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 Dearest
friends:
I wish to present the Home of the Mother to you as a most humble plant
of the Church, the gift which our Lord wishes to make to His Mother. It
has arisen within the great thrust which the Holy Spirit has given to the
Church to incisively communicate His saving message.
We have three missions in the Church:
- The Defense of the Eucharist
- The Defense of the Honor of Our Mother, especially in the Privilege of
Her Virginity
- The Conquest of the Youth for Jesus Christ.
The Home of the Mother wishes to be characterized by its selfless love
for the Church, its profound joy, and the unity among all its members and
with the entire Church whom it wishes to serve.
We partake in a Carmelite spirituality. The distinguishing mark of this
spirituality is the search for union with God on the summit of the mountain
where only the glory of God reigns. One reaches this union through the “nothings,” leaving
creatures aside. In other words, by devoting oneself directly to achieving
union with God, seeking God furiously.
We are just beginning. If you feel the desire to collaborate with us or
to form part of this Work, listen to the voice of the Lord and harden
not your heart. Do not hesitate to contact us.
With affection I bless you and all those whom you love in the Lord,
Fr.
Rafael Alonso Reymundo
Founder of the Home of the Mother
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 Fr.
Rafael Alonso Reymundo
Fr.
Rafael Alonso Reymundo was born in Jerez del Marquesado (Granada, Spain)
on January 10th, 1947. He was the fourth of five children. His parents
were Mr Ramón Alonso, veterinarian, and Mrs. Carmen Reymundo.
On the feast-day of the Presentation, February 2nd 1947, he was baptised
and consecrated to Our Lady. At the age of eight he received his First
Holy Communion in the Parish Church of Pozo Estrecho and at the age of
ten, whilst attending Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, he discovered
his vocation to the priesthood; he felt the Lord tell him, “You
will be mine, only mine, totally mine”.
In 1961 he became a member of “Catholic Action”.
After his father’s death in November 1963 the family moved to Madrid,,
and there he became a member of the Crusade of Santa María (consecrated
lay institution) in May 1964.
In
1965 he became a member of the “Spanish University Foundation” (S.U.F.).
From 1965 to 1970 he studied the career of Humanities and Philosophy
in the University of Salamanca, specializing in History and Geography.
He graduated in June 1970. In 1972 he obtained from the S.U.F. a scholarship
and he made a historical investigation of the recollect spiritual movement
during the 16th century in Spain.
In 1975, he left the Crusade of Santa María to be able to commence
his studies to become a priest.
In March 1976 he received his three missions: 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 young people for the Lord.
 In this same year he was accepted in the diocesan seminary of Toledo.
On the 6th of July of 1980 he was ordained in Toledo by the Cardinal
of Spain, D. Marcelo González Martín. Ever since then Fr.
Rafael has dedicated all his efforts to found this little plant of the
Church, that is the Home of the Mother.
He also continued his work as a teacher until 1999, the year in which
he gave up this profession to dedicate himself completely to the Home.
All of us who are members of the Home thank him for his abnegation and
self-abandonment to the will of God and to the wishes of Our Mother.
We pray to God that He will keep him alive at the head of the Home for
many years.
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 Interview
Tell us about the origins of the Home.
The Home of the Mother has grown and developed with time. It isn’t
a foundation that was defined from the beginning; this would have meant
suffocating the charism. We are all convinced that the Home of the Mother
is precisely “of the Mother” and we are simply instruments.
She is the one who shows us each next step we have to take.
How has the work been transmitted?
I received the charism and endeavoured to transmit it to everyone:
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 Youth for Jesus Christ.
After my ordination, I began to surround myself with young people. The
first thing I did was to cultivate their spiritual life so that they
lived in the grace of God and show them the way to be close to Our Lord
and Our Heavenly Mother. I encouraged them to lead a serious prayer
life,
to practise frequent Confession, to receive Communion every day if possible,
and to pray at least one mystery of the Rosary. Little by little the
commitments
we have now were defined.
That is how the first group was formed which was the Home of the Mother
of the Youth. The female branch was born on the 29th of July 1982 and
the male branch
in on the 27th of December 1983. Both were born at the tomb of St. Peter,
as a sign of our fidelity to the Catholic Church in the person of the
Pope.
 What kind of development had this group of young people?
Growing up they had to take certain options. Their first option
was to study at the university. As most of them were from Toledo and
had to
go to Madrid to study, we had to decide between being dispersed in colleges,
in flats or residences, or else to initiate a small residence themselves
where they could live together the same spirituality. This was the first
important
step.
The second important step was the foundation of the Servant
Sisters of the Home of the Mother on the 22nd of September of 1984. There was a group
of girls who wanted to devote themselves totally to live in plenitude
the triple mission of the Home. The first ones were Mother Ana, Sister
Reme and Sister Conchi.
