A piece of writing from MOTHER TRINIDAD DE LA SANTA MADRE IGLESIA,
from the 29th of December, 1962. Title:
“TO LIVE”
To live…! Hidden in this word is a great mystery of happiness, joy and eternity. Therefore, on this day, feeling deeply immersed in the secret this word encloses, I see that we have been created for eternal Life, and that, as long as we are in exile, we must strive to live from this Life through faith, hope and charity.
To live…! This is the need that all rational beings created by the Infinite One do experience.
To live is the law that we all bear imprinted on our souls. That is why, when death arrives, life ends for those who do not have faith, and rebellious becomes that cry for life that all human beings bear inscribed within themselves. And in the face of the mystery that the contrast of death and the need to live presents to them, those who have not deepened the mystery of life, poor dears, they feel disappointed, seeing in natural death the complete destruction of everything they experience in themselves regarding love, life, happiness, beauty, eternity.
Due to the experience of their being that cries out to them: life! demanding from them the fulfilment of all those needs they experience within them, they lose heart at the gloomy silence of burial which, according to what they believe, will mark the end of all those needs they bear engraved on their souls, and so for them great mystery looms over everything.
Poor man who has been created to live and not to die, and, on understanding natural death, not as the passing from this life to the next or like a punishment for sin and the destruction of the “I”, but rather as the saddest and most incomprehensible ending of all the cravings of his soul, his bitterness is unspeakable, on seeing that death has triumphed over life!
To live…! We have been created for Eternity. We, those who live by faith, hope and charity, know that the word life, which we bear engraved on our souls, is the delectable end, the glorious prize we have been created for, by which, partaking of God, we will be blessed for all Eternity.
You who feel the need to live, who are seeking pleasures and happiness which can be found in God alone, live out by hope the truths that faith presents to you, and you will see that being kindled in your being will be a love that will make you live a life that neither natural death nor time will ever be able to take away from you.
Time is the gift that Infinite Love gives to man for him to be able to win eternal Life; it is the proof that shows God the love which the human creature owes to his creator. Therefore strive to live without wasting one single minute, because you don’t know when the Father of the household will come to fetch your soul.
Christian, whoever you may be, who through baptism are already consecrated, you who have committed yourself to living for God, who desire to glorify Him, realize that you have to give life to souls, since your consecration has made you universal. Never let anyone say to you: you who knew what Life was, you who insofar as being Church had the divine Word in your bosom, what are you doing not giving me the life that the Lord wants to communicate to me through you? Teach me how to live so that I too may have life, be happy and give glory to God!
If, besides this, you live surrendered to God through priesthood or consecration, all men demand from you the divine nourishment that God has placed in you to be communicated to them.
Try to live, make use of every moment, and, being aware of that awe-inspiring truth of your consecration, do not forget that the virgins and “the priests, the ministers of the Lord must weep between the porch and the altar,” exercising their priesthood and knowing that the efficacy of prayer almost infinitely surpasses that of action. And, if to prayer one adds the spirit of sacrifice, lived for love in complete self-forgetfulness, our prayers will then be like incense that, rising up before the divine presence, will give great glory to God and abundant life to souls.
Son, you who want to follow me, you, at least, live your vocation. Stay between the porch and the altar exercising your priesthood and know that the most fruitful apostolate and the best way to give life to souls is to be filled with that divine life that the Infinite One wants to communicate to you, so that you may give it to others.
Do no forget that your vocation, above all, requires you to know your Father God, to lose yourself in His mystery and to be immersed in Him, partaking of His eternal happiness, living and creating within yourself, through your life of grace, a source of living waters that may give rise in your soul to streams of eternal life where all men can go to drink in abundance, thus fulfilling the need to live that all God’s children bear engraved within them.
Take advantage of all occasions that the external apostolic activities offer you to give life. Communicate the divine Word that you possess because you are Church; but do not forget that the highest efficacy is to be found “between the porch and the altar,” exercising your priesthood and trying to keep that same attitude in all your activities.
