Editorial: Incarnational Spirituality Equals Obedience

A chief characteristic of the French School of spirituality and of those schools which flow from it, is the centrality of the Incarnation. As Saint Louis de Montfort tells us: “The mystery of the Incarnation where we find Jesus only In Mary, having become incarnate in her womb. . . . This mystery is the summary of all his mysteries since it contains the intention and the grace of them all.” (TD 246, 248). The Eternal Word took on our flesh, becoming a member of the human family. He took on the thought patterns and the culture of the Jewish people of Galilee. He evangelized and redeemed us “from within”: incarnational.

Although Louis de Montfort never employed the term incarnational, his life demonstrated its meaning. In imitation of Incarnate Wisdom, Jesus, he identified with the homeless, the sick and the poor. He preached to them in a language they could understand, with comparisons taken from their life. He portrayed the truths of the faith in plays, dramas, banners, processions, song. He loved his people and truly sympathized with them. But most of all he incarnated the message of salvation in his own life. He too evangelized “from within.”

The majestic, challenging words of the opening lines of Gaudium et Spes speak beautifully of an incarnational way of life: “The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the men and women of our time, especially of those who are poor or afflicted in any way, are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. Nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in their hearts.”

The same document of Vatican Council II further clarifies incarnational when it states: “The good news of Christ continually renews the life and culture of fallen humanity; it combats and removes the error and evil which flow from the ever present attraction of sin. It never ceases to purify and elevate the morality of peoples. It takes the spiritual qualities and endowments of every age and nation and with supernatural riches it causes them to blossom, as it were, from within; it fortifies, completes them and restores them in Christ.” (# 58)

Incarnational spirituality also entails, then, the task of transforming men and women into the image of the Lord. We must say, therefore, that essential to the term is the obedience of the evangelizer to the Gospel in his own life and apostolate. There is never complete identity between Gospel message and the actual life of people. There is always some aspect of every culture, of every nation, of every parish, which needs to be raised to the level of the truth of Christ as manifested through His Body, the Church.

TO JESUS THROUGH MARY

“St. Bernard strongly recommended to all those he was guiding along the way to perfection: ‘When you want to offer something to God, to be welcomed by Him, be sure to offer it through the worthy Mother of God, if you do not wish to see it rejected.’ ” (St. Louis de Montfort, T.D. No. 149)

Saint Louis de Montfort’s life and writings demonstrate this full meaning of incarnational ministry. He not only identified with his people and their culture, he truly transformed it from within, weeding out what was contrary to the Gospel law. He never hesitated to defy those savants of his time who had little respect for the evangelical role of Mary in salvation history and for devotion to the Mother of God. He flared up against whatever was distancing his people from living fully their Catholic life. Some may consider him too severe in his attempts to bring the customs of his people more in line with the Gospel. However the principle is clear: incarnational also demands the difficult role of reformer, i.e., of constantly calling people to repentance, to a deeper oneness with Christ.

It is this aspect of incarnational that is so stressed by Montfort. When he gazes at the root mystery of our faith, the Word made flesh, he quotes the text of Hebrews 10:5: “When Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me; in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, ‘Lo, I have come to do your will, 0 God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. . . . By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.’ . . .” (cf TD 248; Hymn 10:6).

When the Eternal Wisdom took on our flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary, He redeemed our rebellious ways through obedience. In the midst of the disobedience of the fallen angels, the disobedience of our first parents, the disobedience of our personal sins, He “became obedient unto death, even death upon the Cross” (Phil 2:8). “Jesus saved us all by His obedience,” sings Father de Montfort (Hymn 10:5).

Montfort is dumbfounded by this obedience of the Incarnate Word. The Incarnation entails not only the obedience of the God-Man to the Father but it is also the obedience of the God-Man to Mary and Joseph. It is through obedience that Jesus is truly incarnational.

In this age of relativism, the term incarnational can be a feeble excuse to bend with the trend of the times, or more bluntly put, for permissiveness, if not out-right disobedience. However, it is clearly not incarnational to swing with the moods of the day: to affirm lifestyles alien to the teachings of the Church, to permit anyone and everyone to share in the Eucharistic table, to water down the meaning of the real presence, to contradict the definitive statements of the Church concerning marriage, abortion, ordination of women, etc.

We seriously damage our people by not affirming the radical demands of Jesus Christ as proclaimed by the magisterium of the Church. And we betray the full understanding of Montfort’s incarnational spirituality.