What is the spirituality of the Home?
We experiment the spirituality of the Home as a gift we have received
from God and Our Blessed Mother. We are a little plant which is still
developing.
Each day we discover new aspects and dimensions of this spirituality.
Our spirituality springs from the three specific missions we have: 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. Our spirituality is therefore:
Eucharistic: The Eucharist is the centre of our whole life.
In It we find our strength, “Arise and eat, else the journey will
be too long for you” (I Kings 19,7). We love It and try to make
It loved through the daily celebration of the Eucharist and through adoration.
 Marian: Mary is Our Mother, Model and Teacher. We feel Her very
close to us. With the Scapular, we place ourselves under the maternal
protection of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
Apostolic: Mainly with young people, through the Eucharist and Our Lady as the
fundamental ways to encounter Jesus Christ.
The Home of the Mother is a “home”, a family... in which
the mother is the Blessed Virgin.
The Home is the gift of Our Lord to His Mother. That is why we want to
perfect ourselves, ceaselessly imitating Her dispositions and interior
attitudes of donation, charity and abandonment in God’s hands.
Our soul is a sanctuary exclusively of God where our alliance with Our
Lord and the Blessed Mother takes place. Our Lady lives in us and among
us, manifesting Herself through us, if we let her. The sanctuaries we
want to build in Her honour have to be a manifestation of the sanctuary
of our soul.
Another characteristic of our spirituality is that it is Carmelite. This
is characterised by the search for the union with God on the summit of
the Mountain where only the glory of God reigns. That union is reached
through the “nothings”, leaving creatures aside. In other words,
by devoting oneself directly to uniting oneself with God, seeking God
furiously.
 Then
there is also the fidelity to God. Nowadays there is a great fear of
committing oneself to God and of maintaining oneself on a path of
faithfulness
to Him. Many people do not enjoy the presence of God precisely because
of their infidelity. Fidelity to God always implies the Cross, suffering,
but through it the Lord helps us to discover the complete meaning of
life,
even also of the sufferings that we may undergo. As St. Paul said: “I
complete in me what is lacking in the redemption of Christ for His Church”.(Col.
1, 24)
We want to live in abandonment and trust in God. That is, in a total availability
to Him. The fruit of this is the true joy, union between us and unselfish
love of the Church.
The goal of all the members of the Home must be the identification with
Jesus Christ and the transformation in Him from the maternal arms of Mary.
After all these years since the foundation of the Home, how do you
see things now?
Things have happened that I hadn’t foreseen. The Holy Spirit
is unpredictable. It is not we who guide God’s works, it is God
himself who guides them; we do enough when we disturb as little as possible
what
the Lord is doing. Of course I am surprised when I look back at everything
that has happened.
Perhaps, as regards the Home of the Mother, I am a qualified spectator
of what God is doing. And as a privileged spectator, I am also absolutely
astonished by the growth of the Communities of Adults. And another motive
of hope is the progressive stabilisation of the Home of the Mother of
the Youth, the participation of the young people in the diverse activities
that we are running.
 How
do you interpret the following sentence: “You cannot give
life without suffering”?
It is a sentence I came across in my spiritual reading that was
uttered by the Founder of the Work of Schönstatt, Fr. Kentenich. It is a
sentence that impressed me enormously, so much that I have frequently
repeated it in many of my homilies and retreats. Our experience in the
Home has been the same, not only for me but for all those who more closely
participated in the creation of the Home. As the Home is spiritual life,
that is, it engenders life in the soul, it inevitably implies sorrows
and sufferings. We see it in Jesus Christ and He Himself warned us: ”The
disciple is not greater than his master, and if I have been persecuted,
you too will be persecuted; if my words have been retained, yours also
will be retained” (Jn. 15, 20). The price of life, therefore, is
suffering, and those who are not disposed to suffer, will never be able
to engender life.
To conclude, what advice would you give to our readers?
I can only say that the person who opens himself entirely to God
is usually much happier, even in suffering and persecution. Therefore,
if there
is
one thing I could say to people, it is to open yourselves to God. As
the Pope said in a sentence which impressed me a lot, “Only
the eternal can fill the human heart”. If there is any conclusion
that can be drawn from this, not from what I say but from the Pope’s
fine observation, it is that people should open themselves to God.
As
the Scripture says: “Look, I am at the door and I call. If someone
opens, I will enter and we will sup together” (Jn. 3, 20). So let
us not be foolish and let us open wide the doors to Our Lord who is the
only one who can satisfy us. Everything else can be deduced from this.
What is meant by opening oneself to God? It means to meditate on His
Words,
to receive them into your heart, to put them into practice, to lead an
honest life, to fulfill the Ten Commandments, to receive the Sacraments
to increase our supernatural life, etc.. To discover Him in the poor,
in the needy, in our neighbour.
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