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CONTENTS:
Teaching 1: Call to Ordination
Teaching 2: Vocational Discernment
Teaching 3: Contact with Community
Teaching 4: Adaptability
Teaching 5: Blood Sublimation
Teaching 6: Oblivion of the World
Teaching 7: Correspondence
Teaching 8: Expanded Soul
Teaching 9: Impermeability to External Things
Teaching 10: Modesty of the Eyes
Teaching 11: Perfect Observance
Teaching 12:
Enemies of Perfection
Teaching 13:
Purifying Void
Teaching 14:
Spiritual Life
Teaching 15:
Love and Sacrifice
Teaching 16: Womwn´s Ordination
Teaching 1: Call to Ordination
Although all souls are called to the Supreme Renunciation, just some few realize it by means of the Ordination.
It would be inconvenient to believe that any vocation to Ordination becomes manifested and develops in the same way, but in all of them there is a similar point that one could call internal divine motion in the souls.
This internal call, intense or vague, can be insistent or fleeting; can cause attraction or be refused in the beginning. But basically is always the same: an internal unexplained feeling that calls the soul to the most perfect life by means of the Ordination.
Whoever experiences this internal motion, this Divine call, is obliged to respond to it.
But when vocation emerges from dreamy imagination, personal desires, disappointments and human bitterness, it must be rejected because is not a true vocation. These wrong trends may be however beside a true vocation, but just in a soul that at certain moment felt that internal divine motion. Then, these natural impulses have to be disposed of like passions and obstacles that hinder a true vocation.
Those souls that feel this internal motion in a very vivid and intense way, experience as if it were a sudden wound in the soul. They cannot wait, be happy or resigned to anywhere or anything. Now nothing calls their attention, and anything that moves them away from the divine call is cause of grief and sadness to them; anything that impedes or delays the fulfillment of their desires is death to them
These souls do not admit delays and quickly go up the Way to Renunciation.
Those souls that feel the internal call in a vague way, usually take a long time to realize their vocation; generally, they are unable to travel through the way to perfection and ascend step by step toward the summit. Souls of this type run the risk of failing if a good Spiritual Director does not lead them well. Since they are reluctant to great sacrifices, as soon as they find a serious problem, feel that they are unfit to anything, and here the steady hand of the Director becomes necessary.
Also in life there are certain periods when vocation is apparently forgotten, but it is not so: a true vocation never dies, although ashes cover ashes in such a way that you do not see them, but a little movement, a renewed fervor or a holy reading is enough to revive them.
An internal vague motion is more and more usual in the soul and at the end becomes a true vocational realization.
Certain souls perceive the divine call through an insistent internal motion, which is unrealizable; these souls are immobilized by human bonds and duties of life: so, their desires do not come true because they delay them, but the divine motion is always there and ready inside them.
The soul gets used to that saintly and insistent desire and would wish to realize it, but does not do its best to put it into practice. On this occasion, the divine power that calls this person to his Ordination, makes use of any means to awake him and tests him through pains, mourning and dire losses, and so leads him to realize his vocation.
Despite this, once these souls abandon any worry and break any mental and sentimental bond that ties them to the world, surrender totally to their spiritual vocation.
Those souls that receive their internal spiritual motion in an entirely fleeting and passing way take a long time to realize it. This internal desire appears in the intimacy of the soul, and later disappears and sometimes seemingly does not leave any trace or memory. But once the divine touch takes place, never can be deleted; sometimes many years and one day later, suddenly, that vocational idea appears again, the divine feeling moves the heart in a powerful way, and finally the soul follows the way for which it had been chosen.
Those souls that feel that internal motion and are powerfully attracted by it respond spontaneously. But as soon as they express their purpose, a wave of trials and storms starts against them: habits, family, race and many other factors furiously emerge to hinder their intention. Then these souls suddenly feel belittled and frightened, and do not know what to do. They must be very careful with these trials because these great storms do not last too much, and the stronger they are, the quicker is their passage, and later these souls find again energy, understanding and means to answer to the call.
Those souls that do not resist this internal motion are softly led to the Ordination.
Seemingly, nothing is against them, and everything occurs slowly and without any trouble. Their vocation makes its way within little by little, as if it were a natural and logical consequence of their lives. Nothing and nobody hinders their vocation. This internal spontaneous motion apparently is protected against any contrary wind.
But beware!, the time of trial will come.
Many souls feel this internal call and reject it in a systematic way. Before the idea of abandoning the world and their dear ones, get scared and reject entirely their vocation because of their future hardships and fights.
How many souls experienced this terrible state and almost were forced to follow the Way to Renunciation!
Sometimes, these souls experienced very hard and drastic trials, and almost were forced to fulfill their mission of Ordained Sons, which their performed in a splendid way.
Any soul destined to the Sanctuary, sooner or later, if they are properly guided, will realize their divine destiny.
It is the Divine Mother who calls her Chosen Sons, and this is fundamental y valuable in regard to vocation. Preparation and the way to fulfill the divine injunction are made in many ways.
But as soon as a soul receives the internal divine motion, inevitably it must respond to the sublime call.
Teaching 2: Vocational Discernment
Vocation to Ordination is an unyielding feeling of the soul, a dark state of being, a determining idea of the mind, and an unknown certainty about one’s destiny and choice.
A soul describes this vocational state to his Spiritual Director as follows: “What a strange thing! Every day I recognize less all those things and beings that before were familiar to me. I feel that I am dreaming when I see them and the world around. Now the cause of my suffering is my selfishness, my faults and all those things that refuse to die in my personality. I would want really to die, and I meditate much on death in order to abandon my human personality, fragile and unhappy. But its roots are very deep! Here is my pain and my hardest cross: to see myself in this way, with so many graces that I do not deserve, and being so hard-hearted because of my evils! I do not understand this, and my Director never wished to explain this to me: he just said they are crosses. I did not know that faults were crosses... But they are crosses, or should be crosses in proportion to a real eagerness for purity, innocence and humility that now is just an aspiration in my soul! What a hard, ugly and sad thing is to fall! Truly, if She does not intervene, it is our ruin! And all this without any merit or virtue for my part; just because She simply wants... What a great deal is to die in order to resuscitate! What a sad and despicable thing is to live without renunciation and to miss one’s dynamics for the frightful statics of attachment”.
Vocation is true when what you feel within is love, nothing more than love, and this love becomes surer and more unyielding through trials and hardships. Vocation is true when your love is so self-possessed that does not wish comfort, compassion, distinction or understanding, because love of your vocation is enough.
If your love is a volitive feeling, a power of love, does not need any other love to be sustained or filled, because you sustain yourself through your own vocational love.
Vocation is an unyielding feeling of the soul because emerges like true love; it does not know why, when or how.
Desires of vocation against the true vocation are sensible and also bodily incentives based on certain personal tendencies to seem different from others and to achieve some characteristic and especial gift. These desires lead always to failure and disappointment, and the Director Spiritual must be very watchful not to confound desire for love. If the spiritual aspirant tends to be easily enthusiastic and carried away by affections and flatteries, makes easily particular friendships, and loves to keep them, then we can doubt of his vocation.
Vocation is a dark state of the being, because clear things are not human, but those states that come close to God are dark, because Gods is always darkness to the soul. It is a dark state because logical reasons or common actions of other human beings do not explain it and because it is something undetermined but irresistible.
True vocation cannot be humanly explained, but just divinely intuited.
Whoever wants to reason much and brood about vocation waste his time; he digs a well in the sea. But whoever surrenders trustfully to the arms of his vocation, that is, to the arms of the Divine Mother, reaches eternal shores.
Vocation is a determining idea of the mind, which is sure of its good result and of its final perseverance, because it comes into being within and its root is in the Divine Voice that has called the soul to the Path to Renunciation.
A Soul will fail when it has many vocational ideas. What is real never is the result of our thoughts or dreams.
Vocational ideas come into being from fantasy, never are the idea of true vocation or vocation in itself. If he aspirant considers beforehand his future life, how his companions will be, where he will live and which tasks must perform, we should doubt much of him; he is building “a priori” his own castle on the air, not considering his true vocation.
Vocation is an idea that remains there in a permanent way and disposes of other ideas. It is an idea that knocks and repeats: that is your destiny, God wants you there. It does not create any illusion; any fantasy is out of question there.
