This first celebration of the liturgical feast of our Blessed Juan is a feast like no other. Today, we are engaged in something special: among us can be found some blood relatives (nephews and nieces); there are his confreres in the Congregation and members of his province; there are persons that knew him personally and who were witnesses and beneficiaries of his apostolate. There are people from Puente la Reina and its surroundings who knew him and who kept his memory alive in hopes for this day. There are those devoted to the Congregation and its benefactors who resort to his intercession. There are the young people from this seminary who remind us of the young people for whom Fr. Juan himself worked and dreamed, in fulfilling the arduous task given him by the Congregation.

In this situation, with a deep feeling of joy and thanksgiving to the Lord, we open up the Word of God which we have just finished hearing and we dispose ourselves to deepen the message which our Blessed Juan is sending us.

1. Upon hearing today's readings, the first effect that takes place is that the victory of someone is announced. Someone humanly weak, persecuted, enduring tribulation and death, someone overcome according to appearances.

This is a victory that reveals God's power, his transforming grace and his freeing action. This is a victory of Christ and with Him the victory of mankind over the evil one (the "one who accuses") and over all the historical forms of pain, evil, and death.

This is a victory achieved in virtue of the blood of the Lamb and the outpouring of the Spirit. Equally, this is a victory of some who were faithful witnesses, who did not love their life so as to fear death; they gloried (believed) in their condition as children of God; they depended on a hope that does not deceive; proven and remaining constant in their tribulation, they persevered until the end; because the love of God overflowed his heart and the Holy Spirit spoke through them.

This is a victory which stirs up joy, infuses peace and hope and inspires our thanksgiving to the Lord.

2. This is one of the Gospel paradoxes. It is presented as "Good News," as a "Message of Happiness," yet it also announces a period of grief and persecutions. Its messengers will be disagreed with and persecuted; the same outcome that the Master had awaits them. Their lives will be a challenge and subject to evil interpretations and end in suffering for the Kingdom.

Yet it will be precisely this odd situation which will allow the Word of the Lord to reach everyone and to be witnessed to even before the persecutors, governors, and kings. In such circumstances it is the Holy Spirit who works by speaking in his name and by being a warranty, at the very worst moments, of peace and joy to the persecuted.

3. All this we see realized in our Blessed Juan Maria de la Cruz. His simple and courageous witness until the end which did not hide his Christian identity nor his religious and priestly state, his constancy in prayer, his concern for a spiritual life that was grounded and deep and his intimacy with Christ, his search for the will of God, his apostolic zeal, his dedication to his neighbor, his religious obedience to every demand, his longing to give his life for Christ, all had the martyrs' crown which is a gift from God and a generous response to work of grace. The more we enter into the life of Blessed Juan Maria de la Cruz, the more strongly are we convinced that he was an heroic model of the religious, spiritual, fraternal and apostolic life which ended up with the grace of martyrdom.

4. Our Blessed Juan is equally a model of an SCJ and a gift from God to the Congregation. He came to our Institute already formed and with a reputation for holiness. Our charism and spirituality and the concrete manner in which it was lived at this early period in Spain, were for Fr. Juan Maria de la Cruz a response to an intense search and discernment of contemplation and of apostolic selflessness that characterized his life.

It's no accident, really an act of God, that he came to know our Congregation in the chapel of the Reparatrix Sisters where he came to make his adoration. The ideals of oblation, love and reparation, the central position of the love of God expressed in the mystery of the open Heart of Jesus, the strong emphasis on the Eucharist (Mass and adoration); the tender devotion to Mary; his obedience and total availability to the Lord and his brethren; his social sensitivity and attention to the poor; all were values that Blessed Juan Maria de la Cruz already brought with him and that he found, in the Congregation of the Priests of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the space to grow and develop to a heroic degree.

The spiritual notes he left us, fruits of his reflection and resolutions on everything made during his retreats and spiritual exercises, all speak of his deep rootedness in the spirit of the Congregation. His clarity and practicality call for our attention as he concretely translated the meaning of reparation into relationship with God, relationship with the human reality of personal and social sin. His profound experience of the love of God allowed him to seize and live the essentials of our charism of love and reparation.

