Blessed Conception Cabrera de Armida

There are figures in the history of spirituality that are difficult to classify into the usual categories: neither a nun of closure nor a social activist, nor a theologian of academy or a devout of sacristy. Conception Cabrera de Armida - Conchita for all - was a wife, mother of nine children, widow, mystical and spiritual founder of five apostolic works that are still alive in the universal Church today. Declared Venerable by John Paul II in 1999 and Beata by Pope Francis on May 4, 2019, it represents one of the most unique cases in Latin American spiritual history: a 19th century secular that left a theological legacy comparable to that of the great doctors of the Church.

This page focuses on the five Works of the Cross and the specific Marian spirituality of Conchita. The page about his life and figure is found in the general profile of Concepción Cabrera de Armida.

The five Works of the Cross: an overview

The soul of the entire apostolic legacy of Conchita is the so-called "Works of the Cross": five ecclesial institutions - religious congregations and secular movements - that were born of their spiritual charism over forty years. He did not founded them on his own organizational initiative: he received them in his consciousness as inner communications of Christ, who asked him to be made available to his spiritual directors for them to channel them canonically.

The spirituality that verters the five Works is the spirituality of the Cross: the certainty that the Cross of Christ is not a scandal to overcome but the heart of the redeeming mystery, the source of all authentic love and the deeper path of inner transformation. This spirituality is not masochism or pessimism: it is the logic of love that is given to the end, that lives suffering not as a senseless but as a participation in the sacrifice of Christ.

The Apostolate of the Cross (1893-1894)

The first of the Works was born of a vision and an inner locution of Christ to Conchita in 1893. The Lord asked him to form a group of souls - secular, above all - willing to offer themselves as "victims of love": people who voluntarily accepted suffering as an offering to God for the conversion of sinners and the sanctification of priests. It was not an idea of social movement or external charitable action: it was a spirituality of interiority, sacrifice and union with the mystery of the Cross.

The Apostolate of the Cross was canonically approved by the Bishop of San Luis Potosí on January 7, 1894. Its members committed themselves to pray daily for the priests, to accept the crosses of their ordinary life as an offering to God, to maintain union with the suffering of Christ in the Eucharist and to participate in a spiritual communion of mutual graces. It was a "living rosary" of suffering offered.

The Virgin Mary held a central place in the spirituality of the Apostolate: Mary was the model of "victim of love" par excellence, who had said "yes" without conditions in the Annunciation and had remained faithful to the foot of the Cross. The members of the Apostolate consecrated themselves to the Immaculate as a mediator of their offerings before Christ.

The Ladies of the Sacred Heart

The Ladies of the Sacred Heart were conceived as the secular female complement to the Apostolate of the Cross: women of society who, without abandoning their family and social life, committed themselves to an active apostolate of charity and evangelization. The devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus - closely linked to the devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary according to the tradition of St. John Eudes - was the center of his spirituality.

Conchita insisted that love of the Heart of Christ was inseparable from love of the Heart of her Mother. You could not love the Son without loving the Mother; you could not consecrate the home to the Sacred Heart without also consecrate it to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. This intuition, which in several decades precedes the message of Fatima (1917), shows the depth of the Marian-Christological reach of Conchita's spirituality.

The Religious of the Cross of the Sacred Heart (1897)

The female congregation of active life was the first institution of consecrated life born of the charism of Conchita. It was founded canonically in 1897, with the collaboration of the Bishop of San Luis Potosí and the direction of Father Alberto Mir SJ, spiritual director of Conchita.

His specific charism was the active apostolic life - education, catechesis, attention to the poor - lived from the spirituality of the Cross: apostolic work as a participation in the redeeming mission of Christ, the suffering of daily life as an offering, contemplative prayer as a support of action. The Religious of the Cross today have a presence in Mexico and in several Latin American countries.

The Marian devotion of the Religious of the Cross follows the model that Conchita transmitted to them: Mary as Mother of the Church, model of apostolic life and Queen of priests whom the religious serve with their prayer and sacrifice. The consecration to the Immaculate is part of his daily spiritual life.

The Missionaries of the Holy Spirit (1914)

The priestly congregation founded at the request of Conchita is certainly the best known and the most international presence among the Works of the Cross. The Missionaries of the Holy Spirit - MSPS - were canonically founded on 13 August 1914 by Father Felix of Jesus Rougier, a French Marian priest who found his decisive spiritual guide in Conchita.

His specific charism is the priestly spirituality configured with Christ the Victim Priest: the priest who offers himself together with Christ in the Eucharist, who makes his life a continuous sacrifice. This spirituality has a constituent Marian dimension: the priest who identifies with Christ the Priest also identifies with the son of Mary, with whom he was born from her and offered by her in the Temple.

