“Ordinary life is the concrete place to meet the Lord”

In the Marian month par excellence, the Church proposes as an example two new beatifications, two lay women.  

On Saturday, may 4th, Concepción (Conchita) Cabrera de Armida was beatified in Mexico City. Living an extraordinarily fruitful life, she was a wife, mother of nine children, founder of lay and religious associations, the “Work of the Cross”, mystic, and had a special mission for the sanctification of priests.

“Conchita – explains Linda Ghisoni, Undersecretary of the Dicastery – did not escape the ordinary commitments of wife and mother, and showed us how, precisely in them, she lived the theological place of her encounter with the Lord, instilling daily activities with fruitful love and elevating them to an environment of holiness.

On the other hand, Guadalupe Ortiz de Landázuri will be beatified on Saturday, May 16 in Madrid. Professor of chemistry, she worked in Mexico to spread the message of Opus Dei.  She then lived between Rome and Madrid and was among the first women to be part of Opus Dei, while being a close collaborator of St. Josemaría Escrivá.

"Guadalupe - explains Linda Ghisoni – a layperson who has cultivated the talents she had received at the intellectual and interpersonal level, dedicating herself to profession and her ordinary life, loving Jesus Christ above all else".

"In Conchita and Guadalupe we are not given an unattainable model of two blessed, whose effigy is to be admired for their feats or to be enclosed in a niche. Their life is an inspiration, especially for the lay women of today, to devote themselves with love to what is entrusted to them in family and in professional work, aware that ordinary life, even with all the problems and difficulties – from which not even Conchita and Guadalupe have been spared – is not an obstacle. It is rather the concrete place in which to meet the Lord and in which to live the Christian love that transforms and makes the world beautiful.