Vocation is an idea converted into a permanent habit of the mind and centered on it, and rejecting all in a systematic and stubborn way. It is an idea that becomes effective and permanent through certainty and continuity; it becomes a living and unavoidable power. It is nothing more than an idea, but is the unique idea of vocation and determines life of a being in a direct way. All can change, but vocation, that vocation, cannot change.
Vocation is an unknown certainty of one’s destiny because its basis is an inner, intimate and divine impulse.
On this earth there is no greater certainty than that of knowing that we are chosen, divinely chosen.
When a soul feels it is chosen for a vocation through a divine call, its vocation is certain for the rest of its life. Although this call was nothing more than a very soft internal call, it remains so real as if it were the Mother’s Voice speaking to the ear.
To refuse a divine call would the worst evil; although you totally rebel, the divine call would remain there intact, and if you do not answer, a terrible burden would remain on you.
A call is surer when is more visibly unknown, because when is visible unknown, its roots are deeper in the intimate, dark and divine part of your being, and more established in the unshakeable rock of the Divinity.
Teaching 3: Contact with the Community
Preparation for Ordination life is a constant effort of the soul for many months to get used to higher nervous tensions than to ordinary tensions.
The soul accustomed to this psychical run experiences a violent shock as soon as it arrives at the House of Community.
Doves blinded by sunbeams collide with the white walls of the houses. This occurs with the soul that illuminated by the divine sun of its vocation comes from the world and does not know how to stop on time before this change of vibration, which it experiences when it enters the Seminary. It is precise to put signals of warning and the best signal of warning in this case is a backward survey of the past life.
While the thought runs backward looking at the traveled road, the mind will loose its decisive tension, the heart will slow down its beats of immense desire and, little by little, in that immobility of the soul, the eyes will begin to see the new world where the aspirant entered.
The soul must enter the Silence of the Holy House, slowly, without efforts.
When the aspirant enters the Seminary, his rules of life must be imparted slowly and warnings given little by little. Old men said to those who came back hot and thirsty: “Wait for a while, do not drink water yet”.
After this violent shock, the soul comes in true contact with its vocation and comprises entirely its sense, because vocation and soul look one another square in the eye, not through the veil of the unknown ideal, but in contact with the simple reality.
At once, through an internal state that is entirely new, the soul senses how all its natural powers decrease and become weaker.
Wounds of the soul, even the most old and distant, become patent; all that was hidden appears as if a large screen were open before it.
The oldest desires and bad instincts emerge and everything that seemingly was abandoned forever gains new life.
The Great Current operates during these first days like a huge compressor that removes any humor, even the oldest and most hidden. The soul feels its misery, and the more this misery becomes manifested, the more gigantic appears the greatness and purity of the spiritual vocation.
Through a permanent silence in the Seminary, through the absence of any stranger and through an impossible communication or information about anything or anyone, the aspirant feels that he lacks any support, that he may fall any time and that nobody will run to help him.
People are all day excited by their curiosity, distraction and continuous escape of what they must do and consider. But the almost superhuman silence of the Seminary removes any intoxicating variety and becomes overwhelming and painful. Very few privileged souls are able to enter this silence and to remain immersed in it at once.
The eyes looking down and the absence of images and figures are as if something were rent or broken; it is as if the images of the world had taken an ideal form and were not any more what they are.
The habit of never saying what one wants or would wish, and prayers and Hymns chanted and repeated almost uninterruptedly are for the soul as if it had not any force or capacity for anything.
The apparent monotony of the regulation rhythm, hours repeated always the same through successive exercises during all day, and the new way of walking, of saying, of speaking and of being, produce a painful shock in the soul. But this pain becomes indispensable, because it is as the passage to a new birth.
The soul, put into the vibration of Community, is subject to a constant pressure and finally gets used to dispose of exciting and disconnected movements from the world. But this painful contraction, which in the beginning harries the brain and leaves it tired, rent and empty, is followed by a subsequent period of indifference, relaxation and inner silence. And it is there that the vision and sense of conformity and peace suddenly emerge.
And this wonderful vision of peace places the soul definitively in the perfect and serene rhythm of life in Community.
An unmistakable internal motion determines the vocational state, but this divine gift must be assisted to make the best possible use of it.
Vocation can be assisted by usual media, which are of physical, psychical and spiritual kind.
These means adapt a person to be entirely fit to fulfill his vocation.
In case of Ordained Sons’ vocation, the first means is achieved by adapting themselves to the Radius of Stability.
The Psalmist says: “Only one thing I asked of the Lord, and this I will ask of Him: to live in the house of the Lord all days of my life”.
The most eager souls for perfection have ever sought deserts, forests and monasteries as their abode.
Houses of Community, especially those of Seminary, very often are far away from towns and bustle, and surrounded by the serenity of nature, which affects the nervous system of the Son in a powerful way. It is as if the body were adapted to the environment and disposed of any worldly bodily toxicity.
How many times we hear from those who arrive for the first time at a House of Ordained Sons: “What a beautiful place! What a peace!”.
This adaptation to the place, to the Radius of Stability where the House of Community is located, is so powerful and gradual, that sometimes you do not notice it. Those who should leave sometimes perceive this so intensely that cannot live in peace and calm, and wish to go back to the beatitude of their Retreat. This happens always to them like that women of Shangri-La, who as soon as she left the place, lost his attractive and youth.
This physical-environmental adaptation invigorates the organism of the Son, passions of his souls acquire quiet, and he controls the whirlpool of his mind: the day passes quickly and sweetly, and all those things that were important in the world disappear in the uniformity of the environment or are idealized by memories.
Often you observe how persons who were stuck to their relatives, customs and habits in the world, and that suffered so much in the beginning of their life in Community, have adapted themselves to the new life radically and definitively.
In the Seminary, psychical adaptation goes one together with physical adaptation.
To understand its character you need to have experienced in yourself the power of the Great Current.
This is an adaptation of your senses to certain peculiar pleasures and internal refinement that the world cannot understand¸ for instance, reverential love for Superiors and companions, sensibility to perceive certain states of mind in companions and pupils entrusted to the Ordained Sons, intense suffering before a reprimand, and ability to enjoy very little things or events.
To persons of the world, this state of mind seems to be childish or affected; because they cannot understand that the psychical adaptation of the souls is such that any deep emotion emerges and on the surface becomes a beautiful silk skin.
And in Community you experience not only a psychical adaptation, but also that of senses, intelligence and intuition.
One day, a Superior asked an Ordained Son what was his opinion about the power of the Teaching imparted in Community, and the Son replied wisely: “To the Sons of the world, hours of Teaching are all; they expect anxiously to be gathered, drink the Teaching from the lips of the Speaker, and there they feel the Power of the Great Current. But here, in Community, the period of Teaching and Teaching itself lose their primordial importance. Our day, whether praying, studying or working, is totally permeated by the divine sense of the internal and continuous Teaching”.
In Community, the psychical adaptation of the soul to the Great Current becomes effective and, over all, during the period in the Seminary, the Son possesses a means for spiritual adaptation.
When the Son knows that he found his vocation and definitive purpose, and over all soon after worries and afflictions of the first days, he is breaking loose subconsciously.
Wisdom of all times is that of Cortes: “To burn the ships”. Then the Son burns ships within, and destroys bridges of worldly fantasies and illusory aspirations. And the light of the Spirit and life of the Divine Mother enter the soul gradually.
The spiritual idea is established; all other things that formerly were important now are unimportant and, little by little, the great spiritual adventure is in the foreground and becomes a central and unique point.
This process of adaptation to life in Community and realization of his vocation is sometimes slow and sometimes quick in the Ordained Son; sometimes becomes imperceptible and sometimes quite visible by his Superiors. But it is indispensable for the Perseverance.
Many souls called to perfect life cannot achieve their purpose because their blood links are so pressing that hinder their separation.
Just those who sublimate their affections and transform them into a loving offering to the Divine Mother can surpass this impediment.
Any human being has holy duties toward his relatives, and you cannot dispose of them as if they were useless things, because this would mean a serious lack of charity.
An aspirant, before his vocational decision, has to consider all in depth and hear wise advices about his future behavior, procedures and decision regarding his relatives.
But as soon as you leave all in order and make your steady decision, now you will not look back.
