Albert Cortina talks with María Roqueta and Tomás Borrell, a married couple living in Valldoreix (Barcelona), parents of Mateu, Santi, Elena, Carmina, Imma and Clara. Lay members of the Third Order of the Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE)

Mary, now that you have just given birth to Clara – your sixth child – how do you imagine the Virgin Mary must have felt carrying Jesus, the Son of God, in her womb?

Tremendously happy, with much peace and an overflowing happiness, which would make her smile while she was taking care of her daily chores. Despite her uncertain situation and her fears, I imagine Mary tenderly caressing her belly, regaining confidence and peace while she sweetly sang and recited the Psalms and the Holy Scriptures to the Child Jesus she carried in her womb.

On the other hand, I imagine the Virgin Mary, delighting in the revelations of the Father, attending to the motions and inspirations of the Holy Spirit, while feeling the Son of God moving within her body.

I also imagine her sharing with Saint Joseph, with infinite delicacy and trust, everything she was feeling, patiently making him a participant in such a great mystery.

And when the time came, how many tears would bathe the newborn! With a feeling of anxiety, but full of tenderness, Mary perhaps welcomed the Child Jesus between sobs of joy, stopping to look at him with effort for a second to be able to rest her grateful and complicit gaze on Joseph. And it is that they had the Son of God in their arms.

Thomas, I know that in your marriage you are very devoted to Saint Joseph. Why do you think we should contemplate with admiration his very important role in the Holy Family of Nazareth?

Saint Joseph was a great man, as young people say today. There has been no other like him, and that is why God chose him as the father of the Incarnate Word.

Being a normal man, full of virtues, he knew what it was like to love his wife and his son. But he also knew what it was like to suffer from not making ends meet, from finding a house, from trying to provide for the family. Saint Joseph lived everything that we, as fathers, live and suffer every day. That is why we have great devotion to him in our family. He is the most impressive example of a father that we could have. How could we not imitate him and have special devotion to him as fathers!

Joseph gave everything – certainly many times without understanding why and for what – without reproaching God for anything, for love of his wife Mary, and for love of Jesus. Saint Joseph also gave an unconditional yes to the Lord without really understanding what was happening, without asking for an explanation of why all that was happening to him, or without knowing how the events of his life and his family would unfold in the future. And it is that Saint Joseph simply trusted in Mercy and Divine Providence. That is why he is great!

Mary, you have wonderful children who follow you on the path of faith. Tell us, what is the “secret”?

We do the best we can, knowing that we make many mistakes, many times. However, we are good at asking for forgiveness.

Our faith is not feigned or forced. We are truly in love with Jesus and we try to live that love coherently in our lives, starting with an immense peace and joy in knowing that we are so loved by Him. Therefore, what should we fear? In reality, we should celebrate and be thankful for everything.

Since we love God above all things, we try to make that love permeate absolutely everything we do, think, say, etc. Any decision, no matter how small, if we have doubts about how to carry it out successfully, we put it before the Lord and ask Him: Does this decision bring us closer to or further away from holiness and from You? Then, quickly and providentially, everything falls into place, as we always seek to do His Will, in the concrete and in the everyday.

In reality, it is about turning around the decision that we have before us. For example: we tell our children that they do not have to go to Mass out of obligation, but we tell them that we are dying to go. In this way, we do not want to be late, lest we miss a part of that wonderful moment in our life.

In our family, faith is not a compendium of prohibitions and incomprehensible rules, but a series of instructions – at home we call them “tricks” – to successfully play the cards that each of us has been dealt, in this unique and wonderful game that is life.

That faith lived with joy, sells itself! We thus have the perfect recipe for happiness that manifests itself in that overwhelming joy that we always try to transmit, since that virtue is the best marketing we can do. Joy makes everything become a gift, a precious gift from Heaven.

Joy even when embracing the cross. Because there have been and will be moments of suffering and pain, of course. Our children have lived them with us. These experiences save you a lot of sermons. And I have to tell you that, what a lesson our children have given us many times. They live difficult situations naturally, with abandonment and with the trust of a child towards their parents. It is a lesson to understand what “spiritual childhood” is, abandonment in the arms of the Lord.

