A Serious Spirituality

Our spirituality is profoundly marked by all the aspects of the mystery of the Incarnation,[1] to the point that we could say that our spirituality is that of the “Ave Maria,” that of the “Angelus” and that of the hymn of kenosis,[2] that of the “Magnificat” and that of the “Gloria.”[3] Therefore, it is a spirituality that impels us to transcend the sensible and disposes us to total detachment, seeking the glory of God in everything and through everything.[4]

In conformity with the charism with which God has blessed us, and given humanity’s immense spiritual needs in today’s world, we are convinced that, with a strengthening that is ever more rooted in the principles of our spirituality, and by being creative when spreading our spirituality, we members of the Institute of the Incarnate Word will be able to render the particular service that the Church asks and expects of us.

The evangelization of the culture demands of us a spirituality with peculiar nuances: “All this demands a new approach of cultures, attitudes, [and] behaviors aimed at in-depth dialogue with cultural centers and at rendering fruitful their meeting with the message of Christ. This work also demands a faith on the part of responsible Christians that is illumined by continual reflection when confronted with the sources of the Church’s message, and a continual spiritual discernment pursued in prayer.”[5] Therefore, we members of the Institute of the Incarnate Word understand that “evangelizing consists principally in carrying the grace of God to all men, making of them a new humanity, that is, new men created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”[6]

With the evangelization of the culture thus understood, characteristic elements of our apostolate are the preaching of the Spiritual Exercises according to the genuine spirit of Saint Ignatius of Loyola; the preaching of popular missions, in which Eucharistic devotion and the sacrament of Reconciliation, together with devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, are the pillars upon which the evangelization of a people is established and preserved; and, of course, the proclamation of the Word that seeks to bring men to conversion to God through “a complete and sincere adherence to Christ and his Gospel through faith.”[7]

Now, then, why do we say that our spirituality is serious?

• Ours is a “serious spirituality,” not because it is lacking joy or is boring, but serious because it is open to transcendence, and it makes us tend to this even in the midst of the difficulties of life, for it understands that “all the best of here, compared with those eternal goods for which we are created, is ugly and bitter.”[8]
• Serious because it gives primacy to the life of prayer, because we know that “we do not work for ephemeral or fleeting things, but ‘for the most divine work among the divine ones,’ which is the eternal salvation of souls,”[9] and prayer becomes for us the soul of our religious and apostolic life.
• Serious because it is markedly Eucharistic.
• Serious because we wish to immolate ourselves through the practice of the vows of obedience, poverty, chastity, and maternal Marian slavery, in order to tend to the perfection of charity, imitating the Incarnate Word in his way of life, in order to be a “tangible seal that the Trinity impresses upon history.”[10]
• Serious because, by “following the Holy Father in belief and following the saints in practice, we will never err, since, just as the Holy Father cannot err in his teachings about faith and morals, nor did the saints err in their practice of the virtues.”[11]
• Serious because “we want to form priestly souls of priests who are not ‘tributaries,’[12] priests who will fully live the Christian and priestly kingship and lordship.”[13]
• Serious because “we want to form virtuous men (that is, ‘virtuous’ in the sense of vir and vis: to have the strength of the man) according to the doctrine of the great teachers of spiritual life, especially Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Saint John of the Cross, Saint Teresa of Jesus, Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, and according to the examples of all the saints of all times that the Church proposes as models of virtue for us to imitate.”[14]
• Serious because we are commanded to be “masters of prayer” and are urged, as we have just said, to learn from the great masters of the spiritual life, among them, the great Doctor of the Church Saint John of the Cross.
• Serious because it is anchored in the solid doctrine taught throughout the centuries by our Holy Mother Church, which wanted to make of the teachings of Saint John of the Cross one of its most beautiful pages. And although many souls who are friends of sweetness and consolations may not want to read Saint John of the Cross and may fill their heads with soft authors,[15] we prefer the “hard bread” of the radical doctrine of Saint John, because that is what God ordinarily gives to those He wishes to lead on.[16] For the very One who said to us, “Follow me,”[17] was the One who associated the staff of the cross with his call.
• Ours is a serious spirituality because, from the living and vigorous faith that it seeks to instill in us, it makes us capable of judging everything according to transcendence, and it gives us that providential vision of all of life[18] with which we value everything according to God and in relation to God. Certainly, this is born from prayer, but it translates into concrete works of religious imperative. Total and complete detachment, effective and affective, from all that is not God, and loss of the fear of “being left without anything,” on whatever level, are also elements that characterize us.
• Aware that “religious life is a process of continual conversion”[19] and that we must always grow in our faith, we are encouraged to courageously pass through “the active and passive purification of the senses and of the spirit.”[20] Indeed, we consider that “a religious who is not willing to go through the second and third conversions, or who does nothing concrete to achieve them, does not actually belong to our spiritual family, though he may be with us in body.”[21]
• Ours is a serious spirituality because it engraves love for the cross in our souls with fire, which should motivate us to choose it always, with preference to any other means; the cross not only accepted but also positively and directly preferred and embraced.
• Ours is a serious spirituality because we consider that “this is the resounding idea: to sacrifice oneself,” and that only “this is the way history is directed, yet silently directed and in secret.”[22]
• Ours is a serious spirituality because it brings us to strive to “embrace the practice of those virtues which are seemingly opposed … by practicing truthfulness, fidelity, coherence and authenticity of life, against all falsehood, infidelity, pretense and hypocrisy.”[23]
• Finally, ours is a serious spirituality because it is Marian. And, by consecrating ourselves as slaves of the Virgin, we are following the path that He used, that He keeps using, and that He will use to come to the world.[24] Therefore, our fundamental code reads: “Everything through Jesus and through Mary; with Jesus and with Mary; in Jesus and in Mary; for Jesus and for Mary.”[25]“God alone.”[26]

[1] Constitutions, 8.

[2] Cf. Phil. 2:6ff.

[3] Directory of Spirituality, 78.

[4] Cf. Constitutions, 67.

[5] Directory of Spirituality, 51, quoting Saint John Paul II, “Address to the Bishops of Zimbabwe in Ad Limina Visit,” July 2, 1988; OR (8/21/1988), Spanish Edition.

[6] Directorio de Evangelización de la Cultura, 57, (our translation) quoting Eph. 4:24.

[7] Saint John Paul II, Redemptoris missio, 46, quoted in Constitutions, 165.

[8] Saint John of the Cross, Carta 12, A una doncella de Narros del Catillo (Ávila), February 1589; our translation.

[9] Directory of Spirituality, 321, quoting Pseudo-Dionysius, quoted by Saint Alphonsus Liguori, Selva, 9, 1.

[10] Constitutions, 254 and 257, formulas of religious profession.

[11] Constitutions, 213.

[12] Cf. Nm 18:24; Gn 47:26; Saint John of Avila, Sermons, quoted from Saint Vincent Ferrer, Opusculum de fine mundi.

[13] Constitutions, 214.

[14] Constitutions, 212.

[15] Cf. Fr. C. Buela, IVE, El Arte del Padre, pt. III, chap. 14; our translation.

[16] Saint John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book III, chap. 28.7, in The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross, vol. 1, trans. and ed. E. Allison Peers (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne Ltd., 1959), 278.

[17] Mark 10:21.

[18] “Notes from the V General Chapter,” 11.

[19] Constitutions, 262.

[20] Constitutions, 10, 40, and Directory of Spirituality, 22.

[21] Directory of Spirituality, 42.

[22] Directory of Spirituality, 146.

[23] Constitutions, 13.

[24] Directory of Spirituality, 83.

[25] Directory of Spirituality, 325.

[26] Constitutions, 380.