WORD of the Vine

Venerable Concepción Cabrera, a wife, a mother and a mystic, who lived in Mexico during the Mexican Revolution, formulated fourteen principals of spiritual growth called “The Chain of Love.” Jesus tutored her how to cultivate the contemplative life in the world by intentional effort in the spiritual life. The Chain is a trajectory of progress, a journey into the Cross personally. Prior to reading this post, you may appreciate downloading a copy of the Chain of Love from http://www.incarnateinstitute.org.

Father Luis Ruiz Vazques, M.Sp.S. in his review of the Chain of Love in Oblations of Christ and Priestly Dimensions of Baptism in Concepción Cabrera, says Concepción shows us this battle through the Chain of Love takes dynamism and intensity. The Cross will come and we want to leave nothing in our lives unaddressed or offered to the Father. This sense of dynamism means that we have “to scrutinize the Cross and probe it’s depths” by discovering it as a living force in our experiences. The Cross is not simple a platitude but something that we live. We have to be intense Christians to hold nothing back from Christ or in making our lives a living offering for others, including those who hurt us. The Chain of Love shows us how to be purposely intense and rightly ordered in the spiritual life.

Through baptism and the grace of Jesus, we are wired, according to Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O. P. in Three Ages of the Interior Life, to “manfully do battle, to struggle against the withering effects of original sin” by accepting and struggling with our crosses. The fourteen rules of Venerable Concepción show us how to formulate a plan of battle, for other people’s salvation depend on our faithfulness to the mission of Christ that hits us in the face! ~Mary