Adord and Loved be Jesus!

Viator Web No. 71 June, 2016

Father Harry Clestin,

Vicar General

In his Letter to the Colossians, Saint Paul the Apostle is speaking to a community in crisis,
a community that has been seduced by an empty and deceitful philosophy that relativizes
Jesus Christ. Saint Paul takes the time to remind them of the primacy of Christ, not only
over humanity, but also over all creation (Col. 1). For all of that, the pillars of the first
Christian community are simply disciples of Christ. They act with Him and for Him as
witnesses of love in order to establish his Kingdom of justice, compassion, and tenderness.
Silver and gold I have not, says Saint Peter to the man crippled from birth; but what I do
have, I give to you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, get up and walk (Acts 3:6).
Along those same lines, Father Querbes recognizes Christ as being the one who is everything
for us. He transmits that Gospel enthusiasm to his spiritual heirs. He expresses it clearly
in his motto: Adored and loved be Jesus! Our Founder gave us that motto for our day-today lives as Viatorians and as members of the Church.
The same Jesus who was experienced by Father Querbes is still the one who invites people to discover him. In any encounter, generally speaking, it is important to be oneself and
to let the other person have that same possibility. Encounters are fortuitous and often
come forth from curiosity, then interest, and finally friendship. That is also true in our
relationship with Jesus. Encountering Jesus means, first of all, being honest with oneself
and with him, letting Jesus be God in us and allowing him to come in and that is a risk,

since Jesus can be an encumbrance and might even want to play havoc with everything.
But Jesus does not force himself upon us. If you wish to be perfect, come and follow me
(Matthew 19:21). Jesus is also the master of the relationship, both with God and with
others. Having come from God, he teaches us how to encounter God. Jesus went up on the
mountain to pray, and he spent the entire night praying to God (Luke 6:12). Having come to
put on our humanity, he teaches us to encounter others. While the disciples were conversing
with one another and asking one another questions, Jesus joined them and walked along
with them (Luke 24:15).
My own experience of encounter is presently taking place with the very simple people who
belong to Saint Lopold and Saint Ferdinand Parishes, in both of which I minister. Those
people are living signs that Jesus is adored and loved. In that ecclesial community, Jesus
invites us to encounter him, in praise and in prayer, in order to live intimate moments with
him, in order to taste his word of life and of light, in order to renew ourselves in the depths
of our being. Jesus manifests his joy and tenderness in the midst of his people in spite of
different vicissitudes of existence, in spite of situations where the lives and dignity of
persons are trampled upon. Hope is not dead because those people believe that, through
the actions of goodness, sharing, and compassion that they carry out within their community,
situations of human distress are not in any way fatal. They are also convinced that little
moments of happiness, drops of tenderness, generosity, and mercy, can inundate the world
like the source of living water flowing forth from the heart of Jesus. Those people are
overflowing with joy and hope because they place all their trust in the faithfulness of
Jesus in his love.
We also know how Jesus is adored and loved in the different communities of the extended
Viatorian family on the international level. Viatorians work in many different fields of
activity in order that the glory of the Risen Jesus might shine forth in the lives of those
toward whom their mission is directed. Through this final issue of Viator Web for the
current pastoral year, we have asked different Viatorians to present to us what that motto
means to them today, how they have adapted, shaped, and interpreted it. They tell us how
they update it in what they are, in what helps them to make a difference in the lives of the
people to whom they are sent by the master of the vineyard. I thank them from the bottom
of my heart for their spirit of availability.

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Brother Toms Aramberri

Spain

Adored and Loved be Jesus!

