FROM mother Adela's heart
"witnesses
to Love"
© Only for
personal use
Dear Brothers and Sisters:
“In this they will know that you are my
disciples, if you have love one for another”
(John 13, 35). Jesus tells us in the gospel of
St. John that love is the great sign which
identifies authentic Christianity. It is love
that moves the human heart. It is in being
visible and authentic witnesses to love that the
greatest force for the New Evangelization
resides. Love is the building force of a new
civilization.
In his Apostolic Letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte,
the Servant of God John Paul II, invited the
Church to enter into the Third Millennium with a
clear conviction: her missionary effort ought to
be inspired by and flow from the “new
commandment”: “as I have loved you, you must
love one another.”
The great call today for the Church is to form
living and ardent witnesses to love. It should
be a love that leads to profound communion, a
love that embraces the greatest sacrifices, a
love that heals, restores, elevates, purifies,
and as Saint Maximilian Kolbe would say, a “love
that creates.”
Love is truly the heart of the Church. Today it
is up to us to rediscover the fact that love
must be the origin and also the goal of the
Church’s entire mission. The Church is born of
love because it is born from the Pierced Heart
of Christ. In love the Church is unified, being
of “one heart and one mind” (Acts 4, 32). It is
because of love that it fulfills its mission
throughout history. It is for this reason that
the Holy Father tells us we ought to make the
Church “the house and school of communion,” and
that this is the great challenge we face in the
Third Millennium.
The great Doctor of the Church, Saint Therese of
Lisieux tells us, “I understood that only love
moves the members of the Church. I understood
that all vocations were rooted in love, that
Love was everything.” Perhaps it was because her
heart arrived at this awareness that His
Holiness John Paul II recently proclaimed her
Doctor of the Church, an expert in the “scientia
amoris” (the science of love).
Could it be that in a particular way in this new
millennium the Holy Spirit desires to give the
Church the gift of the charism of Love? Could it
be that this Millennium will be written in the
History of the Church as one of a great
manifestation of heroic love? I do not know.
However, the Holy Father is calling us to build
up the civilization of love and has given us a
great sign and prophet for this mission: Saint
Maximilian Kolbe. This great Marian saint has
shown us what it means to love others as Christ
has loved us. Amidst the horror, hatred,
injustice and violence of the concentration
camps, he chose to love. The darkness around him
did not keep him from loving. In fact it did
just the opposite – as Christ, he loved to the
extreme of giving his live, of choosing love,
and in that way, he conquered the horror of the
culture of death and hatred.
With his love for all, Saint Maximilian
converted a place of such darkness into a place
of light for those who would open themselves to
his words and testimony of life. In that
terrible place of anguished cries, blasphemies,
desperation and offenses, he made it possible
for many to pray and to sing to Jesus and Mary.
In that place where each one would
understandably struggle to survive, he gave up
his life in exchange for a prisoner condemned to
death, taking a step forward and responding to
the Nazi: “I want to take the place of that
man.” Faced with such an act of love and
courage, the guard asked him, “Who are you?” to
which Saint Maximilian responded, “I am a
Catholic priest.”
That alone was sufficient; it was not necessary
to give his name; he was a priest of Christ, a
sacrificial offering, a victim of love for
humanity. It was not necessary to give his name;
it was sufficient to be a member of the Church,
to be a son of God, to be a disciple of Christ.
It was not necessary to give his name because
that act of love would never be erased from the
history of the Church, and that priest who had
pronounced a “fiat” to love would become
beatified as a confessor of the faith and later
canonized as a martyr. The two crowns that the
Blessed Mother offered to him as a child, a
white one and a red one, were lifted high that
day in the concentration camp when he stepped
forward and witnessed to oblative love and
life-giving purity. This Marian heart, this son
of the Immaculate, was called by the Servant of
God, John Paul II a great prophet of the
civilization of love.
To be witnesses to love is the great call that
the Lord is making to His Church at the
beginning of the Third Millennium. He calls Her
to be witnesses in every place and in every
situation without considering how dark or
difficult it may be. It is a challenge that
requires a necessary change of heart. The great
work that the Holy Spirit wants to do in the
Church is to give us a new heart that is capable
of loving to the extreme, capable of giving
one’s life heroically for others, capable of
transforming the world and modern civilization
into a place in which the love of the Hearts of
Jesus and Mary reign.
Let us dispose ourselves, my brothers and
sisters, to work arduously to make ourselves
witnesses of love. Just as Saint John, we too
have contemplated Him who has loved us to the
extreme. We too, therefore, are witnesses to
love, and that is why we can become witnesses in
the world, witnesses that reveal what we have
seen. I ask the Pierced Heart of Jesus that, as
we contemplate Him, we may receive the grace of
acquiring a heart that is like His own, so as to
be able to reveal to the world what love is.
In the Love of the Pierced Hearts,
Mother Adela, SCTJM
Foundress
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