Only in this way, sorrow is transformed into sincere thanksgiving. This becomes even more evident in the moments when we have to face, for example, an illness. How many new blessings all these situations will bring to the family! God knows best.

Tomás, precisely on the feast of Saint Joseph in 2017 we met as walkers at the Emmaus retreat organised by the parish of Sant Cebrià de Valldoreix. I remember that, in one of the final interventions of the retreat, you commented that you felt like the rest of the children who had not been able to be born because of some difficult pregnancies that Mary had, were already in Heaven. How do you think that for the rest of your children the main objective as parents is to lead them to Heaven?

Sending children to Heaven is our true vocation as parents. They are a true gift that we must return with our pockets full to the Lord. Being parents is not a right or a whim, as it is often understood today. Children are God’s. And He has a plan to make them happy on earth and enjoy with them in eternal life.

At home our maxim is that either we all get to Heaven, or no one gets there. It is a way of expressing ourselves so that our children understand that the family is a gift from God.

Parents and children are not “chosen” by you, they come to you as a gift. That is why they have an extraordinary value. God has thought of them specifically for us. If we are a team at home, we are also a team to get to Heaven. No one can be left behind, otherwise our mission on earth as parents will have failed in some way.

It may sound harsh or theologically, I say a barbarity, but that motivates us. Sometimes we have told them: “Guys, we have a football match pending with the six little brothers who are waiting for us in Heaven.” You don’t know how that challenge motivates our children!

At home we have given names to all our children who are already in Heaven. We ask them for many intentions: important things like helping them to be saints and to be better for others, as well as more banal things like passing exams, or winning a football match.

In short, this attitude helps us all to live with our feet on the ground, in the concrete – “short lights”-, while at the same time setting our sights – “long lights”- on the final objective, which is none other than for everyone to reach Heaven and enjoy the fullness of God’s Love in eternal life.

Mary, you come from a family with a long winemaking tradition in the Bages region of Catalonia. When you see at Holy Mass that this noble product of the earth is transformed, through transubstantiation, into the Blood of Christ, what does your heart feel every time you are before the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist in the consecrated bread and wine?

I feel enormously happy because I know that He is present there and that He loves me infinitely.

Many times I have asked God to increase my faith and to never let me become accustomed, out of routine, to His Sacrifice at Holy Mass. And God the Father, who is good and very patient with me, always gives me these “whims.”

Apart from that, I think it is wonderful that Jesus Christ, who is Almighty and who needs nothing from us, wants to use our persons and our work to perform the miracle of the Transubstantiation of the bread and wine into his Body and precious Blood. Don’t you think it is wonderful?

Tomás, you are part of an extended Catholic family from Matadepera in Catalonia. All the members of the family carry out very intense apostolic work. Without going any further, your sister Carmina – Mother Salud – is a religious of the Institute of the Incarnate Word. What are the virtues that your parents transmitted to you and that have given the world such an extraordinary family, which is an authentic testimony of the Truth?

I don’t know if we are an extraordinary family, what I do know is that we are a family that loves each other very much. We know each other well, we know our virtues and our defects and, even so, we love each other as we are, since that is what our parents taught us.

They always said: “God comes first and family takes care of it.” Our parents practiced that motto and set an example. They loved us as if we were only children. On the other hand, the children-in-law were one more in our family. They were not an “addition” that we had to “put up with” because they were the husband or wife of one of our sisters or brothers. They are also one of us.

In this way, my parents taught us to wear ourselves out, to die if necessary for others, to give and to serve even if it costs, even if it is very lazy and above all to always give without expecting anything in return.

They were also the ones who taught us to see the Incarnate Word in each person, to love them and to help whoever and however, without distinctions. Our home in Matadepera was always open to everyone and there were always friends at home.