The way of understanding and living out the faith in post-revolutionary France, and in the
France of Louis Querbes, a child of that era, is distant from me in time and, for that reason,
culturally. How can I personalize for myself the Querbesian motto Adored and Loved be
Jesus of our founder?
I will attempt to answer that question with two biblical texts, which have been basic for
me in the living out of my faith: the mystical experience of Moses on Mount Horeb and the
story commonly known as the parable of the prodigal son.
The Mother-Father God who loves me
Probably the most original lived experience of Jesus of Nazareth was: a God who is near, a
God who pardons, a God who forgets, a God who loves, a God who is mother. While he was
still far off, his father saw him and, filled with emotion, ran to him, embraced him, and
lovingly kissed him. (Luke 15:20) This mother, who does not ask him why he went away
nor why he is returning, scans the horizon for a sign of his return, sees him first, and runs
to him and lovingly kisses him. This God loves me because of who I am and for no other
reason and because I am Gods child. And this God loves you because of who you are.
I do not know who you are, Lord, nor where you are, nor how to explain you; but you are you
and you are here and you are in me and I am in you.
The God who sends me to love his people
I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint
against their slave drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore, I have come
down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians. Come, now! I will send you to
Pharaoh to lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt. I am not Moses, nor am I a leader,
nor do I pretend to be, nor am I able to free my people; the only thing that I have always
heard is: Now, go forth.
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In our world, there are no poor people, but there are people impoverished by slavery of
all kinds and by the exploitation of persons and by the economic plundering of nations.
My eight-year experience in Peru helped me to understand that poverty is not painful, but
that it is painful to come face to face with suffering, with unloved girls and boys, with
abused adolescents, with women psychologically and physically maltreated, with abandoned
senior citizens, with people who are suffering because they cannot live a decent life. You
feel pain for them when you see their eyes and you feel pain for yourself when you realize
that you are powerless when confronted with the sufferings of your people.
But I have hope the hope of people who cry out to our God to free all of them from their
suffering. I have hope in the thousands and thousands of people who work and who fight
to make our world more human. I have hope in all of the Viatorian men and women in our
Viatorian foundations who give meaning to the bureaucratic work that I am now carrying
out. I have hope coming forth from the members of my Father Querbes Viatorian
Community in Vitoria-Gasteiz (who are committed to and involved with our Viatorian Saint
Viator SERSO N.G.O. and in Caritas) that we are able to celebrate our faith and our lives
together and with mutual care, and because they accompany me, and because we work
and dream together, and because we believe that another world is possible.
I have hope because I continue learning how to welcome other men and women, how to
experience the suffering of my sisters and brothers, how to walk with all of them, even
though I am not yet able to demonstrate to others the love of our God that I feel within me.
And I have hope in all Viatorian men and women, in all those who dedicate their work,
their mission, and their lives to the impoverished men and women of our world by
manifesting the love that our God has for all of his littlest sons and daughters.
And I remember, and I miss, two dearly beloved Viatorians, Pierre Laur and Gaston Harvey,
who are neither perfect men nor saints, but who live their lives incarnating the motto
Adored and Loved be Jesus and with whom I have celebrated faith and enjoyed life. To
each of you I send a loving embrace.

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Mr. Marcel Konat

Ivory Coast

Adored and Loved be Jesus!

What does this motto represent for you today?