Many continue to delay their departure by extreme affection and sentimentalism, and others create responsibilities that are already solved.
Although the best thing is to leave your family joyful and in total agreement, it rarely occurs: relatives hardly understand the value of Renunciation. But even if they do not agree, you should try to leave in them a good impression and with their minds quiet.
Those relatives who although do not need urgently your company are against your departure to follow your spiritual life, should be left in their stubbornness, entrusting them to the help of the Divine Mother who gradually will appease their hearts and shape their wills through the sanctifying grace of understanding.
Once the aspirant puts his foot on the Holy House, he must bravely surrender his relatives to the Divine Mother; from that day on, he has to find them again just during his prayer.
But it is during the first weeks in the Seminary when physical parts claim more than ever for his food of blood.
Then a deep sadness and a great longing invade the soul of the Son, and his mind remembers his relatives and events related to them.
Sometimes he realizes that, although already in the Seminary and joyful in it, his heart remains at home against his own will. This state of mind, which reveals a strong union with his relatives, quickly disappears after the first shadows, because it is rather a question of habit than of attachment.
A Director has to know this state of mind during the first days and should not impede the Sons to cry and relieve his feelings because this will be quite good to them. An aspirant that during his first days in the Seminary misses and cries is demonstrating that he is a good son and, as such, also will be a good Ordained Son.
Later, the trial of responsibility. Family states appear in the soul of the Son and his heart starts wondering whether his parents and acquaintances truly were not in urgent need of him.
He sees that his relatives fell, are sick and even died for his fault. All this brings a heavy unrest and he cannot pray and fulfill properly his duties.
Just then his Superiors have to teach him the Act of Sublimation.
Over all: he is not responsible for what already is consummated.
If the Son does not see any urgency to remain at home when he surrenders to spiritual life, then he is not responsible for events that will occur later.
Moreover, through his surrender, this Son became responsible of a spiritual responsibility before the Divine Mother, which because of its divine nature is higher than a blood responsibility. So, a Son who is ever worried by conditions and circumstances referred to his relatives, does not observe his true spirit of Ordained Son; so, he neither can help his relatives nor realize properly his vocation.
A soul that renounced to all and is dead to the world and to any affection humanly cannot do anything for them.
But divinely, this soul can do much for them.
An aspirant left his old mother who was modestly supported by her daughters. Several years later, he came back to see his relatives and could hear joyfully this statement of his sisters: “God has helped us visibly from your departure. All got better”.
Ordained Sons are messengers of the Divine Mother. They cannot do anything, but can get all from Her, since they have left all for Her Love. She takes care of their needs without any request: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God...and all these things shall be added unto you”.
But this divine communication requires constant sublimation of blood and human affections; this is an internal and mystical state that is fed by suffering, detachment and Renunciation that becomes our blood and flesh.
Through this continuous offering of relatives to the Divine Mother, love of children toward parents and relatives will become purer and greater than never before.
Saint Therese of Lisieux sublimated constantly her love of relatives and reached so pure and lofty love of them that she maintained them continuously united with her in the presence of God.
Son: do not believe that your Ordination moves you away from your relatives or forces you not to love them. The Vow of Renunciation increases this love, since you love divinely your relatives.
Then your memory of relatives, instead of being an obstacle, becomes an incentive to spiritual live.
As soon as your relatives experience hard trials or disappointments, instead of declining, they feel that their souls and event their bodies are comforted and divinely helped.
Son: your family love becomes true when you offer it to the Divine Mother through sublimation in a continuous act of human separation and divine approximation.
Teaching 6: Oblivion of the World
Total dedication is impossible without full oblivion of one’s past.
As soon as the Son passes through the Holy Gate of his Ordination, he must entirely strip of the old man as if he came really and physically into a new life.
As soon as a Son is in the Seminary, he will make a backward survey of his entire past life. This survey will last several days or weeks, under Spiritual Director’s guide.
He will try to remember the most remote and forgotten events, and even the most futile and insignificant, without any concealment or shame. If necessary, he will write down all and make use of his meditation period with these memories.
Later, he will open his heart to his Superior or Spiritual Director, without any reticence or shame. He will put his past at the feet of his Superior of Spiritual Director, and the latter will surrender it to the Divine Mother as an offering; then the Son will be sure that all will remain in the deepest silence and secret, which ties in the same way a father with his son: the Vow of Silence.
Afterward, memories and papers will be thrown to the eternal fire of the Divine Love as a living offering of surrender, and the past will remain forgotten and dead forever.
Of course, the Son will not take again what he had given in a way so free and generous.
Later, the Son will be highly zealous not to demonstrate externally this oblivion of his past. And he will never return to any event or word that may revive it.
Of course, especially in the beginning, this will be difficult and strenuous. The past will emerge on the soul in many different forms and will try to occupy the mind and heart of the Son.
His nostalgia will touch the innermost depths of his being, and will put him in contact with events and personages that he knows and loves.
His sadness will cover memories of pain and misery of the world, to show those few happy moments that he lived in the valley.
All these things will be guilt complexes before duties left aside, which will emphasize images that should remain just in the presence of the Divine Mother during the period of prayer.
They will be sentimental stimuli that will try to reflect pictures of flesh and desire behind this disguise.
But all these feelings and thoughts are just temptations to move the soul away from the light and peace of the Divine World, and to return it to the shadows of the world.
When the soul is not very strong and is carried away by memories, this evil appears on the surface and is cause of delay in the Path to perfection and of many faults of Observance and good example regarding other Sons.
You will notice this especially in recreations and strolls. These Sons always will express and remember their past: “When I was a student in such and such school...”, “My aunt used to say...”, At home there was a plant...”.
A Son that is totally surrendered has forgotten his past. He has not a past.
He is not born here or there because he does not name his home city; he remembers his parents and says their names just at the feet of the Divine Mother, and does not mention any image related to his life in the world.
And to make use of particular confidences would be a serious fault and an indication of a wrong spirit.
Sons: never fall so much into imperfection.
When a soul must entrust something to other person that is not his Superior or Spiritual Director and needs to tell in secret events of his past life in the world, this means that this soul is tied to his past and goes on to live in it, hindering any progress in his way toward perfection.
And it is a serious fault in a Son to hear these confidences because in this way, also he comes back to the world and to the past: it is as if he despised the heavenly manna for onions of Egypt.
To suppose that this may happen is beyond imagination.
Likewise, Superiors must be very cautious in this. Do not believe that your authority permits you to send souls to the world. Be moderate in your questions, cautious in your enquiries about the past, and reluctant to subsequent confidences.
When the Son is Ordained has made a backward survey, is free of the burden of his past life, and has entrusted it to his Superior or Spiritual Director. All this is dead and buried.
Saint John of the Cross chants:
“I remained and forgot,
and reclined my face on the Beloved One”.
Cannot there be other way. In the Mystical Path of Divine Union cannot there be specks or tarnished things.
In those who remain there and only watch the Divine Light, in those who forget all, in those who abandon all, and in those who, being dead to the world, have the gift and unique right to take part in the Divine Life, their only supreme good is to recline their face on the Beloved One.
Eastern Masters take with them their disciples to the mountain, where a rigorous winter an abundant snow impede any relationship with the world.
An Ordained Son must follow his Divine Mother up to the high mountain to break any contact with the world. To forget and to be forgotten.
But many Ordained Sons do not go up to the summit: they remain always in the middle of way to be united eventually and tenuously with the world.
These Sons love and keep mainly in mind their correspondence.
In spite of its eventual need and justification to sustain it, correspondence is always a thread between the world and the Son.
The true progress of a Son in his practice of Renunciation is marked by his interchange of correspondence.
From his entry to the Seminary, a Son learns about the control of his correspondence by himself and by his Superiors, and how to write briefly and little, and how to answer those letters that are indispensable; but even this is not enough.
A soul should not love or rejects the correspondence; in this way this correspondence shall stop almost completely in a spontaneous way.
Since in this sense Superiors are always a little complaisant, this desire of stopping the correspondence must depend exclusively on the Son’s decision.
It is convenient to start soon this important task in order to cut any communication between the Son and the world.
In the Seminary, usually they send only a monthly letter to relatives and acquaintances. But parents and friends, because this case is a novelty and since an isolated life always arouses curiosity, usually write to the utmost, with profuse details, about news at home and surroundings. And it is here that the Son must start his demolition labor.
