On Sunday October 27, 2013 we have held a Thanksgiving Mass for the beatification of the 522 martyrs of the 20th century in Spain at the Sacred Hearts Church in Madrid, and in particular, for our brothers Eladio , Gonzalo, Isidro, Mario and Teófilo.
Gathered there were large representatives of relatives of our blessed, sisters, brothers, secular branch members, staff of brothers’ Provincial House, teachers of the four Sacred Hearts schools in Madrid, and parishioners who came from all the presences of the Congregation in the capital.
Among those present were Javier Alvarez-Ossorio, Superior General of the Brothers, the Provincials Nuria Arias (Spain), Enrique Losada (Iberia) and Marcus Vinicius Maciel (Brazil), the Regional Superior Miguel Angel Castro (Paraguay), the General Postulator Alfred Bell and the Vice-postulator of the cause Osvaldo Aparicio. It is noteworhty to mention the participation of the great choir of the SSCC sisters school “El Paraíso”, led by the music teacher, Rosa Escámez.
The ceremony arose from the feeling of gratitude to our brothers for their testimony of faith; a feeling that Javier evoked vividly in his homily. He noticed that from all the martyrs, in imitation of Jesus, we can learn how they have kept "the love that comes from faith till the end", and they could keep it that way because they had learnt its importance in what St. Paul says to Timothy: “all who have longed for his appearance”.
That means, we learn how faith gets us not to ask our Father to free us from the cross, but to trust in the coming of the one who has conquered death definitively. In short, it confirms that the gift of faith is more precious than the gift of life.
10/28/2013