My mother, by her example, taught us to be magnanimous, to keep nothing to ourselves. Her favourite phrase was the following: “We will rest in Heaven.” I am sure that she does not rest even in Heaven from where she does not stop interceding for all of us and for our friends.

In turn, my father taught us not to be lazy at work and to be discreet. That is why we chose for the reminder at his recent funeral the following phrase from Don Bosco: “Let us act in such a way that our actions speak louder than our words.” And that is how he was, a discreet man, he seemed not to be there, but he did not overlook anything and was always ready to give and to give himself to others.

This is what our parents taught us. But above all these virtues, they taught us to treat Christ, to carry him in our hearts at all times. Whenever we asked them for something, they would say: “Does this distance you from God or bring you closer to God?”

Tomás, on February 3, your father, whom you affectionately call “L’Avi” (grandfather), died. I attended the wake at your family home in Matadepera and it was a party. An incessant and multitudinous flow of family and friends accompanied you with joyful songs and prayers. It was clear that this atmosphere reflected the party that was being celebrated in Heaven with the welcome of your father at his birth to Eternal Life.

How would you explain this attitude towards the death of a loved one that your entire family showed both in the final days of your father’s life, as well as at the wake and at the funeral mass?

This joy is a gift from the Lord. I would not know how to explain to you in any other way the origin of the joy that I carry within my heart after the death of my father.

Those who don’t know us might think we’re crazy or unconscious, as one of my brothers-in-laws said these days. But knowing that your father – just like my mother eight years ago – has lived giving his life to his family and to God and that he is dying with his backpack full of good works to go to Heaven to appear before God, is a tremendous joy.

The human pain of “loss”, that is, of not being able to see our parents again or not being able to hug them, is nothing compared to the great celebration that is now being celebrated in Heaven. Joy comes from not looking at our grief but at their well-deserved rest with the Lord. Wouldn’t we want that for ourselves?

These days we have all cried and laughed together, we have sung and prayed and we have become even more united as a family. You don’t know the number of confessions there have been at the wake with the intention of gaining an indulgence for “L’Avi” as we affectionately call him.

We called my dad “L’Avi” because everyone loved him. At his house in Matadepera we held meetings of the Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE) with more than 300 people and he smiled and was happy to serve in this way.

That is why so many people loved him and have bid him farewell in style and with joy. Christians cannot fail to be happy even when hard or painful moments come, because God opens the way for us and is always at our side. He died for all of us, conquered death and opened wide the doors of Heaven for us. We only have to love him and freely let him love us and make us the best version of ourselves. It is important that we let ourselves be molded by him and, in this way, we will achieve happiness here on earth and will be recognized in Heaven as humble and faithful servants. We must never forget that our greatness is to be children of God!

Maria, when choosing the names of your children, I know that you have given a very special meaning to each one of them. Could you share some of those meanings with us?

Actually, we chose names that Tomás and I like and that we know are great patrons who will take care of our children. We had our firstborn after several years of waiting. And finally Mateo arrived, which means “gift of God.”

And then we named another of our children Joseph, since Saint Joseph is the patron of our family. We also have a Juan Pablo, in honor of the Pope of our youth and who marked our courtship.

On the other hand, we have a daughter whose name is Magdalena, since we would like to love Jesus as much as she loved the Lord, with that crazy, innocent, tender and passionate love. And of course, we have also used invocations to our Mother for the names of our daughters, such as Carmen, Inmaculada, Montserrat, etc.

Tomás, every week you welcome young people into your home to listen to talks by Fr. Gustavo Lombardo, a priest of the Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE), and once a month you do so with families, sharing spiritual formation with moments of fraternity during meals. How would you define the charism of the IVE and the values ​​it transmits to our contemporary world?

The charism of the IVE is to evangelize culture, to live everything again in Christ, with Christ and for Christ, with the joy of feeling ourselves children of God. This simple but sincere joy captivated me at the time. I was impressed by how the members of the IVE love the Eucharist and how they give themselves to others. They have nothing and they give you everything.