First, he must read quickly, ignoring superfluous news, just to know the physical condition of his parents and of some very close acquaintance. He must forget and overlook those letters that are merely friendly and informative.
When he has to answer, his letters will be simple, clear and short. He should not comment any case of mere curiosity, and from general news, he should pass quickly to sound advices about the soul and health of his relatives.
Do not be extremely affectionate, curious and long, and like true dead persons to the world, your letters should not arouse interest.
Later, through this simple method, nobody will desire to send you a letter, and shall say what an Ordained Son said to his sister: “I do not write because I have not anything important to communicate”.
The world will accede insidiously and gradually to the Community and the consecrated soul if Sons do not follow strictly these rules.
The world also possesses valid reasons and an entire collection of petty intrigues to win his battles of distraction. Today is a letter with news about a disease, and tomorrow other letter with family troubles. Then you can see a very worried and distracted Son who even does not pay attention to his duties. Continuously, he is thinking of what he deems a misfortune and bothers his Superior to send a letter and comfort, advice and orientate.
All this spoils his inner peace and at the same time is an occasion to help really his relatives by means of prayer and internal sacrifice.
A Son should help those people who suffer not by means of letters and written sentences, but through an internal offering of their lives and blood.
Also, there is other harmful correspondence that takes out peace of Ordained Souls: that of “down-loading”.
Every time something goes wrong at home or someone is in bad mood at home, people “down-load” their anger on a person that is absent, by reproaching and insulting him and his vocational life.
A Son must taste these letters and drink their poison drop by drop; and although his heart is transfixed, nothing should transpire externally. These letters should not be answered or considered; rather it is convenient to break definitively with those relatives, because this means that nothing in common can exist with persons whose opinions are so different.
The most dangerous correspondence is insinuating, indirect and flattering.
Some people believe that they can overcome the adamant peace of a consecrated soul by inviting the latter to taste pleasures that they experience in the world.
In correspondences of this kind, sometimes one may read sentences as follows: “In the house of such and such, we had a party like that time, do you know?”; or “Such and such asked about you”, or “Now such and such is married, and such and such is going out with...”. Sentences of this kind clearly denote their double intention of testing the spirit of a Son that renounced to all things, but also want to hurt by remembering what he left.
A relative that sends letters of this kind does not love truly the Son, humanly and spiritually, and the best thing he can do is to break up with this relative.
If his pleasure and will are absent in the correspondence of a Son, this correspondence will stop by itself, like a fire by lack of fuel. He just needs determination and an honest desire of renouncing to live by memories of the world.
Long letters, a lot of news, telegrams and compliments for anniversaries, and obligations with several and certain persons are all bridges to come back to the world.
Sons should send letters just to their parents and briefly; if the latter are sick or disabled, they will write to the closest relative, but always in a simple and informative way.
Certain Sons would want to write spiritual letters. In their view, they could properly guide the souls, and many times a timely post card became a way toward perfection.
Although this is true, this is not Ordained Sons’ mission.
In due course, the Divine Mother will kindle, in those people of pen and talents, an internal fire to write and gain souls through correspondence.
But sometimes, under instruction of their Superiors, the Sons must write spiritual letters. It is then when, under obedience, their correspondence becomes truly spiritual. Now it is not a link with the world, but a fiery arrow that from loneliness crosses the shadow and reaches the very center of the world to illuminate it and to illuminate a chosen soul.
In this case, the Sons must put into these spiritual letters the essence of their spiritual lives, and should not trust as much in the most beautiful correspondence as in that love with which they were made and sent.
At any rate, the most beautiful correspondence of the Son has to be that that he writes to his Divine Mother.
Clean your soul and transform it into a white and immaculate parchment; take the pen of your self-sacrificed will; fill your soul with blood of your sacrifices like a precious inkpot, and write: write there the history of your divine love during every day of your life, until your death.
You will write this last sentence of love: “Usque dum vivam et ultrum”.
Gradually, a miracle takes place in the soul of the Ordained Soul: his expanded soul.
As the soul is more and more into the Radius of Stability and into the limits of the Holy House, silence becomes effective, enters, and fills with peace and calm the void of worldly things.
This peace is so subtle that sometimes you do not perceive it.
As the soul gets warm slowly under the beams of the Great Current and the body discards the bad essence of the past through its pores, the self breaks his shell and goes out, to the light of the Divine day.
Beings of the world never will be able to know what is this mystery of an expanded soul; every day, they are more and more enclosed in their hard and resistant shell of worries for their homes, things and relatives; and they call this “to be free”, “to live their life” and “not to be subject to...”.
But those souls that have renounced to all possess the gift to experience this supreme good.
A liberated soul goes out of its seashell to look at the sun.
It is difficult to explain this state that those souls that experienced it can explain. This state appears suddenly; sometimes you experience it and even you do not realize it, because it is so natural in this new life. Like any miracle, it is such when you find it in the frame of the highest simplicity; it is there, in front of the soul, like the most ordinary thing in the world.
And the soul experiences in the first place an expansion of its feelings.
How selfish the soul was in relation to its feelings inside the shell! How limited its feelings were, and how hard its bond that tied it to them!
Through its feeling of possession, the son became indifferent, mean and poor before any collective problem of life, and the eyes looked as if they did not see any misery in the world; and when he said, “Poor child”, “Poor sick fellow!”, “Poor woman!”, it was with the secret fear that something like that might happen to one of his relatives.
But lo!, the soul has broken its shell. Those personal affections remained there, in the deep of his consciousness, like something sacred, but not like a possession, and since the soul does not expect anything of them, they became a feeling that comprises many. And one day the Ordained Son feels the miracle of his undetached self that is free of ties and expanded. It is a sweet and strong feeling at a time, which fills the soul and becomes within like an elation of amplitude, understanding and love.
You perceive this effective warmth when it comprises those children and sick and needy people entrusted to the Ordained Son, as a whole. It is a very tender feeling through which he is more and more solicitous and efficient. This feeling is like sadness, like longing for a heaven, when one batch ends and another begins; it is identification of the consecrated soul with their worries and pains, and this identification is stronger when is impersonal.
The miracle of an expanded soul is greater and greater. It is an expansion of ideas, aims and knowledge.
Nobody ever will know the infinite desire of the heart and mind of a consecrated soul. It is convenient for all to believe that those souls are meek doves into their dovecots and to look at them with pity.
Worldly people have so many things into their shell: job, house, city...; all their possessions, everything is their reduced world. Let us leave them alone. They do not know what beats behind those humble aprons and jackets, and what those eyes see behind their lowered eyelids!
An Ordained Son does not know why, but feels the expansion of the Divine Work on the earth and would wish to multiply up many times to fulfill it. All is little, even the world, for what a consecrated soul desires.
How many works these minds build, how many countries they travel through in their dreams, and how many heroic deeds they realize!
Seemingly, all is little to a consecrated soul. The Son would wish to go to all nations, carrying a message of love to all beings, healing all sick people and meeting all their needs. The hours of the day are too short for a soul that wishes to beg for all and to comprise all.
Miracle of love and understanding of Renunciation!
Now the shell is broken, and the free souls fly through infinite spaces and make their whiteness visible to all beings. And they do not feel self-sacrificed, but enjoy: they enjoy divinely these expanded realizations.
But consecrated souls do not stop here; their expanded souls cross frontiers of the planetary chain, entirely comprise the whole Universe, and become an expansion without frontiers and limits, which is purely spiritual.
There the soul surrenders completely. Now, surrender is not a word, but something that “is”.
It is as if the soul, acquiring for a while the speed of the light, traveled to the farthest reaches of space to rest on the Divine Mother’s lap.
Teaching 9: Impermeability to External Things
The Seminary has to form an Ordained Son in such a way that he does not reveal anything of his inner self.
If the Ordained vocation entails to live inside, in divine intimacy, then from the beginning it is indispensable not only to desire to be away from the world and to strive for being unknown to the world, but also to be cautious and to impede the world to know the Ordained Son and vice versa.
The sweet secret of the Divine Silence wants all to itself. So, it is necessary to be always impermeable to external storms. And this is not an insignificant or unimportant work.
A soul than begins should have clear explanations and no doubts about this. All is already prepared in regulations of the Ordination.