The MSPS are present today in Mexico, the United States, Colombia, Peru, Spain and several countries in Africa. His Marian spirituality is expressed in devotion to Mary Mother of Priests and in priestly consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

The Fraternity of Christ the Priest (1912)

The Fraternity of Christ the Priest was conceived for diocesan priests: an intense spiritual life form - without formal religious vows - for priests who wanted to live the spirituality of the Cross in the exercise of their ordinary ministry. He was born of Conchita's conviction - communicated to her internally by Christ - that the priests were the most critical point of the renewal of the Church.

In his diaries, Conchita describes in detail the words that Christ addressed to him about the priests: that he loved them with a special love because they were his "alter ego," who suffered deeply for the priests who did not correspond to his vocation, who needed souls who offered their suffering for them. Fraternity was the institutional response to that request.

Conchita's devotion to the Virgin Mary

The Marian spirituality of Conchita Cabrera is not a side section of his mystic: it is his spine. Since his childhood in San Luis Potosí, he grew up in a subsidiary devotion to the Virgin who was deepening over the years through prayer, sacraments and the inner mystical experiences he documented in his newspapers.

For Conchita, Mary is the "great ally of the Cross." If Christ is the Savior who suffers, it is Mary who shares that suffering without measure and makes it a maternal intercession for all mankind. The image that appears over and over again in the writings of Conchita is that of Mary standing before the Cross: not collapsed by pain but in a conscious offering attitude, freely associated with the sacrifice of her Son.

This vision of Mary as "the first disciple of the Cross" has practical consequences for the spirituality that Conchita proposes: whoever wants to follow Christ crucified must learn from Mary how it follows. Mary teaches to accept suffering without rebellion, to offer it with love, to remain faithful when God seems absent. She is the teacher of the spirituality of Calvary.

The spiritual diaries: 66 volumes of theology lived

Conchita's written legacy is of an extraordinary extent and depth. For more than forty years, his spiritual directors ordered him to write down the inner communications he received from Christ and the spiritual reflections that flowed from his prayer. The result is sixty-six volumes of manuscripts - equivalent in extension, according to some scholars, to the Theological sum of St. Thomas - which are one of the richest spiritual corpus of Latin American mystique.

In these newspapers, the Virgin Mary appears in multiple dimensions. As Mother of the Church who intercede for all her children. As a model of inner life, the Virgin who meditates in her heart the words of God, who does not understand everything but who trusts everything. As Queen of the priests, the Mother who gave birth to the eternal Priest and who continues to beget worthy priests in her Immaculate Heart. As a Corredeemer: the woman who, freely associated with the sacrifice of her Son, contributed to the work of Redemption from the place of faith and suffering.

The most original marine theme of Conchita's newspapers is the priestly motherhood of Mary: The Virgin not only gave birth to the one eternal Priest but, in a real spiritual sense, she continually begets the priests of the Church, form them in her Heart, offer them to the Father along with her Son. This theological intuition, which Conchita articulated in his diaries before the Magisterium developed it explicitly, has been studied by contemporary theologians as a significant contribution to priestly mariology.

Mary Mother of Priests according to Conchita

No Marian theme was more recurrent in the writings and in the apostolic mission of Conchita than Mary's motherhood over the priests. In his newspapers he describes how Christ told him internally that the Church needed holy priests, that the priests were the "pupil of their eyes," and that the best way to obtain them was through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which formed them spiritually from within.

This conviction led Conchita to untirelessly promote prayer and sacrifice for priests among all people in her spiritual environment: it was the mission she understood as her own, which gave meaning to all her Works. The holy priests are the heart of the Church; Mary is the Mother who forms them; Conchita is the instrument she uses to awaken other souls to this mission of intercession.

Venerable declared by John Paul II (1999) and Beata (2019)

The canonization process of Conchita Cabrera de Armida advanced with remarkable speed in the last decades of the 20th century. John Paul II, who had a particular spiritual affinity with the lay mystics of the 20th century, signed the decree of heroicity of virtues - which declares it "Venerable" - on March 26, 1999. In the presentation of the decree, the Postulator of the cause especially emphasized the Marian spirituality of Conchita as one of the most original and fruitful elements of its charism.

The beatification took place on 4 May 2019 in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe of Mexico City - the most important Marian sanctuary in America. The choice of the place was not random: Conchita was deeply linked to the Guadalupana. The Virgin of Guadalupe was for her the image of Mary Mother of Mexico, of America and of the Church born of the simple people. He was beatified in that sanctuary because his whole life had been an act of love for Mary.

The Blessed Cabrera Conception of Armida is today a particular model for the laity - especially the mothers of the family - who aspire to a deep spiritual life without abandoning their family responsibilities, for the priests who seek a spirituality of configuration with Christ the Victim Priest, and for all who wish to unite the suffering of their daily life to the redeeming mystery of the Cross through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.