Adored and Loved be Jesus makes present for me a style of life, a way of life and of
conduct that Father Louis Querbes recommends to his dearly beloved sons, which we are.
That motto invites me, on the one hand, to live in intimate union with Jesus through prayer,
adoration, and contemplation; and, on the other hand, to be faithful to my pastoral and
social commitments in order that Jesus might be adored and loved wherever I am living.
In your life and your ministry, how have you adapted, shaped, and interpreted that
motto?
It is in and through all aspects of my married life, my family life, my professional work, my
pastoral service, and my relationships with others that Jesus is adored and loved.
In order to personally adopt that motto and incarnate it in my life, it was necessary that I
make a decision, that I opt for a choice of life. My commitment as a Viatorian associate in
1987, the formation I have received for the needs of the mission, and a more regular
reception of the sacraments have contributed, in a fundamental way, to helping that motto
to take root in me.
In order to live and to manifest that motto, the path had already been well indicated: living
out, as a Viatorian associate, the spirituality and the mission that Father Louis Querbes
confides to every Viatorian.
Jesus revealed the face of the Father to me through very concrete attitudes of love. As a
disciple, it is my duty to restore that face of the loving Christ, of the Christ who is in
solidarity with every person.
Without me, Jesus tells us, you can do nothing (John 15 :5). The Eucharist occupies
the most important place in my life. At the holy table, I receive him, I am nourished by him,
I live henceforth through him. I, in my turn, must bear witness to that Life in order that
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others, in their turn, will discover it, embrace it, and live it out so that Jesus might be
adored and loved. That is what gives me strength and inspires me in everything.
At Saint Charles Lwanga Catholic School in Ferkessdougou, where I have been living and
working for thirty-five years, Adored and Loved be Jesus is, first and foremost, at the
heart of my life as a husband, as a married Viatorian, through the witness of love and
faithfulness. That motto is also present in my daily family life and in the education of our
children.
I have tried, over the course of the years, to manifest that motto in my work and my
ministry within the school as an administrator, a teacher, and a campus minister.
Today, as the Director of Studies, I share my experiences with young teachers so that Jesus
might be adored and loved in and through all of our educational activities. In the parish,
I have lived out that motto in my responsibilities as the director of the catechumenate for
young people and for adults and as someone who helps prepare future leaders in the
catechumenate program.
Today, my wife and I are involved in pastoral work with couples, preparing couples to
receive the sacrament of matrimony and accompanying couples who are experiencing
difficulties.
How do you update yourselves in who you are and in what helps you to make a
difference in the lives of the people to whom you are sent by the master of the
vineyard?
As a Christian husband, as an educator in a school setting, and as a catechist, I try, with
the support of the Holy Spirit, to live out that motto wherever I am.
Adored and Loved be Jesus, the love of Christ and of others in action, always stimulates
me in my undertakings. It has guided me in fighting against ignorance and sickness in my
village. Like Saint Peter, I had neither silver nor gold. It is based upon confidence in
Jesus, who went about doing good (Acts 10:38), that we were able to mobilize populations
and persons of good will. In a very short time, six classrooms, six apartments for teachers,
a dispensary, a maternity clinic, and three apartments for health-care workers became
reality. God has indeed visited his people!
The motto Adored and Loved be Jesus has converted me, wherever I might be, sometimes
into salt and pepper in order to give taste to life and to what is life-sustaining, at other
times into light to enlighten and guide a sister or a brother, at still other times into yeast in
order to encourage a qualitative change, in order to hasten progress.
That motto energizes my enthusiasm and my passion for mission and for service.
That motto nourishes my prayer on the personal, family, and community levels.
Even though, at times, because of our human condition, that testimony diminishes in
intensity, our willingness, sustained by the One in whom we can do all things, remains
strong.
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Father Jason Nesbit

Chicago

Adored and Loved Be Jesus!