5. Precisely for this reason, Blessed Juan Maria de la Cruz is a true "gift" from the Heart of Jesus for the entire Congregation. He is our first Blessed, preceding even the Founder; moreover, he is our first martyr. He is first on a long list of SCJ martyrs on the glorious page of the history of the Congregation during the last century. Above all he is a gift to the Spanish province who have him as part of their very foundation stone. He is like a "Guardian Angel" for this house of Puente la Reina which he served in joyful obedience for vocational promotion and fund-raising among benefactors.

6. The gift of sanctity is a call that God has for all Christians from the moment of their incorporation in Christ and into the people of God through baptism. It is from this source that the Church speaks to us about the universal call to holiness (LG, n. 40) which takes form in a promise of Christian living which must direct the existence of every believer. This is the will of God, your sanctification (1st Thess. 4:3).

"All Christians, of whatever class or state, are called to the fullness of Christian life and the perfection of love" (John Paul II, Novo Millenio Ineunte n. 30). In this sense our Blessed Juan is a gift to the entire Church. And the church has recognized him as such by declaring him "blessed" and setting him up as model and intercessor for his blood family members, for his religious congregation (SCJ), for the entire Dehonian Family, and for the local churches where he lived and worked and where today are known his familiarity and reputation for holiness, particularly in the parish of Puente la Reina and the nearby peoples and villages which he used to visit and where he exercised some apostolic activity.

This gift has a twofold effect on us. In the first place it is a sure sign that our Dehonian vocation with its particular charism and spirituality is a path to holiness recognized by the Church. Blessed Juan Maria de la Cruz has become for us a historical model to imitate, after Fr. Dehon, in the religious following of Christ. Beneath this point of view we find a sign for the entire Dehonian family, of everything that we religious who have made profession to follow Christ radically to realize the perfection of charity through the evangelical counsels and through our "explicit union… with the reparatory oblation of Christ to the Father for people" (Cst. 6) in love.

Our first promise as SCJs is to adherence to our call to holiness. The very fact that Blessed Juan Maria de la Cruz, according to the official acknowledgement of the Church, preceded Fr. Dehon is one more proof that our Congregation in its charism and spirituality is above all else a "work of God."

7. The second effect is that our Blessed is at the same time a gift and patrimony to the universal church.

In this sense, we are called to make him known, to promote his cause, to present him as a model of Christian life and an intercessor for the entire People of God. Through prayer, in the mystery of the communion of saints, we should keep his memory alive and seek his intercession in our life and affairs so that they are always directed to God's will and maintain a pure intention of service to the Kingdom.

A fact that I thought about was that on the night of March 11 and the days after his beatification in the various parts of the Congregation (Italy, Spain, the United States, Brasil, England, India), several confreres told me that the image of Blessed Juan Maria de la Cruz was the only one which was shown on all the TV networks as a symbol of that massive beatification which took place in St. Peter's Square. It was more than anyone could imagine or hope for. And afterwards I asked myself: Isn't this a sign that God wants this humble religious repairer today to be a model and motive for Christian living through the world?

Frequently the things of God take place only where there are men and women available for collaboration with Him and where these things are important.

8. At this point, I want to thank the Spanish province which always believed in this cause and which conducted it in faith and patience in spite of contrary winds. I want to thank even more certain ones who engaged in this work directly, Fr. Antonio Aguilera Alama and Fr. Oliviero Girardi and the many devout benefactors who supported them. Thanks too to those who are carrying on the same service today. I wish to motivate them to carry on with renewed enthusiasm and a certainty that, if God wills, his canonization will take place soon.

Puente la Reina, which was a beneficiary during the life of the Blessed and which was the depository and custodian of his relics is now turning into a sanctuary and place of pilgrimage and meeting place with God through the intercession of the Blessed.

9. Let him be, for the Province and the entire Congregation, the patron of SCJ vocations and for all our work of vocational promotion and let him be, too, the particular patron of all our benefactors. In this fashion he will carry on his work from the mansion given him in glory by the Lord, the same work he had in the Congregation during his life.

He accepted this work with the availability which marks a faithful son of Fr. Dehon because he was convinced that "to obey is to love."

We do not have the slightest doubt that now he will do even more and that he will raise up in the Province men of great creativity, enthusiasm, perseverance like his own with which they will work so that workers are not lacking for the harvest of the Lord, nor that faithful sons of Fr. Dehon are lacking for building up the Civilization of Love.