What are the C.A.H.M.?

Commitments

Questions to Fr. Rafael about the C.A.H.M.

More information

C.A.H.M.

The purpose of the C.A.H.M. is the sanctification of their members in the following of Christ. They were born in the Church to serve the Church, participating in their own way in the triple mission of the Home of the Mother: the Defence of the Eucharist, the Defence of the Honour of Our Mother, especially in the privilege of her Virginity and the Conquest of the youth for Jesus Christ.

Each Community of Adults organises its apostolate with the approval of the Superior of the Servant Priests and Brothers, according to the needs of the social environment in which it has been born, seeking to provide a response from the Gospel to the challenges of Christian charity.

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COMMITMENTS

In the C.A.H.M., there are three types of commitments.

1. Committed members

Each day:
- Upon rising, the Angelus, the Offering to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
- at least half an hour of mental prayer
- five mysteries of the Rosary
- daily Mass and Communion
- Before bed, three Hail Mary’s to Our Lady, the Glory Be, and the Salve.

Each week:
- to attend the weekly meeting of the Community.
- Confession every two weeks.

Every year:
- to attend the annual Spiritual Exercises

2. Volunteers

Each day:
- Upon rising, the Angelus,the Offering to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
- at least a quarter of an hour of mental prayer and a mystery of the Rosary
- Before bed, three Hail Mary’s to Our Lady, the Glory Be, and the Salve.

Each week:
- to attend the weekly meeting of the Community.

Each month:
- Confession at least once a month.

3. Friends

Each day:
Upon rising, the Angelus, the Offering to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

There are some Friends who make certain commitments in consultation with their spiritual director; and there are others who don’t make any commitment other than to consecrate themselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus with the daily formula with which all the members of the Home of the Mother consecrate themselves.

Commitment Formula:

“Lord Jesus Christ:
I have heard your voice say to me: Follow me. Whoever wishes to follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. I freely decide to follow you as (a friend, committed, or volunteer) of the Community of Adults of the Home of the Mother. And I offer myself for the fulfillment of the work that is the gift to your Mother and our Mother. I wish to live the triple mission of the Home: the Defense of the Eucharist; the Defence of the Honor of Our Mother, especially in the Privilege of Her Virginity; and the Conquest of Young People for You. See to it, Lord, that these commitments become reality, granting me your grace and your mercy and raising up in me an ever firmer love for the Eucharist, for our Mother and for young people. May our patron saints obtain for me from your Heart the grace of becoming an oblation pleasing to You, for the glory of the Most Holy Trinity and the salvation of men. AMEN.”

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Questions

Father Rafael, whose idea was it to begin the CAHM ?
When the Home of the Mother of all Humanity, Mother of the Youth, was first founded, I already understood that it would not be a work confined solely to those who wished to consecrate themselves to religious life, that there would also be a strong presence of lay people. Therefore, I always had it in my mind to establish a secular branch of the Home of the Mother. Many years ago, I had even drawn up a series of possible statutes for the lay movement. The Lord then put in my path other persons who have helped me to carry this out.

What place do these groups of lay people of the Home have in today’s Church?
In a time of crisis for the family, with so many divorces and separations, the spirit of the Home comes as a call to fidelity to God and to the search for union with Him by distancing ourselves from attitudes that are contrary to his will. This is how we come to see the trancendental importance of the Home for the recuperation of the family, which is the main cell of society.

What do the C.A.H.M. contribute to the Home of the Mother?
A great dynamism. Let me explain. Dinamism means movement. And there is no doubt that a very powerful current is moving that impels us all to work for the good of the Church.

What does the creation of the C.A.H.M. mean to you?
It is clearly the work of Our Blessed Mother. Its birth and expansion are not due to human calculations. I know very well that it has nothing to do with the development of a business project with investment capital and therefore with criteria of viability and efficacy. These are not God’s criteria. I am amazed by its way of birth, by its way of development, its way of growth, its way of expansion... I could say that I am a privileged spectator of what the Lord himself is doing. He is the main actor. And we are with Him in the measure and in the way that He wishes.

What do you expect from the C.A.H.M.?
I expect every member to absorb and live his own vocation; and therefore his triple mission of the Defence of the Eucharist, the Defence of the Honour of Our Blessed Mother, especially in the privilege of her virginity, and the conquest of the young people for Jesus Christ. And this not in a passive way, like some form of lingering resistance movement, but in an active, pioneering, dynamic way. There’s a whole world out there that has to be renewed from its foundations. And the renewal begins with oneself and with the environment in which each one is living. This is why all of us must be apostles. The members must study their immediate surroundings and see what it is that God awaits of them and do it. When all of us who make up the Home of the Mother are united we will form a great potency of transformation in society, not by the way of force but by the way of the spirit. It is in the Eucharist that every member of the Home of the Mother finds strength, light and consolation. And in the Heart of the Most Holy Virgin Mary we find our peace and our home.

