The Word of God becomes incarnate in Mary. She receives him with love, welcomes him with love, and with great love shares her flesh with him, and it is her blood that flows through the veins of the God who there takes on human form as a Child. Her “yes” is love, it is hospitality.
Thomas Merton says that “No one contained the light of God more fully than Mary, who, by the perfection of her purity and humility, identified herself completely, one might say, with the truth, like a clear crystal that disappears in the light that passes through it”. (THOMAS MERTON, Seasons of Celebration) His surrender is hospitality. And a hospitality that did not end with her conception and childbirth, but lasted all her life, which, for some 33 years, she spent in close proximity to her son Jesus. Who else was close to the Lord? And who cared for the Son of God more than Mary?
St. John Paul II, the late Pope so devoted to Mary, beautifully expressed this maternal dedication, saying: “No one has devoted himself to contemplating the face of Christ with the same constancy as Mary”. And he underlines, in brief, Mary’s many glances at Jesus: a look of the heart at the Annunciation and a look of tenderness at the birth; a questioning look when she met Jesus in the Temple and a penetrating and intimate look at the wedding feast in Canaan; a sorrowful look when she saw her son on the Cross and a radiant look on Easter morning. And finally, a gaze seared by the power of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost (St. John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 10). These glances reveal a life dedicated to the love of her Son. A dedication that was not limited to loving only her Son, but all the children he entrusted to her.
It is in this gaze of communion with her Son Jesus, particularly present in the most fragile, “her living images”, that Mary under the title of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (NSSCJ) accompanies the founding project of our Congregation. It is to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that María Josefa Recio and María Angustias Giménez turn and invoke in their restless search for a direction in their lives and in the uncertainties and difficulties that Benito Menni poses to them when they are willing to collaborate with him in the creation of something new. Our Lady of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is for the two Grenadines and also for Benito Menni the mediator of all graces, and all three place themselves under her protection and mediation to resolve the founding situation.
It is in this gaze of communion with her Son Jesus, particularly present in the most fragile, “her living images”, that Mary under the title of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (NSSCJ) accompanies the founding project of our Congregation. It is to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that María Josefa Recio and María Angustias Giménez turn and invoke in their restless search for a direction in their lives and in the uncertainties and difficulties that Benito Menni poses to them when they are willing to collaborate with him in the creation of something new. Our Lady of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is for the two Grenadines and also for Benito Menni the mediator of all graces, and all three place themselves under her protection and mediation to resolve the founding situation.
We can say that Maria is in the gestation of the Foundation – in the stage of dreaming, searching, questioning, discerning God’s will and in the whole process of growth. María Angustias even attributes to her the role of vocation promoter. She tells us: “Without knowing the sublime dignity to which the Virgin was going to raise us, and making some of us plans different from those which the Virgin had for us, behold, this empress of heaven takes special care in choosing those whom she has destined to form this numerous army of persons who, abstracted from all that is happening, will only presume to be faithful spouses of Jesus and daughters of the Queen of his loving Heart” (RMA p.141).
For María Angustias, the foundation of the Congregation is the work of the Blessed Virgin. She develops this theme throughout her narrative, particularly in chapters V, VI and VII of Section II, concluding in the first chapter as follows:
“I will explain: when the Blessed Virgin wished to be our divine teacher, she planned that from the beginning it should be she herself who would lay the first foundations or cornerstone of so lofty an edifice. Therefore, since this heavenly Lady reserved for herself the direction of her beloved institution, the result of this divine work cannot be sterile. On the contrary, its effects were fruitful. Our beloved Mother of the Heart of Jesus being the wisest and humblest creature in the universe, she herself wished to give her daughters sublime lessons of religious perfection, so that they might serve as a special distinction between us and other institutions”. (RMA p. 139)
In Chapters VI and VII, Maria Angustias presents Mary as Teacher, placing the first lesson in the importance of unity of life – “How essential it is that in a community of sound principles prayer and action go together” (Id. p. 140). In the next chapter, the teaching continues: “… Our Lady teaches us that just as she, as Queen of Heaven, has taken care to seek out young people to form this new army, so she ardently desires that these beloved daughters of hers should be so active that they will only want to sacrifice themselves in order, like solicitous mothers, to care for the poor sick whom providence has entrusted to us”. (Id. p. 142)
In letter 145, St. Benedict Menni, making several comments on the spirit which animates him and which he hopes will also animate all those who participate in the dynamics of the Congregation, underlines that Jesus wants to make use of our “humble docility to do immense good… to do and accomplish – he with his powerful hand – through us wonderful things for the good of souls”, and if we abandon ourselves to the will of God and “do not allow our hearts to grow cold”. He underlines that this spirit is composed of self-denial, humility, silence, recollection and boundless charity.
“May this be the spirit that always reigns in this dear Congregation of mine. This is truly, my daughter, the will of your dear Foundress, the Queen of Heaven, because, my daughters, it is by her will that the foundation was made and it is by her commission that I transmit this spirit to you”.
We believe that it is important to go deeper into this theme, as it can be a brilliant force in the hospitaller stage we are living through.
Sr. Isabel Morgado and Paulo Paiva