Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller, MSpS, explained the spirituality that animates his religious congregation, the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, with 60 students and graduates of Oblate School of Theology’s Programa de Espiritualidad y Dirección Espiritual (Spirituality and Spiritual Direction Program for Spanish-speakers) Sept. 30 at the School.
Archbishop Gustavo professed vows as a member of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit in 1975 when he was 18. He was ordained a priest for the religious congregation on June 22, 1984. He noted that like all Christianity’s spiritualities, the spirituality of the Cross is a way of following Jesus and is to be lived “in the spirit of Christ crucified” in view of Jesus’ invitation to carry one’s cross. The many different spiritualities are incorporated into God’s plan with specific people at specific moments in history, he said
He illustrated this spirituality as lived in the life of Concepción (“Conchita”) Cabrera de Armida (1862-1937), a married lay woman who was called to live the spirituality of the Cross amid intense anti-Catholic persecution in Mexico.
“She lived this time from the heart of the church of Mexico and as a gift from God to help her seize the opportunity to offer her suffering for Christ, with him and in him,” the prelate explained. “In the midst of pain, the attitude of faith that she lived deeply and communicated to many people is summarized in the phrase ‘I hope against all hope,’” the archbishop commented. “Through her, God granted abundant fruits for souls, for the works of the Cross, for Mexico and for all Christianity.”
At the height of the persecution, religious orders were outlawed. Public celebrations of faith were banned, and the right to vote, freedom of speech and free political association were withdrawn from members of religious orders and clergy. During this persecution, which came to a head in the Cristero War, hundreds of priests and thousands of lay people were executed without trial or died fighting for their faith.
Concepción Cabrera lived throughout the conflict as a widowed mother of nine children and as a mystic called to live the spirituality of the Cross in daily life, the archbishop explained. He said she wrote 60,000 pages of meditation which influenced the work of his own Congregation of Missionaries of the Holy Spirit and several other “apostolates of the Cross.”
In the middle of the revolution, in which more than 10 percent of all Mexicans died voluntarily, the bishops consecrated Mexico to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, king of peace, on Jan. 11, 1914. In that ceremony, the archbishop said, “the cry ‘Long live Christ the King’ was born. Ten years later, Mexico renewed its consecration to Christ the King during the Eucharistic Congress of 1924. Conchita Cabrera, who in May 2019 became the first Mexican woman beatified, was recognized as a lay woman, mystic and apostle.”
Archbishop Gustavo said that Cabrera’s example emerged in her marriage and her family life. “The Lord told her in many ways, in his soul, that she had to live her state of life well. During her beatification Mass on May 4, 2019, in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, her life was summarized in three words: Lay, Mystic, and Apostle,” he said.
Conchita’s mission was not small, he said. “The Lord told her, ‘Your mission is to save souls, and especially the souls of priests.’ The Lord invited her through this spirituality to be one with Jesus on the Cross, and in those moments of suffering to help the priests; and not only them, but especially to priests.
Archbishop Gustavo explained the symbols of this spirituality, its emphasis on the “giving of self for others,” which is a priestly role among both lay and ordained people. In a lively question-and-answer period, he helped participants identify characteristics of a spirituality of the Cross in the lives of the people they accompany. “She was passionate about the path to holiness and was convinced that this path had to be done carrying the Cross, and that is a good news. When the Lord calls someone to live a particular charism, an angle of Christ, he leads that person down that path.”