Concepción “Conchita” Cabrera de Armida (1862-1937), was born in Mexico, into a pious Catholic family. She married and became the mother of nine children. Her writings were widely distributed and inspired the establishment of the five apostolates of the ‘Works of the Cross’ in Mexico: ‘Apostolate of the Cross’ founded in 1895, ‘Congregation of Sisters of the Cross of the Sacred Heart of Jesus’ founded in 1897, ‘Covenant of Love with the Heart of Jesus’ founded in 1909, ‘The Priestly Fraternity’ founded in 1912, and ‘The Congregation of Missionaries of the Holy Spirit’ founded in 1914. These apostolates continue to this day.
She was a great mystic of the Church in Mexico. His Holiness, Pope St. John Paul II, declared her Venerable on December 20, 1999. Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to her, thus clearing the way for her beatification in Mexico City, on May 4, 2019. The Congregation for the Clergy in Rome wrote about her in 2007, “In the future, she will be of great importance for the universal Church. The spiritual motherhood for the sanctification of priests consumed her completely until she died at the age of seventy-five.”
Conchita spent many hours in adoration before the Holy Eucharist, and she received many messages from Our Lord, especially pertaining to the priesthood. These messages have been approved by the Church, and are quoted in the Congregation for the Clergy’s booklet on priestly holiness and spiritual maternity. Venerable Conchita’s messages are also widely published in many books.
“Spiritual maternity [motherhood] of clergy, explains Kathleen Beckman, President and co-founder of the Foundation of Prayer for Priests (www.foundationforpriests.org), has an historical tradition in the Church and is well articulated in the Congregation for the Clergy’s publications (2007, 2013). But why spiritual motherhood? “[The] motherhood of souls, especially of clergy souls, distinguishes itself by the essence of the term ‘mother’ which denotes one who labors to give birth. God invites women to labor spiritually to [give] birth [to] grace in the souls and ministry of Christ’s ordained ministers.
“All authentic spiritual motherhood derives from the life and heart of the Virgin Mary, Mother of all priests. After the Ascension of Christ, I imagine that the Apostles and early Church thought of the Mother of Jesus as their cherished and necessary spiritual mother. The term spiritual mother is so much richer than a spiritual friend or sister because of the birthing process of grace won by prayer and sacrifice. As Jesus told Venerable Conchita, ‘The Virgin Mother did not cease sacrificing her motherly heart to the divine will of the beloved Father.’”1
It would seem at first puzzling why Conchita would have chosen marriage over a religious vocation, given her obvious virtue and piety. But Conchita never once considered the life of a religious for herself. She simply believed that she was unworthy of such an amazing way of life. Instead, she wished to marry, have many children and serve God in that way. She wrote, “Lord, I feel so unable to love You, so I want to get married. Give me many children so they will love You better than I.”
Conchita never enjoyed going to dances, but would attend at the insistence of her parents. It was at one of these dances that she met her husband-to-be, Francisco de Armida, or ‘Pancho’, as Conchita would fondly call him. “He came to dance with me, and I could not say a word. Then he told me very quietly he loved me. I had never imagined myself capable of having a sweetheart, so I kept quiet. Then I watched as tears rolled from his eyes. He said he was suffering because I did not want him. This softened me, and I replied, ‘Is that why? Is there anything else? Well, I love you, so do not suffer for such a little thing!’”
Thus began a nine-year courtship. The couple would actually have wanted to marry right away, but her parents thought 13 was too young (even though at that time, girls this young did become brides). So they became engaged and waited, exchanging love letters, spiritual letters, spiritual poems, and remaining chaste for the day of their marriage. It was said of Francisco that he was a “perfect gentleman.”
Conchita later revealed, “Courtship never bothered me in the sense that dating would somehow impede one’s spiritual life by losing focus on God. Rather, I found it very easy to join both together. At bedtime, and when I was alone, I would think of Pancho and then of the Holy Eucharist. This was my delight. And every day I would receive Holy Communion and go to see Pancho afterwards. The thought of Pancho did not keep me from my prayers…”
Finally at age 21 she and Francisco married. During her toast to him at their reception, she jokingly told him to not be jealous if every day she wanted to meet “another man.” He knew she meant the Son of Man in the Holy Eucharist. He accepted and even encouraged this throughout their married life. It was a good, loving marriage by all accounts, despite Francisco being somewhat controlling and even a bully at times. Through her love and gentle persuasion, she was able to completely change him, to the amazement of their family; he would always urge her on in her spiritual activities.
She led a very sedate lifestyle, rising at dawn every day to pray. For her early morning prayer she would wear a “Crown of Roses” (a crown woven from roses with the thorns turned inward to disguise her penances). Next she attended early Mass, came home and prepared breakfast for the family, completed her household chores, then did embroidery for the poor and sewing for family and friends. She would also do some spiritual reading throughout her day, and pray the Rosary with the staff in her home, while setting aside time for visits to the the sick and the orphaned in her town. But what really gave her strength and fueled her undertakings were her visits to the Blessed Sacrament. This is when our Blessed Lord would reveal all His desires for her.
All of this in no way caused her to neglect her family. Homeschooling her children, and caring for her husband were her first priorities. “I carry within me three lives, all very strong: family life with its multiple sorrows of a thousand kinds, that is, the life of a mother; the life of the Works of the Cross, with all its sorrows and weight, which at times crushes me until I have no strength left; and lastly, the life of the spirit, or interior life, which is the heaviest of all, with its highs and lows, its tempests and struggles, its light and darkness. Blessed be God for everything!”
“Being a wife and a mother was never an obstacle to my spiritual life,” she one day asserted. The Lord had revealed to her: “You married in view of My great designs for your personal holiness, and to be an example for many souls who think that marriage is incompatible with holiness.”