It is necessary for you to sense within yourself an unquenchable need to give souls to God; that you feel in your being the urgency for all men on earth, regardless of their race, class or condition, to live for the eternal life, giving them all that happiness for which they were created. But, in order to embrace everyone under your radiance, only “between the porch and the altar” will you be able to attain the strength that your soul needs.
Those Christians who live their Christianity need to make others partake of the happiness they possess, feeling the urgency to reach everywhere, because their charity asks them to help everyone by filling them with life. And before the powerlessness of their own actions, on seeing that the number of people around them is so limited, and given that their mission is the infinite-like demand to reach all mankind, they can fully rest only by staying “between the porch and the altar,” knowing that there, in priestly attitude, our radiance embraces everyone without distances, without time, without difference of race, without frontiers. In that priestly attitude you will embrace all souls.
O Love! “between the porch and the altar” my soul cries out: “Give me children for Your glory, or I will die…”
Before the power of prayer, no one is left without receiving the benefits coming from the soul-Church who deeply lives its Christianity, and the measure to its radiance is the measure of the soul’s participation in God through its life of grace; a participation that gives the soul, according to its own measure, a greater or lesser strength to exercise its own priesthood on behalf of others.
Children of the Church, come to the divine banquet of eternal Love. Come, because together with the Church, in priestly attitude, my soul is “between the porch and the altar,” extracting the treasure from God’s heart to make it known to you.
Dear soul, whoever you may be, maybe the person most forsaken on earth, the most neglected, the most misunderstood, the loneliest of all, who think there is no one in whom you can find repose, for me you are the dearest of all.
I want you to know that for your sake, oh dearest daughter of my bosom of Church, I am “between the porch and the altar” exercising my priesthood, and weeping, like Saint Monica, to obtain from God the life you need. I also want you to know that neither time nor distances exist for me; I don’t care whether you live in this century, whether you existed at the beginning of time or whether you will live at its very end.
Whether you experience misfortune or happiness, you who read these words, have to know that my soul has been with you in those very moments when silence and loneliness engulf you, keeping you company and giving you warmth and homely affection. Because I have been made your mother by God, since neither time nor space exists for the bride of the Holy Spirit, who, on feeling herself fecundated by Him, knows that she is universal mother of all souls, experiencing within herself how she loves all souls and each soul, with the same capacity to love each soul and all of them.
Yet how could I give you life, if my posture were not to stay “between the porch and the altar,” which is the only way possible to reach all times? And, how would I dare to call myself mother of all souls, if my prayer before God were not possess the efficacy that a spiritual mother needs in order to obtain from the eternal Bridegroom abundant life for all children? How could I be called your mother if I did not give you life? And, from where would I draw life, if it is not from the infinite water Spring? Yes, there, in the hidden secret of our Father God, is the Source of life, where I need to be filled in order to be fruitful and to give you the life you need as God’s child.
“Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord weep between the porch and the altar” and let the virgins implore; let them exercise their priesthood and live their consecration, quenching in this Fount of life their need to reach all souls. The range of our actions, regardless of how broad this may be, is so limited…! and the need that the soul-Church feels to give life is so infinite-like…!
If you feel yourself called to an active apostolate and you have imprinted upon you the need, perhaps, to go far away to foreign missions, I bless your thought, because if you do it seeking only the glory of God, it is the Holy Spirit who moves you, inspiring you to give life through your word to these souls who, maybe without you, would have never known God. But do not forget that you will not be able to satiate the need that you experience to make God known and loved, even if you were to surrender your whole life to apostolic works, unless you devote long periods of prayer to exercising your priesthood of spiritual fatherhood or motherhood “between the porch and the altar;” thus bringing to life this attitude within you in such a way, that at any given moment of your existence, you may be reaching everywhere, even if your external action is limited.