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A Common Spirituality

The centre of the spirituality is Jesus Christ whose life and doctrine are explained and interpreted by the Catholic Church. We go to Jesus Christ by the shortest route: Mary. She is our living example with her FIAT, accepting the plans of God for the salvation of the world. Contemplating Her the C.A.H.M. discover their own mission of service to God and men. This union with Christ and with Mary leads them to union with the Church, with which Christ identifies himself.

Aware that they are the Church and that they serve the Church because they love her as a work of God, they participate in the Liturgy, they meditate the Sacred Scripture, they study the Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium, they accept her moral norms, they cooperate with their shepherds and they share their concern for the problems and the progress of the human race. This identification with the Church commits them to a concrete cooperation in the work of establishing the Kingdom of God.

The examples of life proposed by the Church - that is, the Saints - are for them faithful friends, especially the Protectors and Patrons of the Home. They commend themselves personally and in community to their Holy Guardian Angels and particularly to the Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael. They recognise the need for personal prayer and spiritual direction as an indispensable instrument in order to seek and to find God in all things.

The centre of the C.A.H.M. is the Eucharist, experience of love and of action. All the members of the C.A.H.M. are united by their common commitment, their lifestyle and their filial love of Our Blessed Mother. And they make sure not to live wrapped up in themselves but rather in openness to the other communities of the Home, to other communities of the Church (in the parish and the diocese) and to all men and women of good will, and they try to make known to all the riches of their faith.

The C.A.H.M. wish to be recognised by these three characteristics: Unity, Joy and Selfless Love of the Church. And they will be enabled to achieve this by the experience of fraternity that they have between them, with the other members of the Home of the Mother and with all people.

Foremost Charism : THE YOUTH

The charism of the C.A.H.M. must be developed to help all men and women, but giving particular priority to the youth. This leads them to:

- take decisions in favour of the defence of life in all its stages;
- carry out works of mercy and charity;
- cooperate as a priority in the apostolic activities indicated by the Superior General of the Servant Priests and Brothers of the Home of the Mother;
- take up positions that favour the disappearance of injustices, discriminations, exploitations, etc., without borrowing in any way from ideologies that are foreign to the Gospel, but acting in accordance with their faith.

They must consecrate and sanctify the values of the temporal order of things and they wish to put an end to the dualisms of faith-culture, faith-politics and faith-reason.

Kinds of action

Each Community of Adults must seek to live the first mission of the Home in whatever environment they find themselves and must therefore develop all legitimate means of ensuring that the Lord is better known and loved in the Eucharist. To this end they will seek to revitalise or to create forms of prayer, of adoration and of formation around this Sacrament. They must learn from the Family of Nazareth and model themselves on this Family.

Mary, Mother of God and Our Mother, must be made known, so that She be more honoured and loved by her children. We must deepen in prayer, contemplation, work, joy, charity, inside and outside the Community... reflecting the virtues of the Holy Family.

The mission of the conquest of the young people for the Lord impels the C.A.H.M. to set up activities that facilitate the discovery of Christ as the supreme value. And they must take decisions in defence of this value in the environment around them: in the family, in society at large...

By way of example these possibilities are proposed to the members of these Communities: cooperation in the creation of summer-camps, youth centres, student residences, hostels, house-homes for young people, spiritual exercises, retreats, editorials, newspapers and magazines, co-ops, schools, hospitals, cooperation with persecuted Christians, aid to the Third World, aid to emigrants and to the poor, the setting up of employment agencies, the promotion of sport, participation in radio, T.V., etc..

A Way of Holiness

Being part of the Home is a way of being the Church. It is a calling, a specific vocation: the vocation to be the Home in the Church. The Holy Spirit, author of the works that spring up in the Church, is at once the impulse and the motor of these works. It is He who gives them life and breath so that they may give glory to the Trinity. The C.A.H.M., therefore, are a way of holiness. And the principles that move them must be contemplated in the mystery of Christ and his Gospel, as the Church believes and preaches, and in the supreme Law of Love. This law is written by the Holy Spirit in all hearts in the moment of Baptism and the C.A.H.M. wish to fulfill it in every situation of their life. This Law of Love pushes them to be open and free, always disposed to divine action, recognizing and accepting their responsabilities with God, with men and with themselves. By this Law they are impelled to seek the correct responses to the needs of their brothers, working for the authentic progress of humanity, peace, justice, charity, freedom, and human dignity.

The entire life of the C.A.H.M. is lived in communion with their brothers of the Home: the Servant Priests and Brothers, the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother and the Home of the Mother of the Youth, in order to fulfill together the missions which they have recieved and in which they participate according to their own state of life.

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