “charity is in order to evangelize the culture, charity is essential, for it is both the end of the one who works and the end of the work itself; otherwise, the civilization of love will not be reached,” there will not be an adequate reform of the structures of society, and our evangelizing work would only be “a superficial varnish.” “For this reason, in the variety of apostolates of our Institute, a preferential place should be reserved for charitable works, which is an essential component of the evangelizing mission of the Church and an indispensable element for the evangelization of the culture.” “The only violence that leads to the building up of the Kingdom of Christ is the sacrifice and service that are born of love,” said Saint John Paul II, and we are convinced of this. And in the sight of everyone is the fact that our missionaries give, and God willing, will always continue giving, magnanimous proofs of it.
“In order to build the Kingdom Jesus, called men to make them disciples.” In this sense, the first characteristic of our identity and the most profound source of the special link that unites us in this beloved Institute is our consecration to God as our supreme Love and to the spreading of His Kingdom. This is our principal apostolate. Nothing makes sense in our personal and community life if it is separated from our condition as persons who are consecrated to Christ through the profession and practice of the religious vows. Our quest for “perfect charity” is the fundamental way for us, and an obligation, since through the practice of the evangelical counsels, we, as members of the Mystical Body of Christ, continue showing the world the way of its transfiguration into the Kingdom of God.
Therefore, we believe that our proclamation of the Kingdom, which is the same as evangelization, is accomplished primarily through testimony of life that is “already a silent proclamation of the Good News and a very powerful and effective one.” Without this concrete element, we run the risk of our charity growing cold, or that the paradox of the Gospel that we announce will be attenuated. In other words, “we would become tasteless salt and light under a bushel basket.”
Saint John Paul II paternally advised us some years ago, “Be light that illuminates, salt that does not lose its flavor. The more intense your apostolic labor is, the more efficacious the testimony of your consecration to Christ must be. The more engaged you are in the organization of temporal realities, the more you must appear in your actions as persons who have opted for an irrevocable following of Christ poor, obedient, and chaste.”
But furthermore, an explicit proclamation is also necessary: we have to be able to give a reason for our hope. “There is no true evangelization if the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom, and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, are not proclaimed.” Nevertheless, this proclamation is only one aspect, since proclamation avails nothing if men do not adhere to it. “For this reason, authentic evangelization should lead to and culminate in the worthy reception of the sacraments, since the grace of the Holy Spirit is ordinarily communicated through them.”
Consequently, without diverging from the religious axis that guides evangelization – the kingdom of God, before anything else, in its fully theological meaning –, we recognize the need for working for the establishment of a Christian social order.
Thus understood, this proclamation of the Kingdom does not take us at all out of the world. But neither does seeking an alliance with the world have anything to do with our style of sanctification and apostolate. Since for us “Being in the world” only makes sense when it depends on “not being of the world.” Indeed, our proper law points out that “all anti-testimony, all incoherence between expressing values or ideals and living them, all looking out for oneself and not for the Kingdom of God and its justice, all falsification of the word of God ” violates this obligation to be luminous signs of the Kingdom of Christ. “If a sign becomes blurred, it loses its reason for being, it disorients and confuses.” How much does this world, so confused through lack of superior ideals, need religious who let what they are be seen in their actions: ambassadors for Christ, co-workers for the kingdom of God!
The Church, and us within her, have the mission to proclaim “the Kingdom of God. ‘The kingdom of God 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.’ ”
Even more: in the same way that the Incarnate Word went around all of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and curing every disease and illness among the people, we have chosen to spread the Kingdom of Christ even to the furthest regions, in order to say with the Psalmist: The LORD is king. The world will surely stand fast, never to be shaken. He rules the peoples with fairness. Consequently, the kingdom is an efficacious, but mysterious, action that God accomplishes in the universe and in the fabric of human vicissitudes. The resistance of evil is conquered through patience, not overbearingly or clamorously.
And although it is true that Jesus compared the Kingdom with that seed that a man sowed in the earth, and the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how, we are not inert witnesses of the development of this kingdom, but rather active collaborators. “Jesus asks us ‘to seek’ actively ‘the kingdom of God and his righteousness’ and to make this search our primary concern.” And for this reason we want to go to the world so that it converts to Christ. And we want to go to the culture and to the cultures of man, not in order to convert ourselves into them, but rather to heal them and, assuming in them all that is authentically human, to elevate them with the power of the Gospel. That is to say, not to kneel before the world, but so that the world kneels before God.
We cannot avoid the great task of changing the world “from savage to human, from human to divine, that is, according to the heart of God.” Saint John Paul II said, “Do not be content with this more human world. Make a world that is explicitly more divine.” Given that, as Saint Pius X wisely stated, “The civilization of the world is Christian.”
It is true that the direct management of temporal affairs, putting them in order according to God, corresponds to the laity. But all Christians, and especially we as religious, must be the soul of society. And this “not because the Church seeks power or the favor of the powerful more than God’s help, which is infinitely powerful; not because it wants the temporal government of the nations: ‘Who does not snatch away temporal kingdoms, Who comes to bring the heavenly Kingdom’ – although sometimes it had to do this subsidiarily –; not in order to obtain a mere formal recognition of established religion; not because it is desirable that bishops replace governors; not in order to obtain favors that aid its material expansion; not simply to avoid enemies, since its enemies will not destroy the Church: …they will not prevail; not for convenience and coexistence; not through strategy, but through vocation: Go into the whole world…; not so that the nations subordinate themselves to men of the Church, but rather to Jesus Christ; not to be served, but to serve; not to try to get the clergy to abandon their duty or ‘control’ the State; not to seek temporal kingdoms, when Jesus Christ gives us the eternal one; none of this, but rather, because this way follows the reality of things: because of divine ordinance, theological and philosophical reasons, common sense, because history orders it and because the contrary is an attack against the Word.”