Because I don’t believe that you, who were chosen to live your priesthood, can feel satisfied with the applauses of a brilliant apostolate thanks to your own deeds, without dedicating long periods of time to being “between the porch and the altar,” communicating divine life to all those souls who, in comparison with the ones you can reach through your words, are like infinite, and are crying out to you: you who have the Life! why don’t you give it to me? And if due to your poor and scarce prayer, your life is so limited, that you cannot reach to me when I am dying, how do you dare to dedicate yourself to a handful of souls, when the whole universe is shouting out to you with inexpressible groans that you fill yourself with divine life through your intimacy with the eternal Life, so that, as a good father or mother, you can communicate life to all your children? How can you feel satisfied, and maybe live happily, lured by the sweetness of giving life to people who are close to you, while those who are far from you are dying because they don’t receive it?
“Let the priests and the virgins of the Lord weep between the porch and the altar”…! Any Christian who feels within the demands to be fruitful and to give life! O, if every one of us could say because we are full of divine life, for our deep and intense intimacy with the Lord: “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink,” and he who hungers, come to me and eat, because Infinite Love has brought forth within me “a source of living water welling up to eternal life”
With Saint John of Avila I also tell you: “Whoever takes on the office of father or mother, let them learn how to weep.” Yes, whoever embraces the office of being a father or mother should learn how to pray. Because, how could those persons who were called to give life to souls present themselves before the divine gaze, if, because they did not go to receive it in the infinite water springs as Love asks of them, they lack life even for themselves?
Let he who takes the office of priesthood learn how to pray “between porch and the altar.” Because should the death of some of his children eventually happen, maybe because those children were not given the divine life they expected through him, great will be the burden for his soul on judgement day!
Members of The Work of the Church, you at least stay “between the porch and the altar!” exercise your priesthood in order to be fruitful so that all the Work of the Church may give the life that the Lord, through it, wants to communicate to the world; praying and acting according to the will of God for every one of us, but everyone leading a profound life of prayer in its extension and intensity.
Live…! Dear child, learn how to exercise your priesthood, learn to live, knowing that by virtue of faith neither distances nor time may exist in your soul. Learn how to live, and then, at any moment of your life, you will be able to joyfully accompany Jesus in Bethlehem saying: “Today the Saviour has been born.”
Given that in God there is no time and for the soul-Church there are no boundaries, through faith you can truly live all that has taken place over the last twenty centuries. But let your faith be such that, going to the stable in Bethlehem, at the moment when the Word of Life comes out from Mary’s womb to communicate Himself to mankind, you may receive Him, and this so painful sentence: “He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him,” won’t be true any longer in you.
Be active in this life of faith, enlighten it with charity, revive it with hope and strive to live all the steps of Jesus’ mortal life throughout your whole life. Keep Him company in the manger, in Nazareth and during the moments of His public life; be present at His crucifixion; contemplate His resurrection and rejoice in His ascension… Why should you envy those who lived with Him? If so, you don’t live by faith!
I consider myself the happiest creature on earth. Because I am Church, living the riches of my Christianity, I have felt the joy of having been to Bethlehem, I saw Jesus in Nazareth, I accompanied Him in His public life, I comforted Him in Gethsemane, I adored Him in Calvary, I kissed Him in His resurrection and my hope was fulfilled in His ascension.
I shouldn’t feel envious of anyone! for I have witnessed what the Lord said to Thomas: “Because you have seen you believe, blessed are those who have believed without seeing.” I bear the light of faith imprinted in my soul and it is more certain to me than my own actual senses, feeling that whatever faith teaches me is more certain than all that I can learn by myself.
My soul has been with Jesus at every step of His life, and I experience the joy of being able to live in each and every moment the mystery of Jesus that most pleases me. Because, guided by faith, I penetrate the recondite hidden secrets of the Church, and inflamed with charity, I receive within myself all these mysteries lived in love or pain, keeping Jesus company in every moment of His life.