The continuous control of the Son about his behavior, in every act and emotional, cultural and external act are media tending to this.
Any demonstration, tenderness, weakness, change, struggle and temptation have to be something exclusive of the Son and of his Superiors and companions, but nothing of this has to transpire outside.
Any emotionality has to be repressed and any affection removed. An Ordained Son has to control himself in such a way that should not reveal any contraction of a muscle, a tear, or a blush.
The sweetest secret of a soul has to involve it totally in such a way that the unique demonstrable personality outside is that of personal unity of the Ordained Son.
Before those who look from outside, all this will transform the Ordained Son into a unique, general and ideal figure, even externally.
Any work must be made carefully and conscientiously during the period of Seminary.
Superiors should not forget that the souls tomorrow must be in contact with external duties, an even with the world, and that later it would be very difficult to acquire so subtle and refined habits that generally need time and exercise before being put in practice in a spontaneous way.
It would be regrettable to see an Ordained Son carried away by his emotionality or expressing it before the people; it is as if he rent his cloak.
Certainly, a careful observer would detect at once the origin, culture, possibilities and predilections of a Son by means of his much verbiage, and just the Divine Mother and his Superiors have to know all these things. When women socialize, usually they behave so discretely and correctly that is impossible to decipher them. They are correct persons and nothing more. If worldly success can produce so much self-control, how much self-control this love has to produce for the good name of certain impersonality Ordained.
An Ordained Son has to be so permeated by this spirit impersonality that nobody, however expert or psychologist be, can discover his needs.
If a good soul goes and sees his Superior and says: “I would wish to donate paper and envelops because I noticed that the Ordained need it”, or something like that, this is so because certain Ordained Son has transpired something that should not be revealed.
An Ordained Son never shows that he needs or lacks something. Superiors already know how much and how to request necessary help.
An Ordained Son should not discover his moral and physical evils to anyone. Certain souls are entirely shy, especially in regard to their physical evils; they never say or reveal troubles of human nature, but other usually complain for their evils or reveal them. The latter neither know to stand a headache and reveal it.
The Ordained Son never should be sick or to have physical disturbance before anyone, and nobody has to discover behind his ever equal aspect his physical condition, which the Son simple mentions to his Superior and to the physician for his cure.
An Ordained Son must learn in the Seminary to become impermeable and invisible before the eyes of all.
Nobody must know what they feel or think; nobody must deduce his inner feelings from his external movements; in this way, the personality of a Son of Cafh will shine.
Nobody must see the color of his eyes, because constantly he will avoid fixing or concentrating them on anyone in particular.
Nobody will know too much the timbre of his voice, because the Son keeps from speaking much and speaks clearly. He speaks what is necessary and without any especial modulation.
Nobody must deduce how the Son is from his external manifestations; this would be like the profanation of the Holy Temple that just is devoted to the Divine Mother.
The Sons must make in the Seminary this impermeable element to remain isolated any moment from outside.
Teaching 10: Modesty of the Eyes
The Ordained Sons offer their lives and their entire being to the Divine Mother, and the seal of this loving offering is the daily effort of the Sons to make it perfect.
Especially the eyes are the magnetic control of this eternal and daily offering.
A continuous sacrifice of the sight is indispensable for a true Ordained Son.
Eyes are the mirror of the soul, and should be the mirror of the Son’s Renunciation. Now, our eyes will not be useful to satisfy one’s curiosity or appetites, but just to see what one wants to see and decides to see; therefore, our eyes must see inward.
When a being loves, he does not wish to see anything except his beloved person, and walks as if he were thoughtless and absentminded.
We should not forget Campoamor’s verses in relation to a young woman in love:
“Because nobody looks at my eyes,
they are shut forever”.
So, love impedes beings to see and often causes to say, “I do not feel like seeing anything or anyone”, because sight along with thought is concentrated on memory and image, and this produces pain.
If an Ordained Son loves the Divine Mother and suffers when anything separates him from Her, then he cannot desire to see anyone except His Mother, and since any external thing is rather images that distract and move away from the unique end and perfect image of the Divine Lady, he must lower his eyes always with modesty.
Modesty in his eyes, a permanent gift of an eager soul for perfection, should be an urgent need in the beginning of spiritual life and mainly in the Seminary.
Those aspirants that come from the world are full of fantastic images that they wish to forget, and they can do this more easily when do not superpose images over images.
Also, in people of the world who use to see anything that happens around, even those things that do nor concern them, their habitual curiosity disappears in an admirable way when they do not look.
Modesty in the eyes is also like a balsam for worldly tiredness and prepares the soul for an intimacy with the Divine Mother that abides within.
Ordained Sons: your eyes must be continuously modest: neither look nor want to see anything except what is strictly indispensable. Your eyelids must be lowered, without affectation and naturally. Not for this you will seem an eccentric person, since it is not correct to look at the face of a person that you greet and when you say goodbye, but your eyes must reflect modesty during your conversation.
This virtue increases your spiritual beauty and due composure, since your eyes half-open give a particular charm to your face, and when you do not look everywhere, especially in the street, your composure is serious and attractive.
Perchance is there a more spiritual and beautiful face than that of the Buddha? But, what does grant to him so transcendental and characteristic beauty? Why does that face acquire eternity throughout years? It is especially beautiful by virtue of his way of looking. His half-closed eyelids allow his eyes to glimpse just forward, and his glance ignores surrounding images and comprises the soul and eternity of things.
It is indispensable to acquire the habit of looking with modesty from the Seminary. When the Ordained Sons are carried by their apostolate to the whirlpool of the world, just then they realize the total importance of this virtue.
Whoever lacks the habit of not looking, with difficulty can acquire it in the world or during an intensive work. In a Son, his temptations and disappointments are always a result of being unable to restrain his glance in due course.
Teaching 11: Perfect Observance
When the Son arrives at the Seminary, he finds a method that is entirely new and different, even on its formal aspect, from that that he used to follow.
It is convenient for the Son to adapt himself to this new life and to acquire a habitual and strict Observance. Perfect Observance in Community should not be an acquired virtue because in this case the Son follows a trajectory to reach a virtue that always is something different from him. On the contrary, Observance has to be his own state, intimate and expansive, of internal Renunciation. A Son that achieves a perfect external Observance does not possess it entirely if it is not closely united with internal Observance.
A Son in contact with life in Community faces a radical change of spiritual methods and even in apparent contradiction with rules established and formerly practiced rules Cafh. It is as if one said to him: “All your exercises and practices of spiritual progress that you made so far are useless now; throw all away”.
The Son had to make his best in his spiritual life to achieve an end that he gradually reached. It was an effort to achieve objectives and a stable psychical position. The Son updated this effort by practices of spiritual life, weekly meetings, where the Teachings were particularly explained, by periods of exercises of meditation and by contact with his Superiors.
But from the beginning, the Son refuses this effort to achieve something internal, which is almost external, when he comes in contact through his Ordination, as if one wore the glove of life inside out.
In fact, the soul has to dispose of any objective, any achievement and any effort to become negatively a realization.
The souls dispose of all; all becomes unimportant; no exercise is more important than other; neither to possess certain capacity, nor certain virtue.
In this sense, in Community, perfect Observance is the only real value, which is a flower than comes spontaneously into being in the soul and is not a good that one has reached.
The Son can perform this perfect inner Observance by identifying himself with the Mystical Body of the Community.
The Community is a living being, more living than any other, because its compounds have sacrificed their personality and their own identification to fuse themselves and to become one being.
Denial of one’s personality facilitates the formation of bodies of Fire in the Sons, where diversities disappear, and the Sons identify one another by similitude. Without this internal state, of unification, the Son may be very respectful of the rules, but his Observance will be ever something different, a drop of slippery oil in a jar of water.
“Yours” o “Mine”, “More” or “Less”, and “Better” or “Worse” disappear by means of this concept, because all is a simple unity.
In fact, a perfect Observance can be achieved just by this unity of compounds in the Community.
All are responsible for taking care of a good progress in the House, of a strict fulfillment of any duty, and of the perfection of the Sons.
For instance, if a Son broke a plate, all other Sons have to feel internally guilty and responsible, and if another Son gains a prize, all have to experience the joy of victory.
Whenever a Son witnesses a negligence of another Son, he has to correct it, if possible, because the fault of the one is also the fault of the other.
