Venerable Concepcion Cabrera de Armida: A Life Offered Up For Priests

Conchita teaches us how to love the Church.

To love the Church is not to criticize her, not to destroy her, not to try to change her essential structures, not to reduce her to humanism, horizontalism and to the simple service of a human liberation.

To love the Church is to cooperate with the work of Redemption by the Cross and in this way obtain the grace of the Holy Spirit come to renew the face of this poor earth, conducting it to its consummation in the design of the Father's immense love.

Conchita, a simple laywoman, far from criticizing priests, gives her life for them. In a sublime elevation of the Trinity she cries out: "I deliver into Your hands by an absolute, total, unconditional donation, all my being on behalf of priests. "I want to carry in my heart Our Holy Father, charged with the whole burden of the Church, the cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops, the parish priests, the priests, the seminarians who waver and struggle in their vocation.

"I myself am worth nothing, but I possess You and I beg You to utilize me for the good of the beloved Church and of all her hierarchies which I love and respect with all my heart."

Then, as did Therese of Lisieux who prophesied: "I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth," Conchita ends her prayer saying to Christ, after having offered up her life even to her extreme agony for priests: "I will offer up my life for them on earth and I will spend my time in heaven in their service for Your love" (Diary, Nov. 30, 1928).

~ Excerpts from Conchita, A Mother's Spiritual Diary. edited by Marie-Michel Philipon, O.P , available online here. ~

Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, Eternal High Priest, Mother of all priests and our Mother, help us respond generously to the Holy Spirit's request, through the vice of His Church, to offer up to God Eucharistic adoration for priests. Amen.