I experience a joy that the disciples of the Lord did not live; because now, being able by faith to live those very moments twenty centuries later, the development of the Church has given to my soul a knowledge that they did not possess for not having received the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Which is why, I go with the shepherds to the stable at Bethlehem and, knowing the reason why I am going there, I grasp the profound mystery that is taking place there, enlightened by the gifts of the Holy Spirit who kindles my faith. And at the very instant when the Word comes out from Mary’s womb, I receive Him before She lays Him in the manger; because there was no one to receive Him, “Mary placed Jesus in the manger.” These words of the Gospel enshrine a deep mystery: it was the Father’s will that Jesus might be placed amongst straws to make it clear to us that “He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.”
My soul steps ahead of the shepherds and, in the clearest light of faith, lives that moment of the birth of the Word of Life that the angels alone could perceive. At that very instant I open my soul for the Mother to place Him on my lap, and in silence, as a bride, I make good use of these moments in which my God made Man was eager to communicate His proclamation to us, and I receive Him on my lap.
Let us see who is happier, those shepherds or me? They didn’t know what they had to do, but faith has taught me, aflame with love, to take advantage of this moment of the birth of Jesus in order to receive the message of eternal love that, on becoming incarnate, the Word came to communicate to us.
I was at the manger and stood by the cross; I saw the glory of the divine Word in His ascension; I received His first words and His last ones. And all was because faith, surpassing my senses, makes me live.
That is why, on this day, children of my soul, I ask you: Live. It is necessary to live! And the Source of life is in the bosom of the Trinity, that unveils to us the faith that the Incarnate Word deposited in the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church.
O Love…! I hope for the promised goods; yet I live what I hope for, because faith, inflamed by charity, makes me live by hope.
Live what you hope for, dear soul. You at least, child of my Work of the Church, live your vocation, apply yourself to living what faith presents to you, and love all that most wonderful reality of your Christianity, which we impoverish because it is unknown.
To live…! What great joy does my soul feel for being a Christian…! What most wonderful dogma that of my holy Church…! What happiness it is to live by faith, hope and charity, and what joy to know that, for those Christians who live their Christianity, there is no time, place, distance, or centuries…!
In the life of prayer the soul soars high to the very bosom of the Trinity and there contemplates the secret mystery of the divine begetting, surprising, in the silence of prayer, the Word breaking out into an infinite expression of eternal love. Submerged, the soul penetrates into the hidden and recondite mystery of the loving spiration, by the Father and through the Word, of the infinite fruit of the eternal love that, personified, is the Holy Spirit; Love that binds the Trinity together in the mysterious secret of its eternal virginity.
As we have already seen, there is not a single moment in the life of Jesus or Mary that we cannot live and make present in our life.
Jesus kept everything present from the very moment of His conception until His ascension into Heaven. That is why what you live now, at this moment, He then lived and received, experiencing the joy and comfort of seeing Himself accompanied by your soul at every step of His life; and you experience the joy of not only having accompanied Him in one single episode of His life once, but rather, at every single moment of your lifetime, you can accompany Him in the manger, in Nazareth, during His public life, etc., etc., something which those who were with Him at that time were not able to do, unless they lived by faith.
Love…! My whole life, thus lived, is to live…! My whole life, thus lived, gives life; my whole life, thus lived, is happiness, truth, fruitfulness… That is why, with all the joy of my soul, I can say that, through my simple life of faith, hope and charity, there is neither anything that I don’t possess, nor anyone of whom I may feel envious. My soul has enlarged its capacity and, living in the truth, there is nothing I may desire that I do not have.