For us, who are very average, the IVE has made us see, with its way of living the faith, that it is not so difficult to love the Lord and to let ourselves be loved by Him.

Albert, if you have the opportunity to visit the seminary or any IVE house one day, let me know. It is like being a little bit in Heaven. You would never leave there.

It is a gift for us to be part of the third order of the IVE. It helps us to love the Lord more and to abandon ourselves in his loving arms. We let Him take the helm. This is how the formation apostolate arose in our house in Valldoreix, because as tertiaries we have the duty to give ourselves, to put our time and our goods at the disposal of the Lord so that He can reach the hearts of the young people and families who come to the IVE seeking a personal encounter with the Incarnate Word.

María, when choosing schools for your children, what was the main criterion for them to receive a quality Christian education?

We had no doubts about returning to the schools where we ourselves studied, and which are spiritually assisted by Opus Dei. We owe a lot to the Work, in our human, academic and spiritual formation and for this we are infinitely grateful and we entrust this formation to our children as well.

It was not enough for us to have educational centres that gave a few hours of religion classes. We wanted for our children schools that lived out Christian education coherently and fully in their ideology and that the integral formation of the person was a priority, even above academics. This should be felt both in mathematics classes, for example, and in sports activities. Both in the dining room, as in the playground or in the oratory.

We sincerely believe that we have made the right choice, since it is enough to go to the schools to which we have entrusted the education of our children to see students of all ages freely attending the Eucharist or visiting the Blessed Sacrament at any time of the day.

I fondly remember my first conversation in front of the image of the Virgin in the gardens of the boys’ school. I said to her: “Here they are, go on, look after them for me!” To which she replied: “I should look after them? … But they are mine! Am I not here with them, their Mother?”

And this is really how it is. As parents, our children have been left on loan to us. Knowing that not everything depends on us, but that God and our Mother look after them, gives us much peace.

Tomás, I know your fondness for playing music at different moments of praise and adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. For you, is it important that children, young people and adults participate regularly in Eucharistic Adoration, which is increasingly spreading in many parishes and monasteries?

For me, the important thing is that my children, young people and adults love the Lord more. The center of our lives should be the Eucharist and Adoration. These are moments when we “waste time” with the Lord to get to know Him better and thus be able to love Him more.

Like a couple who look for a few moments to talk and get to know each other and thus fall more and more in love, that is how I see the moments of prayer and adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. They say that contact makes love, right? That is why we have to spend more time with the Lord. I love Eucharistic Adoration, praise and everything that brings me closer to God and gives Him glory. Looking at Him and letting Him look at me and whisper in my ear.

At home we love music and today there are very beautiful songs to pray and praise the Lord. Whenever I can, I take my guitar and sing to Him in adoration, at home, in the countryside, wherever! I enjoy them very much and they help me to feel the Lord closer. In reality it is an offering that I make to God. He has given me this gift and since I see that I am not too out of tune, I return this gift to Him, imagining that my songs “soften” a little the pain caused in His Sacred Heart by so many insults and mistreatment that He often receives.

But I also enjoy – although it is more difficult because you do not “feel” with your senses – silent adoration. Both ways of being present before Jesus in the Eucharist are very good, since we are body, soul and spirit and we need to feel in our hearts so that with reason we can find, know and love God.

I think that in our time it is very important, especially for young people at the age of vocational discernment (marriage or religious), silent Eucharistic Adoration, because in silence and contemplation we can leave everything at the feet of God and say to Him without distortion: “What do you want from me? Do with me what you want.” Achieving a balance between these two types of worship in silence and with music is sublime.

Eucharistic Adoration with music certainly brings us to our feelings, which come out “on the surface” and we come away very comforted. However, worship is not just feeling that “state of well-being.” Worship is loving God, not leaving ourselves satisfied. I don’t know if I explain myself very well, but I think that silence is a very important part for God to speak to us and for us to discover what He wants from us. That is why we like praise so much, as well as silent worship, because we do not seek to feel good ourselves, but to give ourselves and give glory to the Lord.