If in Community all goes right, all have to feel wellbeing, and if something goes wrong, all have to feel that burden.
Because of this feeling, Observance is not something abstract, but a result of a state of mind of all Sons in Community, like a general perfume in a room is a result of a flower that is present therein.
It is not question that the Son follows the Observance, but that the Community achieves its inherent characteristic.
So, a perfect Observance is a result of an inner state of the soul, conquered by Ascetic Renunciation and Mystique of the Heart.
The outer change of procedures that a Son finds when he enters the Seminary should be followed by a whole inner change. This is work of the Son guided by his Director, because without the latter, Observance will be non-existent or something entirely external and deprived of any value.
Of course, the Son reached through his Ordination the culminating point where the Ascetic Renunciation has to come true.
So, he must abandon any value, sentimental, educational, ideal, and even in certain sense, spiritual.
Humanitarian tendencies, experiences, studies, titles and social expectations have to disappear. Even successes in psychical practices and in exercises of meditation may disappear totally because the soul has to be deprived of all.
Mystique of the Heart is water and fire that destroy and purify all to achieve Perfect Simplicity, which is indispensable to Divine Union.
If the Son is not liberated from all these values, then the latter become counter-producing surges that affect the wellbeing in the Community and the development of a perfect Observance.
If a Son is identified with this life that he embraced, then any hope of future disappears: dreams and illusions of conquest and utopian joys vanish because he already possesses his end and knows beforehand which labor expects him in life.
The external result of perfection in Ascetic Renunciation and Mystique of the Heart is always and systematically: health for sick people, providence for the needy, and guide for the souls.
From the moment when the Mother receives his child in her arms, knows how difficult will be his growth and, since She decided it, She knows that Her mission is to be a mother and nothing else, and this feeling will lead Her mission with dignity and will lead Her to fulfill all Her duties perfectl0y.
So, the Son that knows the external result of his mission already possesses a reserve of possibilities to perform it, and this is revealed in him through a quiet and perfect Observance.
Observance is not only to obey strictly the schedule and to perform offices of the Community, but also to be responsible for any need and any useful element to prepare the Community for this purpose.
Observance is love of Radius of Stability, usual reserve of Cloister, updated Providential Economy, reservoir of energies deposited in a common reservoir and, over all, intimate permanence with the Divine Mother for identification with daily practices and works.
The Son knows that a result of his internal Renunciation has to be healing of evils and diseases in the world.
Any significant disease is the fruit of continuous and uncontrolled exhaustion that occurs in human beings.
The parable of the Prodigal Son repeats constantly.
Certain energies should be recovered to remove basic diseases from the world, and here is one of the highest tasks of the Sons.
Practice of chastity, modesty in the eyes, continuous exercise to control inner impulses, and void of mind and heart, would be just practical virtues if the Son did not leave their fruit to store and later distribute them among sick people of the world by means of their prayers.
Sometimes this labor even is direct and the Sons must attend and care for sick people through a more effective help, which is magnetic and curative.
So, perfect and true Observance is to avoid any exhaustion of energies.
Perfect Observance is apparent in an updated Providential Economy.
One knows that there are numberless needy people in the world and that economic problems should be solved as soon as possible, and the Work of Cafh strives after these basic results. Also one knows that the above mentioned evil is, over all, a result of human incomprehension and selfishness.
Humans make use of everything and everybody to the full. Every thing that one uses directly or indirectly, did not cost one life but many lives, and all beings are indebted to mankind for all those things that they posses and use so indifferently and continuously.
The Son must be conscious of this selfishness and thoughtlessness to feel indebted to mankind and to be ready to contribute effectively to meet needs.
The Son understands this and strives after the application of the Providential Economy even in Community, and he works for the sake of work. So, the economy of the Community is transferred to the Divine Plan and its performance increases enormously.
On the basis of this concept, a Son delivers not only his work, his unselfishness and his application to the work, but also achieves maximum performance and does not tire.
An unselfish work becomes light and multiple.
This is more apparent through union and impersonality of the Sons in Community, and the external miracle of helping the needy becomes effective.
First, through the spiritual encompassing power of the Sons who turn over the world their result mentally; second, through their sentiment and contact with any humanitarian movement of different institutions; and third, through the tasks of the Sons by means of Cafh’s Works.
Cafh’s Works are a miracle because, without any outer possession, but with the offering of the Sons and practices of Providential Economy, Cafh can support works but without certain incomes.
Perfect Observance contributes to store great reserves of energy.
As a result of Perfect Observance, also there is a continuous union with the Divine Mother and, in due time, Power to Direct the souls.
If a Son believes that Divine Union is bliss and ecstasy, he does not fulfill properly his Observance. If his state of mind is good and fervent, he fulfils all right any act in Community; but if internally he is despondent and dry, then one sees him sad, emaciated, bad-tempered and even indifferent in his Observance.
Union, which is a divine fruit of Renunciation and true Mystique of the Heart, is luminous participation in any act of Observance.
Happiness is not bliss, but fulfillment and vivid desire of a proper and perfect Observance in all your activities.
Here bliss or dryness is out of question, except perfection that through right intention becomes Observance and Divinity.
When in Community there his full spiritual life, the intimate and deep peace permeates the soul along with so inalterable certainty of the Divine Presence that all this remains in the depth of the soul, even and despite distractions, mistakes, spiritual dryness and pious bliss.
In short: Perfect Observance is not a mere external and mechanic fulfillment of any act in Community: Perfect Observance is a permanent state of the soul and a living result of the Ordained Son’s idiosyncrasy.
Teaching 12: Enemies of Perfection
Ordination is a magnetic field of high spiritual potentials, but not Supreme Realization that one just reaches within.
So, negative elements also enter the House of Community. Since low stimulating elements cannot enter there, little negative elements penetrate and delay enormously the achievement of perfection, exhaust the best vocational fibers and sometimes even spoil sanctifying efforts of a whole life.
Every state has its characteristic dangers and defects; and often one tends to certain defects in Community, which should be known and fought.
We can sum up the enemies of an Ordained Soul into three main defects, namely: disagreement, backbiting and scruples.
An Ordained Son is obliged by his Vow of Renunciation to become “a nothing”: a Divine nothing. This lofty ideal, encouraged by a true vocation, acquires such a power that even leads an aspirant to take his Holy Vows, but later, an entire series of gradual factors retaliate in his soul by trying to impose their will.
Renunciation entails a strenuous, hard and continuous fight. It is the most difficult and especial work that man may realize on earth. When a soul, basically respectful and surrendered, gives up fulfilling this divine purpose of being nothing, personality is activated again.
Lohengrin’s story ever repeats: the chaste Else, image of a surrendered soul, whose desires still are holy, leans out of the balcony, and at once Gutruna, a dethroned usurper, who still is unvanquished, tries to tempt her, “Who is he? Ask his name”, to stir up her disagreement.
If he is not totally faithful to his duty and internally gives up doing something, at once his intuitive part is dissatisfied, and this dissatisfaction comes into being in the soul. If he is not self-sacrificed, highly obedient, purity-oriented, faithful to any duty and constant prayer, he feels disappointed. Happy that soul in disagreement with itself; may the Divine Mother impede that a fine pride leads the Son to be dissatisfied with everything and with those media that She granted to him for his perfection.
Saint Therese said rightly: “May God protect us from a dissatisfied nun!”.
Because dissatisfied souls do harm themselves and the entire Community.
The enemy possesses very subtle arguments and complaints, and her first insinuation is that the Son cannot reach perfection, and blames this failure on Superiors, not on him: they do not understand or appraise him, or on the Community that is devoted rather to work than to prayer, or vice versa, on this or on that.
And this Son uses to be dissatisfied, which becomes a constant enemy that immobilizes any force and saddens his spiritual life by wasting a precious time in vain.
Certain souls realize on time this evil and seek in themselves the cause of their dissatisfaction, and fight against their inefficient Renunciation, which constantly is the cause.
How sad is to see a soul that is truly called to Ordination, a faithful, saintly and good soul that does not achieve its purpose because Renunciation is to become nothing, not suddenly –one achieves this through Holy Vows– but effectively through daily surrender of all that a soul possesses externally or internally!