Soul-Church, whoever you may be, if you want to live and be filled with divine life, exercise your priesthood “between the porch and the altar.” Take advantage of the birth of Jesus to receive the eternal Proclamation of Infinite Love who is longingly inflamed with the desire to communicate Himself; and go to Calvary to receive the testament of He who, in the midst of His pain, is the Herald of eternal love. Be a universal father or mother, reaching all mankind, and don’t forget to comfort, help and strengthen those who in the last of times, when the world may be close to its end, may go through that “great tribulation,” so great that, as the Gospel says, “it will be shortened out of love for the chosen ones.”
The divine Word always dwells “in the Father’s bosom.” From the Father’s bosom He leapt to Mary’s womb, and from Mary’s womb He wants to leap to your soul to manifest His secret to you. Listen in silence to what He wants to tell you; don’t forget that He is the infinite Word in the bosom of the Trinity and that He came to manifest to us, in the Church and through Her, all that God is. In order to receive His message of love, you cannot feel satisfied with just knowing something of what He came to tell you, but rather, being avid to receive Him, you must listen to all that He came to communicate to you; do not feel happy with less. Open up your soul to Infinite Love, so that He can find the repose which He longed to have on coming to His own, and thus He might not have to repeat again: “I looked for comforters, but I found none.”
At least you, dear child of my Work of the Church, live your condition of being Church, knowing that the greatest joy of your soul is to be God’s child and heir of His glory; divine filiation also makes you be God by participation, since, given that you are Church, you live from the same life of the Infinite One.
Immerse yourself in the Trinitarian mystery that is enclosed in the bosom of our holy Mother. Receive the Utterance of the Father to His Church, since, on wanting to manifest all the recondite depths of His divine life to Her, He so wonderfully did it, that He gave to His holy Church the self-same Word He has in Himself to utter Himself, so that this Word might tell us about all He is and how He so is Himself.
Listen to the Incarnate Word who is expressing the eternal secret of your Father God to you. Keep silence in your soul to perceive the Canticle of love that Christ is addressing to you in Bethlehem, in Nazareth, in Jerusalem and on Calvary; keep Him company in the Eucharist and receive His secret of infinite joy and pain for His being unknown. Learn this, “for Christ so loved His Church that He gave up Himself for Her,” and also give yourself up together with Him for the Church in order to fulfil your mission.
Look at the Holy Spirit, who, burning with eternal Charity to give Himself to the Church, is the Love that impels the Father to tell Her, through His Word, what He is; and it is the Holy Spirit Himself who, making the Word burn with love for His Church, makes Him give Himself up laying down His life for Her on the cross.
Sing the riches of your Immaculate Mother; enter into Her life which is the same as that of Christ.
Live your condition of being Church, knowing and penetrating all these riches that this holy Mother contains inside Her bosom, knowing that your vocation is to rekindle, to revive and to live, in order to have Her wonderful dogma be lived; dogma that is the life of the Trinity, which, through Christ and by means of Mary, is given to you as a gift in your holy Church.
Revive your faith by living in communion with this great spiritual family that forms the Mystical Body of Christ, so that, united with the entire Church, forming with Her one soul alone and being aware of this great fraternity, you can lean on Christ’s breast to drink of the infinite life that, welling up from the bosom of the Trinity, today wants to be communicated to you.
Living member of the Church, if you want to be filled with life and communicate it, if you feel inside your inner being the thirst for souls that drives you to mission lands, if you want to reach everywhere, if you need to find no limits, if you want to live the life of God, of the Word Incarnate, of Mary and of the Church, exercise your priesthood “between the porch and the altar,” fulfilling in you, and through you, in those souls entrusted to you, those demands for life which Love, on creating us, has imprinted on us.
How happy God is…! And how blessed are those who living by faith, which is more certain than the midday glare of the sun, by hope and by charity, experience in themselves such fullness of life that they are able to say: “Let anyone who thirsts come to me and drink” and whoever hungers, let him come to me and eat; because “between the porch and the altar,” after having been filled with divine life, a source of water welling up to eternal life has gushed out in me through my priesthood!
Mother Trinidad de la Santa Madre Iglesia
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