Mother Mª del Carmen Hidalgo de Caviedes y Gómez
Foundress of the Oblate Sisters of Christ Sacerdote
“God’s will”, his life.
Surrender of love,
“pro eis et pro Ecclesia.”
The dedication of his life that God inspired in him at the beginning of the civil war and that marks his entire existence, has as its basis or foundation the Priestly prayer of Christ. His words: “Father, for them I pray, […] and for them I consecrate myself, that they may be consecrated (sanctified) in truth”, will be inseparable in his heart, mind and life, and until the consummation of his offering. Therefore, her message, her life offered in favor of the Church and priestly holiness, her witness of holiness lived in this oblative sense, united to Christ the Priest and Victim, “can be a light lit for the Church to understand the dignity, the greatness, the beauty of the ministerial priesthood, in the whole history of the 20th century, a century that we can call the century of the ministerial priesthood” – in the words of Don Demetrio Fernández González, addressed to the Oblates, one month after the death of the Mother Foundress.
This is how he wrote…
“Christ the Priest is my life, is my demand; and, I do not know how to express it, but I would say that He is also my answer. It is in Him, unfathomable mystery of love and sorrow, where my soul lives the reality of its vocation as an Oblate; it is there, in the depths of His mystery, where the total gift of surrender to Love comes to life. And there, in that profound mystery of Christ the Priest, I see, with luminous clarity, so many and so many things that I have to readjust in my daily life.”
“We must always recognize that He loved us first, that this is love. That before we could say yes, we were already prisoners of his Love, because he loved us first. God the Creator loved us, God the Redeemer loved us. Christ the Redeemer claims us.”
“Holiness is not this or that virtue. Holiness is God, and to be holy is to participate in God, to deify myself, to unite myself to Him in Love.”
“I would not know how to choose anything outside the Will of God. The Will of God is my life, because it was the living of Christ.”