A soul stubbornly and entirely ignoring Renunciation suffers from a constant nervous tension and continuously runs after external things for a reiterated relief that becomes backbiting. This soul refuses to be guilty of its own evil and needs to blame others for this. One can observe, and even experience confirms this, how a Son that is negligent in his Vows puts other souls on his own level and seeks accomplices of his evil by means of backbiting. Backbiting does not start in a direct way; the poor Son seeks in secret other comprehensive soul, certain particular friend that hears his intimate confidences, and later releases his own evil through backbiting against Regulation, Superiors, other Sons or everything.
If certain soul has fallen, even very partially in this so great evil, correct it and claim in a loud voice to the Divine Mother, “Clean me of the sacrilege of backbiting!”.
Other souls, more simple but equally unable to Renounce totally, do not accuse of their evils those people round them and those media of life granted to them, but to hidden shadows and imaginary phantoms.
Neither karma, nor wicked spirits, nor bad influences can do anything against a soul totally surrendered, with fidelity and constancy, to the Divine Mother.
Those poor souls are scared and victims of doubts, temptations and scruples of any kind. Constantly they believe that they did wrong, that they did not fulfill properly their Observance, that their Community looks at them in askance, and that they are good for nothing. If they pray, think that their prayer does not please the Divine Mother; if they work, think that their work is improperly made; if they speak, believe that they have offended; and if they keep silent, feel humiliated.
Scruples and fears are a sad evil. But if the Son saintly decides to examine and seek in himself which part of his soul refuses to surrender, and delivers it at once to the Divine Mother like an offering, then fears and doubts will disappear immediately at if this were a miracle.
The Divine Mother has chosen his Sons for the sublime vocation of Renunciation; many offer themselves through Holy Vows, but not all are able to fulfill them in a perfect way, and this is so because they want to keep a drop of personality.
When a Son feels dissatisfied, sad, aggressive, backbiting, fearful and doubtful, he must be immediately grateful the Divine Mother because this denotes that he did not deliver something, that he is keeping something, that he does not honor his Vows of perfection, and that all this is a clear warning and exact indicator of his progress or stagnation in the Spiritual Path.
Defects are like little bells that just warn the soul: “Still you are not the nothing, the divine nothing”.
Ordination, and over all, Ordination of Community, is the most perfect practice of the Vow of Renunciation. And perfection in this Vow is a constant practice of the same steady effort of will to achieve it up to that moment when, by discarding any effort, grace and understanding of Renunciation permeate the soul.
In due time, this Divine grace runs into the soul and permeates, cleans and annihilates all, and leaves therein the great void of union.
As long as the Son practices and struggles for conquering to the full his Vow of Renunciation, experiences many ups and downs, trials and temptations, and also moments of joy, but this soul is ever protected, assisted and personally taken by the Divine Mother.
But as the soul is coming close to realization, is not satisfied with any emotional state, however lofty it be.
The soul feels the giddiness and attraction of the void, but fears to jump in it.
Here is the description of a Son about his desire of void and, at the same time, of his attachment to spiritual sensibility: “How incomprehensible are these states of my soul! Yesterday after thirty minutes of prayer, I said, ‘I will meditate in Ordination’s style’, and chose the Golden Temple in search for consolation. I began, ‘Mother... Mother...! I suffer and I do no know why. Mother, come... embrace me...; tell to me, what must I do? What must I think? Mother... Mother...’, at the only word that at the end I articulated was, ‘Mother’. Suddenly, a painful and sorrowful feeling permeated my soul. Seemingly, it was like a son that insistently requests something and she refuses to give it because she knows that it is neither good nor can offer true happiness, and that on the contrary may be harmful; that is why she is reluctant. But as soon as his mother sees that his child is so sad, gives in with great pain. So, I felt as if She said: ‘Come, Son, do as you wish’, and when I realized that this was painful to her, I was sorry and cried, and my weeping was not violent, but soft. Deeply afflicted, a purpose emerged from me, which translated into words would mean: ‘Mother, I do not want anything, anything. Thy will be done. Illuminate and strengthen me to understand that Your Will be done’”.
This Son still desires a sensible consolation, but at the same time does accept it because he knows that he has to reject all and that then Her Divine Will shall be done and shall launch him to the Great Void.
The soul finds very difficult to be detached from the volitive feeling of his Vow of Renunciation, but nothing satisfies him or produces in him pleasant feelings, and if he has them, also he understands that these feelings are not a full spiritual life. Whatever he does, internally or internally, does not satisfy him, and the fulfillment of his own duties becomes a heavy burden. Seemingly, nobody can understand him or come close to him, and everything becomes pain, tiredness, anguish and loneliness.
A soul in this transition state writes to his Director: “I am alone, in an inaccessible loneliness. It is as if I was in the middle of an ice-field and far away, on the edge; friendly faces smile at me, extend their hands, but cannot come close and are just like figures. Even I cannot bring anyone near, and they do not want come; they fear me because I could cause them my own pain and they move away as if they wished to escape from certain deadly influence. From afar, they invite me to go out of this ice-field, but I know that I cannot return, because over there other people call me and say I should move further into this frozen area”.
Now the Son cannot stick to anything and is as if he got lost. The Great Mystical Death is getting ready within. This state of void is so impressive and concrete that at first sight confuses in such a way this Son accustomed to certain reserve in his personal life, that gets scared and despairs. Psychical and physical phenomena come up. The world and figures of beings disappear before his eyes and sometimes his eyes “see but do not see”
His head hurts, his bones crackle, his entrails refuse to receive food and everything is against the Son when he reaches the Threshold.
It is as if all barriers were open or broken.
So impressive and terrible is this anguish that permeates the soul that the Son just desires his own death to escape from that spiritual death that has to grant to him a Real Life.
His heart beats at an accelerated speed, his mind gets lost and cavils, his nerves burst, and his senses seem enraged and unleashed wild beasts. The soul cannot tolerate the great void even making use of human resources; a deadly and divine void takes place in the soul like the deepest nostalgia, the most marked dissatisfaction and the most maddening weariness.
Now, when the Son enters the Eternity on this solemn instant, the most important thing is to keep his eyes fixed on the unique point of the Divine Mother.
After this mystical death, in this great inner void, the soul wakes up to a new life, of infinite quiet and peace.
An Ordained Son has to synthesize and demonstrate spiritual life.
No suitable word can express it. Its name should be Life, but the term “life” relates only to physical and sensorial forms of man. Because there is no specific word, one must compound and call it Spiritual Life.
Spiritual Life is integral life of man, true life: physical, mental and spiritual, known through combined manifestations of these fundamental and inseparable principles of being.
Many persons speak of spiritual life, but it continues to be something theoretical, objective and chimerical, while man goes on to live as if corporal life was his unique life.
Spiritual life cannot be expressed, explained or demonstrated objectively; you can grasp and know it just by living it; and it can be lived just by means of a total communion of the individual with it.
An Ordained Son is able to live and demonstrate it through his total surrender.
An Ordained Son must keep ever in mind his Ideal and maintain it high: his spiritual life is neither something hypothetical nor a beautiful castle on the clouds, which is reduced to theories and projects. He is palpitating spiritual life in his entire being and in every expression; this spiritual life leads all his thoughts and actions, and is his unique aim.
His voluntary Withdrawal from the world is not a disdainful act addressed to those who live in it, but an effort to build internally a new world, a spiritual world.
Mystique of the Heart, which absorbs a Son and causes him to centre on himself and to consider himself continuously, is not a speculative act of self-control that places him on an unreal position, but an effective act of constant will and love. It is an inner quest that tries to achieve an integral man in the deep of being.
Discipline and organizing acts of the Son are not an imposition of superior powers on eager instincts that try to preserve their prevalence, but an harmonious exercise between different values and potentials of being.
The Son is tired of bombastic theories, erudite books and high-sounding sentences: although all this is beautiful, its results were not imminent. Therefore, he decided to achieve his aim in a direct way, through personal identification, practice and transformation, not through considerations about spiritual life, but by creating and being Spiritual Life.
Spiritual Life is non-existent as long as is in conflict with something or is considered like something different. But it is Spiritual Life as long as is located within, in the intimate and deep part of the soul, in the secret chamber of the heart; Spiritual Life acquires its own life from that place: it feeds by blood, magnetism and mind power of being; later, it appears splendidly on any external manifestation of the Son that has conquered it.