“Just by unravelling more and more the unlimited and unfathomable potentialities of the mystery of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word, men and nations will be capable of constructing a future civilization that is equal to the true demands of human nature and of the divine will.”
Not to work for a Christian civilization is in a certain way an apostasy in the faith. For this reason, today as in the past that famous phrase of Don Orione that our proper law makes its own continues to resonate: “Whoever does not want to be an apostle should leave the Congregation: today, whoever is not an apostle of Jesus Christ and the Church is an apostate.”
We, who meditate on the “Call of the Eternal King” every year in our Spiritual Exercises, should distinguish ourselves and stand out in the campaign of the Kingdom of God against the forces of evil, a campaign that is the axis of world history, knowing that our King already won and is invincible, that His Kingdom will have no end, that the definitive manifestation of His triumph in His second coming is not far off, and that His reward surpasses all the vanities of this world, since what eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and what has not entered the human heart, what God has prepared for those who love Him.
All of us, religious and our laity, each according to his specific vocation, are called to build the Kingdom of God, collaborating with the Lord, its first and decisive architect.
This is the Kingdom of the evangelical beatitudes that proposes to us to live poor in spirit in order to lift the last of the earth from the dust of humiliation. Did not God choose those who are poor in the world, wonders the Apostle James in his letter, to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him? Those who bear the sufferings of life with love enter this Kingdom: It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God, where God Himself will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain. The pure of heart who choose the path of justice enter this Kingdom, that is, those who adhere to God’s will, as Saint Paul warns us: Do you not know that the unjust will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor boy prostitutes nor sodomites nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.
For this reason, we must place ourselves in His hands, trust in His word, and let ourselves be guided by Him like inexperienced children who only find security in the Father: Whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child, said Jesus, will not enter it.
With this spirit, we should make the invocation Thy Kingdom Come! our own.
This invocation pushes us to direct our gaze towards the return of Christ and nourish our desire for the final coming of God’s kingdom. Nevertheless, this desire does not impede the Church from accomplishing her mission in this world; on the contrary, it commits her to it all the more strongly, as she looks forward to crossing the threshold of the Kingdom, of which the Church is the initial budding forth, when it arrives in its fullness. For then, as Saint Peter assures us in his second letter, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you.
* * * * *
Dear all,
“The martyrdom of those who […] go against the tide in order to follow the divine Master” should not suffocate our hopes or fill us with fear.
Christ Himself said: You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it. If we are with Peter, we should not be afraid, even though all the powers of hell come against us, because the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church. And it was Jesus Christ who said to the Apostles and to their successors: Whoever listens to you listens to Me. This experience of Church should lead us to know why charity and mutual assistance between the members of the Church are possible. They are possible for Jesus Christ, because He gives us His spirit, because He teaches us to show solidarity with each other, because He teaches us that we must occupy ourselves with the things of the soul, with important things, with things that do not pass away, with things that do not die. Unfortunately, – we have seen it and are living it today as well – we know very well that the life of the Church is also the experience that there is evil among the men of the Church. Jesus Himself said it: there will be wheat and weeds. If all of us were wheat, the whole world would be Catholic. But there are wheat and weeds, therefore, one has liberty. If one sees that all are holy, then one would be forced to follow Jesus Christ. And it is not like this: we know that Judas was in the Apostolic College. Wheat and weeds! And it will be so until the end of times, and the one who thinks something else, is a utopist. The Church of the good alone does not exist. The Church is holy because her beginning, her means, and her end are holy. But the Church has us sinners in her midst. And we have to realize, furthermore, that the very existence and work of the weeds is to the benefit of the wheat, of those who love God and for whose good God makes all things work. And precisely seeing evil in the Church, one of the greatest temptations that a Christian can have, should bring us to have more faith in Jesus Christ, because He already prophesized it. He said it two thousand years ago: There will be wheat and weeds. And what do we have to do? Work to be wheat.
Today more than ever, “we need the greater and lesser hopes that keep us going day by day. But these are not enough without the great hope, which must surpass everything else. This great hope can only be God, who encompasses the whole of reality and who can bestow upon us what we, by ourselves, cannot attain. The fact that it comes to us as a gift is actually part of hope. God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end, each one of us and humanity in its entirety. His Kingdom is not an imaginary hereafter, situated in a future that will never arrive; his Kingdom is present wherever he is loved and wherever his love reaches us. His love alone gives us the possibility of soberly persevering day by day, without ceasing to be spurred on by hope, in a world which by its very nature is imperfect. His love is at the same time our guarantee of the existence of what we only vaguely sense and which nevertheless, in our deepest self, we await: a life that is ‘truly’ life.”
May Mary Most Holy, who with her fiat inaugurated the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, sustain our efforts for the spread of her Son’s reign in such a way that one day, having followed Him in suffering, we may also follow Him in glory. May she attain for us the grace to understand that the Kingdom of God is… joy in the Holy Spirit, and that we live in our communities – even in the midst of the most difficult circumstances – the essence of the Kingdom that Jesus Christ came to inaugurate on earth: The kingdom of God is… righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
May the Virgin Mother concede us final perseverance in the holy cause of her Son and make our work to sum up all things in Christ fructify.
If “The highest grace that God can grant our young Religious Family is persecution, especially that persecution that leads to martyrdom” for our firm and unmovable adhesion to the cause of Christ, which is the same as saying, for fidelity to the Church and to its mission in the world, fidelity to religious life and to the charism of one’s own institute, and fidelity to humanity and to our times; may God find us worthy of accepting martyrdom with this cry ever on our lips:
Long live Christ the King! Viva Cristo Rey!
In the Incarnate Word and His Most Holy Mother,
Fr. Gustavo Nieto, IVE