Not surprisingly, God would require much of this graced soul, “…Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.” (Luke 12:48). In a locution, Our Lord said to her, “Ask Me for a long-suffering life and to write a lot… That is your mission on earth.” And writing was something that she did although almost unbeknownst to her family. After her death it was discovered that she had over 66,000 handwritten pages in her spiritual diaries!
It was in Church on Easter Sunday, 1894, that Conchita had a vision in which she saw a shining cross of light. In its center was the Heart of Jesus pierced by a lance and the Holy Spirit descending on it. This was the birth of her major work, the five apostolates of the Works of the Cross. Jesus explained to her, “The Cross is the salvation of mankind. On it is My pierced Heart and for it and through it the Spirit enflames hearts.” Furthermore, He said, ‘This Cross will chase away the devil. It will spread warmth and life. It will cure souls and bodies and do many miracles.’
“The world is buried in sensuality, no longer is sacrifice loved and no longer is its sweetness known. I wish the Cross to reign; today it is presented to the world with My Heart, so that it may bring souls to make sacrifices. No true love is without sacrifice. It is only in My crucified Heart that the ineffable sweetness of My Heart can be tasted. Seen from the outside, the Cross is bitter and harsh, but as soon as tasted, penetrated and savored, there is no greater pleasure. Therein is the repose of souls, the soul inebriated by love, therein is its delight, its life.”
What would seem most significant in the life of Venerable Conchita, especially in our day, was her mission of Spiritual maternity [motherhood] of the clergy. The Lord revealed to her the vital role of the priesthood for the world: “…These souls bear the germ communicated from heaven for reproducing Me in souls and on My behalf the virtues that ought to sanctify and save them from a thousand dangers that I know. But priests’ souls indispensably have to be victims. They have to be converted into a gift, renouncing themselves and making themselves a pure offering to my Father, in union with Me and surrendering themselves in self-donation for souls, as I am, within my Church and her teachings.
“…[My] love for my priests goes beyond what a human mind can comprehend because it is divine. I love them from eternity, in the bosom of my Father, with love from the depth of My Heart, with inconceivable delicacy, with all the power of a saving God. Never will I exhaust speaking of what My priests are for Me: My hands, My laborers, My very Heart and the center of innumerable souls.”
And the need for this Spiritual Motherhood: “…Bring yourself as an offering for the priests. Unite your offering with My offering, to obtain graces for them…. I want to come again into this world… in My priests. I want to renew the world by revealing Myself through the priests. …I want to give My Church a powerful impulse in which I will pour out the Holy Spirit over My priests like a new Pentecost. The Church and the world need a new Pentecost, a priestly Pentecost, an interior Pentecost. I will entrust to you a different martyrdom, you will suffer what the priests undertake against Me. You will experience and offer up their infidelity and wretchedness.”
Conchita’s vocation was therefore a very profound ecclesial, as well as Marian one. Her intense devotion to the Mother of God was lived in constant union with her, and became especially manifest in the great crowning grace of her life, which she received on March 25, 1906. The late Bishop Joseph J. Madera, M.Sp.S., strove to explain this extraordinary grace: “The mystical incarnation may be compared to the indwelling of Jesus in Mary from the moment of His conception in her womb. The Lord had raised Mary to a level of holiness never to be equaled by any other human being. Nonetheless, the specific grace granted to Conchita on March 25, 1906, as far as we know, has been granted to only a limited number of souls. The fundamental rule is that, even though God grants extraordinary graces to chosen souls, what He confers on them is eventually intended for the up-building of the entire Body of Christ. Since the mystical incarnation which Conchita experienced is rooted in the sacrament of baptism, this grace also constitutes for all of us an invitation to live our baptismal commitment at an ever-deeper level. This is precisely what the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council wanted to emphasize in the fifth chapter of Lumen Gentium, on the universal call to holiness.”2
“…The followers of Christ are called by God, not because of their works, but according to His own purpose and grace. They are justified in the Lord Jesus, because in the baptism of faith they truly become sons of God and sharers in the divine nature. In this way they are really made holy. Then too, by God’s gift, they must hold on to and complete in their lives this holiness they have received… (ch. V, 40)
Conchita’s life was exemplary in that she lived and sanctified all the states of Christian life, from fiancée to wife, mother of nine children to grandmother, then widow, and by a special indulgence of Pius X, without being deprived of her family status, she died canonically as a religious in the arms of her children.
Her life of ardent prayer and generous sacrifice for the holiness of priests was undoubtedly the fruit of her Eucharistic union with Jesus, the Eternal High Priest. She prayed for the holiness and protection of all priests, and for the fruitfulness of their ministry in the Church, desiring to echo the heart of the Mother of Christ in her great love for the Church of her Son.
Venerable Conchita said: “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.”
On May 4, 2019, Venerable Conchita will be beatified in Mexico City, where Our Lady of Guadalupe told St. Juan Diego, “Am I, your Mother, not here? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the folds of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? What more do you need?”
Our Lord revealed to Conchita that, “In Mary the nascent Church was supported and Mary sustained it with her gifts and her virtues, her prayers and her love.” Let us all now pray that Mary may obtain for the Church, “a new Pentecost through the Cross”, and that Christ may “renew the world” through the hands of His ministers, the priests. Venerable Conchita said that “…the priest does not live for himself, rather, through Christ, he lives for others and all his powers and graces are directed toward but one goal: the salvation of souls.”
Anne Marie Jacques
1) https://catholicexchange.com/meet-venerable-conchita-mystic-messenger-to-priests-spiritual-mother
2) Under the gaze of the Father: Conchita’s reflections on a retreat, by Archbishop Luis M. Martínez, 1935 — Editions St. Paul ©2011
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