St. Candida, the Visitation and the Trinity: an invitation to live as daughters and sons of God
This May 31 becomes, for the Daughters of Jesus and the whole Mother Candida family, a particularly luminous date. We celebrate the birth of Juana Josefa Cipitria y Barriola (Saint Candida) in the year 1845 in Andoain, Guipuzcoa. And since she was born on this beautiful day of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, her parents decided to baptize her the same day she was born. It was in the Parish of San Martin de Tours; we also celebrate the feast of the Visitation of the Virgin Mary and, in addition, this year it coincides with the Sunday of the Holy Trinity, so we celebrate the feast of the same God, community and encounter.
We believe that this coincidence in the calendar is an opportunity to allow ourselves to be touched by the same spiritual movement: that of a God who goes out to meet us and calls us to live in sonship and closeness.
Mary: a faith that sets out on a journey
The Gospel of the Visitation presents Mary walking “in haste” to Elizabeth’s house. She carries within her a new life that impels her to go out, to share, to accompany. Mary becomes a presence that consoles, listens, serves and rejoices.
The Visitation is the gospel of bonds. It reminds us that faith does not consist only in believing in ideas or carrying out practices, but in allowing ourselves to be moved towards others. Wherever someone needs companionship, hope or a listening ear, God wants to be present.
St. Candida Maria de Jesus also lived this way. Her life was an available response to the needs of her time. She knew how to look deeply at reality and discover where more humanity, more education, more Gospel was needed. Like Mary, she understood that God is truly experienced when we dispose ourselves to his will and set out on the way.
“I wish to be called of the Daughters of Jesus.”
The XIX General Congregation of the Daughters of Jesus wanted to return to the heart of the charism with a profoundly simple and provocative expression of another birth, the foundational inspiration: “I wish to be called of the Daughters of Jesus”.
It expresses identity. To be Daughters of Jesus and to belong to the charismatic family means to live in trust, to know that we are loved freely and to recognize that every person has the dignity of a son and daughter of God.
In a culture where we so often need to continually prove our worth, compete or build a perfect image, the trait of sonship reminds us of something essential: before we do, produce or stand out, we are loved. We are sons and daughters.
And from this experience a different way of living is born: freer, simpler, more fraternal. Those who know that they are sons or daughters can look at others not as threats or competition, but as brothers and sisters.
We invite us to ask ourselves:
- From where am I living: from demand or from trust?
- Which people need to experience, through me, closeness and welcome?
- What does it mean to me to be a son or daughter of God in the midst of my concrete life?
The Trinity: God is relationship
The Solemnity of the Trinity reveals to us the deepest face of God: God is not solitude. God is communion, shared love, a living relationship between the Father, the Son and the Spirit.
And perhaps there we find a very profound key to the spirituality of St. Candida Maria de Jesus: to learn from God a way of life based on encounter, closeness and mutual care.
Mother Candida’s devotion to the Holy Trinity was very simple and yet profound.
In a world where disconnection, empty haste and silent solitude thrive, the Trinity reminds us that we are created for relationship. No one flourishes in isolation. We need communities that accompany, people who listen, spaces where we can truly be ourselves.
An invitation for today
This May 31 can be much more than an anniversary or a liturgical celebration. It can become an invitation for today.
Like Mary, we are invited to set out on the road.
Like Candida Mary, to live attentive to the needs of our times.
Like the Trinity, to build bonds that generate life.
Because perhaps evangelization today begins precisely there: in learning to live as beloved sons and daughters of God, capable of making the world a more human, more fraternal and more hope-filled place.