This is why Ordination is in essence spiritual life. This is so true that all observe and look at the Ordained Son as if he was something outside the world or strange to an ordinary way of living.
A Son said: “The Ordained are something out of my reach and beyond”.
It is true: the Ordained are out of reach of other men, because they do not live, rather they live spiritually. Saint Paul says right: “I do not live, but Christ lives in me”.
A new being lives in an Ordained Son who is a perfect and complete expression of Spiritual Life.
A slow but continuous process, which is totally real, achieves this transformation; and an Ordained Son must do his best to be on that level.
Not only others have to see him beyond, but also he has to be truly beyond.
Men live in a way that is more physical than spiritual, which granted to them a heavy and materialistic world; but those who strive to live an integral life, in tune with physical and spiritual values, will build a new world, a spiritual world round.
This new world, which is a fervent aspiration of the Ordained Son, will become more usual and permanent as the time goes by, and finally will be a tangible reality.
Ordained Sons: never deviate your glance from this guide; keep ever in mind this aim.
An Ordained Son cannot be ambivalent in relation to life and Spiritual Life; all that moves him away from his unique aim is entirely relative and truly unimportant.
An Ordained Son who understood entirely this inner concept of Spiritual Life realized completely his divine vocation.
Teaching 15: Love and Sacrifice
Here are the greatest gifts of Ordination: capacity to love and suffer in silence, which the Sons acquire by being detached from things.
Seemingly, on first sight, life of Ordination is a decision of certain little sensible souls who abandon the world and any affection. And it is convenient that people of the world may believe such a thing about those who abandoned it.
You need great capacity of love to go and embrace a state of life totally devoted to the Divinity, and to sacrifice the purest and deepest affections of your heart.
Moreover, a very concentrated and watchful life in Community and the application of exercises of assistance and prayer really intensify sensorial fibers of your being, and grant to your soul so extraordinary and supernatural excellence that is beyond understanding.
Inner efforts made by you to gain control over natural feelings and to sublimate affections of your blood, grant a higher capacity of love; and since this is not a selfish or sensorial love, quickly expands, and its character is entirely supernatural and divine.
This lofty love beautifies and strengthens any word and act of the Ordained Son who is more and more able to perceive, observe and communicate his feelings, and to appreciate those little things that are reference points of human sentiments.
This super-sensibility, which does not operate by itself but in itself, transforms work and direct assistance into a great success, and grants introspective power of help and protection to action.
Of course, when the Son acquires this great sensibility, also he has more power of suffering: not a sterile pain, but a sweet and constructive suffering.
Saint Joseph of Cupertino said he had a wound in his heart: a living wound of love.
And Simone Weil says, God is love in your intimacy and sacrifice in your external work.
Pain is an unmistakable sign of true love.
Perhaps certain weaker souls may be always unable to suppress and to say nothing about their state of mind, and may feel hurt and misunderstood by somewhat indifferent or hard attitude of people. But this little laments dissolve the effective fruit of the grace and scatter the sap of the internal offering.
You should give in a form self-denying and constructive, with unlimited generosity, and in silence; this way, intact drops of blood of your heart fall on the lap of the Divine Mother.
Through the power of this internal pain, the Son is able to start any conquest, to achieve whatever he wishes spiritually, and to gain souls.
Great is the value of a missionary who, amid dangers and strenuous efforts, conquers souls wherever he goes; but infinitely superior is that egocentric missionary who conquers souls in the loving and unselfish silence of his heart.
As long as he loves and suffers more and more, he conquers more souls for Spiritual Life.
A Sign of Blood is embroidered in the Standard of Love belonging to an Ordained Son.
So, a vocation of Renunciation does not demand any elimination of affections and feelings, but just their transmutation into a flame of Divine Love.
This love, after its purification from human dregs, and by means of pain and sacrifice, becomes a Living flame of Divine Love.
Worldly love and pain kill, but spiritual love and pain give life.
When love loses any external appearance of manifested affection, then it becomes deeper and spiritual, and is like a state of apathy and indifference. Even human affection, deeper and more real, loses consistency and rather belongs to the soul than to senses.
Teaching 16: Women’s Ordination
Women’s Ordination is peculiarly and basically different from that of Men.
Women as Ordained Daughters and to become Ordained Daughters, have to live in Community.
Otherwise, may an Ordained Daughter do something that a Daughter of Table of Lonely Beings cannot do?
If sometimes, an Ordained Daughter must be in the world for certain especial mission, this would in a temporary –never permanent– way.
Even works made by Ordained Daughters in Houses of Cafh could be made by non-Ordained volunteers.
An Ordained Woman is authorized as such just when she takes her Vow of Renunciation and lives a life of total chastity; otherwise, she cannot exist as an Ordained Woman because the Daughters of Lonely Beings are able to perform her duties.
Her openly priestly character is a result of the absolute chastity of the Ordained Woman. And since chastity must be constantly defended, she protects it in a way unique and exclusive by living in Community and following its strict discipline.
Many somewhat dreamy souls felt that Ordination is a title more, a white veil on their heads, and later an ordinary life. And certain women even believed that they could be housewives and possess that title. But Superiors wisely dissuaded them in the sense that Ordination was not a title, but a conclusive reality. Those few married women who, by an extraordinary vocation, could be accepted and Ordained, should abandon home and affections and surrender entirely to life in Community and to a continuous practice of chastity.
Cafh’s Women, keep in mind this concept, which must be properly explained to any Daughter who comes to the Seminary: Women’s Ordination is Community and Chastity.
Men, although chaste, perform their priesthood by assisting continuously those souls entrusted to them, by teaching the revealed Truths of Cafh, and through their priestly apostolate that enables them to communicate with all beings by means of their blood Vow; but women confirm, demonstrate and justify their Ordination by means of a continuous chastity and life in Community.
Although Ordained Daughters never take, like the Knight Masters, an everlasting Vow of Renunciation, it is beyond imagination that these women are not like them in the innermost depths of their souls.
During a meeting in Community, an Ordained Daughter said she desired personally rather death than a dispensation of her Vow of Renunciation. And here is the true spirit that must encourage any Ordained Daughter: a surrender of her freedom and chastity to the Divine Mother for the rest of her life.
Although these women do not take Vow of Everlasting Union like Cafh’s Superiors, they do in spirit: self-offering like Voluntary blood Victims to keep the spirit of union among all Cafh’s Sons.
They have to renew their Everlasting Vow in spirit every time they hear the prayer of blessing, when they address these beautiful words to the Divine Mother: “I am united with you, by an Everlasting Vow of Union with all Sons of Cafh, who were, are and will be”.
Even for certain especially authorized souls, it is convenient to take this Everlasting Vow in a way private and formal.
Although a Vow of Renunciation admits dispensation, how would live in the world a soul who once entered the Sanctuary of the Divine Mother? And overall, in a woman who offered her best possession to the Divine Mother: her chastity? How can these souls, over there in the world, ask of the Divine Mother the key of pleasure, which once they have surrendered to Her?
A Superior said to other: “Up to these days I hear the words of the Knight Great Master, in Full Moon 1952 on occasion of a dispensation of a Vow of Renunciation: ‘Mother, may any dispensation be for others, not for me; rather death that defeat; rather death than that. May I be the last being in your House before I may be vomited again to the world”.
Women’s Ordination is the crown of Cafh: it is its power, hope and source of means. But their Ordination acquires everlasting and indestructible value if they establish it. And divine things cannot be established in appearances, ranks and habits, but in Eternal Verities. And in a woman as a priest, her Eternal Truth is the gift of the Divine Mother, which distinguishes her like a woman, that is, an offering of her chastity for the rest of her life.
CONTENTS:
Teaching 1: Call to Ordination
Teaching 2: Vocational Discernment
Teaching 3: Contact with Community
Teaching 4: Adaptability
Teaching 5: Blood Sublimation
Teaching 6: Oblivion of the World
Teaching 7: Correspondence
Teaching 8: Expanded Soul
Teaching 9: Impermeability to External Things
Teaching 10: Modesty of the Eyes
Teaching 11: Perfect Observance
Teaching 12: Enemies of Perfection
Teaching 13: Purifying Void
Teaching 14: Spiritual Life
Teaching 15: Love and Sacrifice
Teaching 16: Womwn´s Ordination
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