I think that young people should check if they can spend an hour before the Blessed Sacrament singing or in silence, if they are capable of both things I would say, in my humble opinion, that they are doing well. The problem is letting ourselves be carried away only by emotionalism. I have seen it many times: the celebration of the Holy Mass and subsequent adoration of the Blessed Sacrament with guitars is organized, and instead, some of the young people “pass” the Holy Mass, waiting for it to end and then entering the Church to participate in the Adoration. I think that if this happens to them, it means that they should mature their relationship with God a little more or examine it at least to discern if they are really looking for Him or are looking for other things.

Mary, how would you explain your personal relationship with Jesus, our Savior, and with Mary, our Mother?

I think with affection and tenderness about how my life of faith has matured. That is not my merit either. What a spoiled child I was before! With my hair disheveled and pulling on the Virgin’s mantle with a list of requests.

Now I live my relationship with Jesus and Mary much more naturally. My membership in the IVE has helped me a lot in that.

Now I feel enormously loved and blessed, so I try to live everything as the gift that it is, the good and the not so good. If He who loves me so much has thought of a specific plan for me, how could I not want it? That trust leads me to enjoy a precious intimacy with the Lord, which permeates my life, a gratitude that transforms everything, starting with my gaze towards Thomas, the children, the family, friends and towards others. In short, I let God be God, and I simply adore Him and trust in Him.

I feel part of the team of Our Lord Jesus Christ, fighting under His banner. Blessed Saint Ignatius of Loyola and his spiritual exercises! Another gift, without a doubt, that I have received in all this time. So tiring myself and going out of my way to serve the Lord and others seems to me to be the best of plans. Fulfilling everything that He has thought for me is a joy. First of all, in the duties of my state, in marriage, but also in the various apostolates in which I become involved.

It is not so much what I do or do not do. It would be arrogance on my part to think that everything I do could depend on me. In reality, it is He who does and I let Him do it in me.

Finally, the Virgin Mary, my good Mother, who with her example of life, always answers my calls and does not stop offering me winks so that I can be a better wife, mother or friend. Also to encourage me when I realize that I am not doing well or giving me a touch when I do not realize it. And… uffffff… those touches are not at all “corny” eh!… They turn out to be very tough!… ha, ha, ha.

Tomás, you have in the dining room of your house an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in a prominent place. Why is it important to consecrate our homes to this devotion?

The Sacred Heart of Jesus must reign in our hearts and in our homes. It is a very beautiful tradition of the Catholic Church that is in disuse and it is a shame. I think that Catholic families should recover it.

It seems that this thing of reigning sounds authoritarian and somewhat retro. However, it is the most modern and greatest thing there is: Giving glory and honor to the one who created everything! Everything is His and we are all His. The least we can do is honor Him!

When you consecrate your house to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, very good things happen in your home and in your family. This is what our spiritual director, Father Jose Vicchi, a priest of the IVE, warned us about. And so it has turned out to be. With the consecration, you give Jesus the keys and the government of the house and the care of your family. You don’t know the weight you’re lifting off your shoulders! You are left with the peace of mind that God only wants the best for us. How foolish and proud we often are when we want to take everything on ourselves and then we start crying. But we fall again and again into our self-sufficiency. It happens to all of us, the devil tempts us as he tempted Adam and Eve.

If we truly love the Sacred Heart and let Jesus govern our home and our family, He will triumph and society will win, because it is in the family that we learn to love, respect and serve, and what better teacher than Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Maria and Tomás, thank you very much for this interview, for your valuable testimony, for the sincere commitment you have to the Truth – which is Jesus Christ himself – and for that precious friendship that you constantly offer to me, to my family and to so many other families who try to be faithful to our Christian faith, to be witnesses of the Truth and who strive to bring the light of the Gospel to our world.

I recommend that people who have read this interview also watch your video on marriage entitled: “Together in the party until Heaven.” Marriage: together in the party to heaven – Tomás Borrell and María Roqueta – YouTube