Without a doubt, one of these elements is living out our consecration in such a way that we will become “other Christs.”[3] This is central to our spirituality, and every aspect of it is “profoundly marked by all aspects of the Incarnation.”[4] This is why we say that we wish to “be ‘like a new incarnation of the Word,’ ‘like another humanity of His,’ so that the Father sees in us ‘nothing but the beloved Son’ (St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, Elevations 33, 34, and 36).”[5]

Hence, following the teachings and Tradition of the Church, consecrated life in our Institute “consists in the imitation and following of Christ, chaste, poor, and obedient, in the pursuit of perfect charity.”[6] This “means for us that, in following and imitating Christ through the practice of the evangelical counsels, we must strive to live fully the radicality of Christ’s self-emptying and His condition as a servant, and in this way ‘transfigure’ the world.”[7]

From this follows the desire that every religious of the Incarnate Word has Jesus Christ as the center of his life, that Jesus takes the primacy, and that nothing is placed before His love. Thus, this absolute centrality of Christ will allow the religious of the Incarnate Word to firmly and resolutely desire in all things and above all things “to give primacy to the spiritual”[8] and to tirelessly seek to live in holy abandonment to the benevolent will of God. Living in this way, with Christ at the center of his life, he will also begin to give more weight to eternity rather than to temporal things.

Therefore, “this Christocentric imprint”[9] – so characteristic of our Religious Family, which finds its foundation in the clear and correct understanding of the mystery of the Incarnate Word – “must be branded upon us and upon our apostolate of evangelizing culture.”[10] This evangelization must be a consequence of being “other Christs,” and so for this reason, for us, we are missionaries “above all because of what we are.”[11]

[1] Directory of Consecrated Life, 1.

[2] Directory of Consecrated Life, 2.

[3] Constitutions, 7.

[4] Constitutions, 8.

[5] Directory of Spirituality, 30.

[6] Directory of Consecrated Life, 223.

[7] Directory of Consecrated Life, 224.

[8] Directory of Spirituality, 8.

[9] Directory of Consecrated Life, 37.

[10] Directory of Consecrated Life, 37.

[11] Redemptoris Mission, 23.