This motto is a call to contemplation, to humility, and to service to others.
It is a reminder to me that the sum of the efforts of Viatorian Community life, ministry, and
prayer life is that Jesus may be Adored and Loved.
Looking at the motto again, it leads me to ponder: How does Jesus want to be adored and
loved? What qualities does Jesus say we should have if we truly love and adore him?
Jesus said: If you love me, you will keep my commandments whoever observes my
commandments is the one who loves me (John 14:15, 21). Jesus defines the greatest of
his Commandments; they are the two Commandments upon which all Commandments are
based: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your
mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as
yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these (Mt. 22:36-40, Mk. 12:3031, Lk 10:27).
Love of God and Love of Neighbor that is essentially how Jesus says we are his disciples,
and this is what we are to do in order to truly be the people we say we are, people who
adore and love Jesus.
However, even the basic tenets of our faith are very challenging. We live in a world whose
adoration and love are placed in many other directions. It is a challenge not to get caught
up into the desires of the ego that sometimes say: Adored and Loved be wealth and
power. Adored and Loved be my abilities and talents. Adored and Loved be the loudest
personalities and flashiest graphics. Adored and Loved be what is convenient and
comfortable.
Adored and Loved be Jesus is a motto that is still counter-cultural today as it was when
Father Querbes sought to restore the practice of the faith in the rural churches of the
Archdiocese of Lyons. It is a call to defy conventional wisdom and to challenge a status
quo that has become indifferent to sinful behaviors and the sufferings of others.
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To adore and love Jesus is to set aside our personal agendas and to seek first the Kingdom
of God and his righteousness (Mt. 6:33). It is the path of putting ourselves last and putting
God and others first. Adoring and Loving Jesus calls us to the same emptying of self that
Jesus modeled for us. He emptied himself, taking the form of a slave he humbled
himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross (Phil 2:7a,8).
This self-emptying is very challenging in this day and age. The ego often asks: Whats in
it for me how do I benefit? When the ego motivates our thought processes and decisions,
out of pride, our vision then becomes centered upon Adored and Loved Be Me. To adore
and love Jesus is to challenge the ego and to ask: What is in it for God and for others?
What is in it for those who are poor? To follow Jesus, to truly adore and love him, is to
engage in a journey that can sometimes be painful to the ego and will rouse us from our
comfort zone.
It means that I must welcome the distractions when people come to the church for mercy,
compassion, and assistance. However, it also means that I must enjoy the distractions of
the world in moderation, and not allow them to come between myself and God or myself
and others.
Father Querbes adored and loved Jesus in prayer to God and in his love for the people in
the rural parishes in the countryside near Lyons. He spent countless hours in prayer before
the Blessed Sacrament and at the foot of our Blessed Mother. He recognized Mary as the
first disciple of Jesus, the first person on Earth to Adore and Love Jesus as her son and as
the Son of God. He often adored and loved Jesus through Mary, and it was to her patronage
that he dedicated the effort of his ministry.
Through prayer and discernment and through loving Christ through others, he sought to
find ways to assist struggling pastors and catechists. From a love of Christ extended to
others, an apostolate of teaching Christian Doctrine and Service to the Holy Altar was
born.
To keep this vision alive, as mentioned, it is important to challenge the distractions of the
world and to seek opportunities for prayer. I want to better mirror the habit of Father
Querbes by offering more of my prayers to the intercession of our Blessed Mother. It is
important to realize that I am not finished growing in faith, in knowledge, and in love of
God and neighbor. After five years since seminary, there is no doubt an invitation to pick up
more books and articles and to allow my faith to be formed by considering the perspectives of theologians and spiritual writers. Truly, as a servant of the mission of Father Querbes
and a disciple of Jesus Christ, my vision will continue to be broadened by opening myself
to the workings of the Holy Spirt and adoring and loving Christ in others. The people who
come to the Church come from many different life experiences. As a priest and their brother
in Christ, I am not the gatekeeper to knowledge or grace. I too have much to learn from our
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elders, from the children and those who raise children, as well as those who have no place
to live. Each person carries the burden of the Cross in their lives, and each person is a coheir to the promises of resurrection to new life. They nourish me when I am burdened by
the cross, and walk with me on my own journey toward heaven.
To better adore and love Jesus is to seek him in prayer without distraction, and to love him
in others. Jesus modeled perfect love of God, and loving God in others. I will not do it
perfectly, but my understanding of how to do it will continue to be informed through prayer
and discernment, as well as through encountering Christ in others.

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Father Jacques Beaudry

Haiti

Some Quick Reflections based upon Father Querbes Motto:

Adored and Loved be Jesus!
As a priest closely connected with the Saint Marys Charitable Center for forty years, the
adoration and love of Jesus, especially in the Eucharist, have played a major role in my
mission of accompanying people spiritually and of preaching grass-roots retreats. In those
retreats, my task as director is to try to help people to live out their baptismal commitments,
of which the most essential is to become Jesus, especially by communicating with the
One whom we adore and love, so that the Heart of Jesus will beat within our own, as the
Venerable Marthe Robin loved to put it.
The brevity of this article that is asked of me restricts me to sharing summarily several
quick reflections that are evoked by this motto of Father Querbes and to leave it up to
each one beginning with myself to delve more deeply into them by adoring and loving
Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, as Father Querbes himself loved to complete
his thought.
1. First of all, Adored and Loved be Jesus seems to me to be at the heart of Viatorian
spirituality (a spirituality that no one has yet precisely defined). It is that motto that can
energize the exercise of our charism. How are we, concretely and effectively, to teach
Christian Doctrine and to serve at the holy altar without adoring and loving Jesus?
How are we to help young people and those who are accounted of no importance to
discover how much God loves them without helping them to recognize that love in
Jesus so that they can savor the happiness of fervently loving him in return?
2. Adoring Jesus (ad os) means turning toward the Face of the God who is constantly
turned toward us, means living a warm face-to-face experience. But, oftentimes, the idea
that we have of God (the All Powerful, the Dictator, the Judge, the Magician, the Great
Healer, or even, as Chateaubriand presented him, the Eternal Bachelor of the Worlds)
results in people approaching God with fear and even with coldness. The first task that I
undertake in a retreat or spiritual direction session is to tear off Gods masks, the first one of
which is omnipotence. As each mask is torn off, it is replaced with something beautiful and
positive that is found in Jesus (servant, savior, meek and humble of heart, Father-Son-Spirit,
Love not a love that takes, but a love that gives the very best of itself so that what is good,
what is best in the other person might flourish). A Love that God serves with all his Power.
So, not only do people experience joy in living a true face-to-Face experience with this God
who is Love, but people love God so greatly that the only fear that they have is doing
something that can hurt God. If people do not adore Love, is not their adoration an incipient
form of unconscious idolatry?
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3. This God of Love became incarnate. What humility! Who among us would want to become
a rat in order to save the rats that are ruining our house? But the distance between us
and a rat is infinitely shorter than the distance between God and us. And God traveled
over that distance. Marthe Robin stands admirably in awe: God lowering himself to
become a creature so that creatures can ascend to where God is. From his Heaven of
Glory, God descends to the Manger, from the Manger to the immolation of the Cross,
from the Cross to the nothingness of the altar, from the altar into the hearts of his
creatures. That is the summit, the possibility of perfect union. He could not have given
more; he would not give any less. Love went beyond words. Now it is up to us to give by
giving of ourselves unstintingly (Marthes Journal, Christmas 1930).
4. The fruit of that loving adoration should lead each of us to adore God, not only in the
Eucharist, but everywhere and especially in ourselves and in others. At the age of twentythree, I read these words of Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity, which since that time have
always been the bright light of my life that I share ceaselessly with the people whom
God gives me the privilege of meeting: Believing that a Being who is called Love lives in
us at every moment of the day and night and is inviting us to live in communion with
him is what turns my life into a heaven on earth. And what is true for me is also true for
the other people whom I encounter. Whence flow forth respect, friendship, service,
solidarity, and so much more.
5. How are we to develop that spirituality of adoring and loving Jesus?
a. First of all, by giving to the people for whom we are responsible the possibility of
living out that motto of Father Querbes thanks to Exposition of Jesus in the Most
Blessed Sacrament.
b. By consciously thinking, each time that we are going to live an activity in which our
Viatorian charism is exercised (see No. 1), that we are going to adore and love Jesus
with a love that has hands, as Mother Teresa liked to say. And by realizing in this way
that our spirituality energizes from within the exercise of our charism and that,
reciprocally, the exercise of our charism energizes and enlarges our spirituality.
c. By re-reading Number 43 of Saint John Paul IIs Letter at the Dawn of the New
Millennium about a spirituality of communion, in which he states clearly that: We
must not deceive ourselves: without this spiritual progress, the exterior means of
communion will be of very little use. They will become soul-less faades, masks of
communion more than expressions of communion and ways of growing in communion.
6. Love and not fear or a desire to ask Jesus to help us take revenge on our enemies is the
great sentiment that must lead us toward Jesus. For a number of years now, the only penance
that I have been giving after Confession consists in asking penitents to close their eyes and
to hear Jesus saying to them, as he said to Saint Peter: And you do you love me? (In spite
of his denial, Jesus did not directly reproach Peter, but simply asked him that question.)
Therefore, we are to respond Yes to Jesus by saying to him: Here is why I love you or
Here is how I am going to show you how much I love you.
And so, in the above paragraphs, we will find several grains of wheat to gently chew on
while contemplating Jesus in the Eucharist, thus enabling us to better say to him: Jesus,
My Love, I adore you!
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