‘Do you want to follow Jesus, Son of God, until death on a Cross?’

‘I want to’

It’s the promise that is common to us all, or rather it’s the response from the which our religious family is born: ‘we have come together as a single family, because the Lord has called us, and our response to his call has united us’ (circ1. pg 69). Now it is up to us to live in this promise in its fullness, giving to it a concrete action that distinguishes our daily living, and prevents us from allowing this statement to become a formula, that challenges us to a degree, but then does not ever go beyond the sentiment with the which we initially pronounced it.

What type of death on a Cross have we promised in order to follow Jesus?
Perhaps it is the one we have deferred to a distant future, that may never be, those which our sentiments and religious fantasies are able to envision, beyond our 'daily dying' that our being baptised, already asks us, and that our religious consecration states a choice of life. One can say ‘But I didn’t know all this…’ Of course we want to know everything and quickly, but with the Lord, one cannot at once understand ‘everything’ and ‘quickly’. Do we know what the Lord will ask of us? Do we in fact know what he asks! ‘Our every act is a response, it may be a consent or a refusal’ (CIRC1). But the father continues: 'for those consecrated in the community, and who believe in the community, means believing in God' (Circular 1 pg.91).

Here is then the meaning of our dying on the cross: to believe in God, believing in the Community, and in the means that it offers in order to be ‘conformed to Christ, and so become praise of the Father’ (statute, art.4). Our ‘death on a cross’ is none other than our faithfulness, which we allow the consecration we have made to render our lives sacred. Let us go to the Statutes, articles 16-28 speak of ‘charity towards God’, articles 29-39, to ‘charity towards others’. Obedience, chastity, interior detachment, mortification, personal and liturgical prayer, the divine presence, invocation of the name of Jesus, Holy Mass, reading and meditation of sacred scripture, recollection, community life, fraternal charity… in all this is contained in our ‘death on a cross’! All of this lived in simplicity, of acts and of gestures that, render us as ‘living’ members of this family where the Lord has wanted us. Among these acts and gestures, is the monthly quotation, perhaps the most insignificant, the simplest, and for this reason the most difficult to understand. But it is God’s ways to attach to the things which appear to be insignificant the most challenging realities! It is easier for us to attach our detachment to great mortifications. But ‘...great mortifications are above all negative, in as much as they may be able to feed a secret pride, and to make us feel good about doing them. And yet we owe that which truly costs us, something that is a true mortification for us; only by mortification does the soul rediscover her liberty in order to respond to God’.

Does the giving of the quota, that each month the community asks of us as a sign of our participation in the life of our family, ‘truly’ cost us something? It is here the Lord awaits us! One may object that we can do without signs. Obedience is part of our following Christ, until that ‘death on a cross’. This is why the quota itself becomes a ‘religious act’ (III circ. Pg. 102). It personally challenges us, this is why the giving of the quota is individual, and if the reasons for the spiritual nature of the quota are required, one can refer to the particular circular where the father states that ‘it appears to me almost superfluous to have to comment on the topic of the quota- for those who have truly understood their vocation and are living it.’

There may be objective impediments to this act of charity towards our religious family. However we must never be the ones to dispense ourselves, according to our own whims and opinions that which the community asks us. Paradoxically, the quota is given all the same, without having given a cent if the ‘dispensation’ comes to us, by ways that are wanted and blessed by God. To the contrary, the act could signify avarice, and avarice of heart! Avarice is the third of the principal vices, which not only compromises the life of perfection, but even our eternal salvation.

‘I want love, not sacrifice, not offerings, but communion with me,’ says the Lord. It is not the material act which constitutes the offering, it is expressed by our love and communion with God. So then, ‘may the strength of your spirit come upon us Lord, so that we adhere fully to your will, in order to witness it with the love of sons and daughters.’