Article 1: General principles
48 The religious life through which we surrender ourselves totally to the service of God, wherein perfection lies, consists mainly in the fulfilling of three vows: poverty chastity, and obedience, driven by charity.

49 The profession of vows has the following nature:

First, it fulfills our baptismal grace most effectively. It removes the obstacles that may separate us from the fervor of charity and the perfection of divine worship, and consecrates us more intimately to the service of God.[52] Consecration with the three vows has its roots in the baptismal consecration and is its most perfect expression. The person who consecrates his life to God in this way fulfills the demand of Baptism to perfection; We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death. (Rom. 6:4)

50 Secondly, it resembles martyrdom, since the religious possesses the same will as a martyr. Both accept their death to this world in order to unite themselves totally to Christ and partake of his kingdom: “Even when persecution is lacking; peace has its martyrdom: although we do not submit our flesh to iron, we destroy in the soul, the passions of our flesh with the spiritual sword.”[53]

51 Thirdly, the religious profession constitutes a true holocaust of oneself, since, in light of the vows, the religious offers himself and his possessions wholly and unreservedly to God. Through the vow of chastity, he offers the goods of his body; through the vow of poverty, the good of external things; and through the vow of obedience, the good of his soul.[54]

52 Lastly, the religious profession is a true consecration through which the religious becomes something sacred, destined for divine worship, and the property of God.

53 With the profession of the vows, we strive to uproot from within us the threefold concupiscence – incompatible with the Father’s charity:

- the lust of the flesh (disorder in eating, drinking and sensitive goods);

- the lust of the eyes (eagerness of seeing everything, of possessing it all);

- the pride of life (disorder in honors, ostentation, boastfulness, self-sufficiency).[55]

These correspond exactly to the temptations with which the devil tried to seduce our Lord:

- Gluttony: If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread (Mt 4:3).

- Vainglory: If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down (Mt 4:6).

- Pride: All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me (Mt 4:9).

In these three temptations is found “the matter of all sins, because the causes of temptations is the same as those of greed: the delight of the flesh, the hope for glory, and the ambition for power.”[56] This is the ruse the father of lies used with Adam and Eve when he tempted them to taste the forbidden fruit because it was good for food, and… it was a delight to the eyes, and… was to be desired to make one wise” (Gen .3:6).

54 For this reason, Christ himself provides three weapons against these ruses, summarized in the three vows of the religious.

- Poverty corresponds to the command of giving alms,[57] which includes everything done out of love for one’s neighbor, rejecting wealth and ambition.

- Chastity corresponds to fasting,[58]which includes everything that one does to restrain concupiscence.

- Obedience corresponds to prayer,[59] through which “man shows reverence to God by means of prayer insofar as he subjects himself to him, and by praying and confessing that he needs him as the author of his goods.”[60]

Here is contained everything that one does to give proper worship to God; therefore, the vow of obedience, stemming from this worship of God, constitutes the essence of the religious life.

Article 2: The vow of chastity
55 Imitating Jesus Christ – having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end (Jn 13:1) – we want to offer to God by the vow of chastity a holocaust of our body and of our natural affections, living “the obligation of perfect continence observed in celibacy.”[61] This vow implies a preferential election of the exclusive love for God since we have freely chosen to be like eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven (Mt 19:12).

56 Virginity – which is above all of the heart – flows from, and is oriented to, charity in order to fulfill the supreme commandment to its maximum perfection: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind (Mt 22:37). Thus, the vow of chastity enables the religious to be completely free to tend to God, since he is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord (1 Cor 7:32), offering his body as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Rom 12:1). The vow of chastity, fully lived, constitutes the triumphant purity which tends with all its strength towards God. The religious joyfully sacrifices his carnal affections, surrendering himself to Jesus Christ and directing to Him all his loves. The fruit of this consecration is dominion over everything, together with a free will, prompt to pleasing only God.

57 This vow gives the religious a great spiritual fecundity since it is God who makes fertile and vivifies the heart of the one who, through virginity, resembles the Angels and the resurrected who neither marry nor are given in marriage… being sons of the resurrection (Lk 20:35-36).

58 “Only the love of God calls in a decisive way to religious chastity. This love moreover makes so uncompromising a demand for fraternal charity that the religious will live more profoundly with his contemporaries in the heart of Christ. Chastity witnesses to preferential love for the Lord and symbolizes in the most eminent and absolute way the mystery of the union of the Mystical Body with its Head, the union of the Bride with her eternal Bridegroom. Finally, it reaches, transforms and imbues with a mysterious likeness to Christ man’s being in its most hidden depths.”[62]

59 We should always desire a triumphantly victorious chastity. This victory can be attained in various degrees:

- substantial, eliminating serious sins;

- perfect, eliminating even minor sins;

- triumphant – most perfect – not only obtains elimination of sins with maximum delicacy, but also goes beyond the mere avoidance of sin. This can be done in regards to the promptness (eliminating every discussion or compromise with temptation, which leads to an immediate and radical victory); or in regards to the totality (immolation of the heart and negation of the passion, even in its indirect aspects – vain beauty, natural love, etc. – related to the senses and sex, but not strictly sinful by themselves).

This superiority of refinement, promptness, and above all of total negation in the sexual sphere is the characteristic of the religious form of chastity with relation to natural tendencies, without denying their existence. This surrender of the will can be classified in two ways:

- negative: painfully endured mortification,

- positive: joyful and desired sacrifice to obtain union with God, characterized by a spiritual and virginal matrimony according to Saint Paul.[63]

This matrimony is proper to religious life. The heart is not suffocated but offered and made sacred. This attitude only is worthy of the religious state. The loving surrender it implies must be joyful, in order to immerse oneself in the spiritual domain of divine love, the purpose of virginity.

Article 3: The vow of poverty
60 Our Lord – the Way we must follow[64] and the example we must imitate[65] – though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich (2 Cor 8:9). In his preaching, He teaches us: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Mt 5:3), and invites whoever wishes to attain perfection, if you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” (Mt 19:21)

61 Evangelical poverty consists in the voluntary surrender of material riches and the external goods of this world with the aim to seek only God. In Saint Jerome’s words, it means, “to follow the naked Christ being ourselves naked.”[66]

62 The perfection of evangelical poverty does not reside in the mere lack of riches or material goods (effective poverty), but in the detachment and voluntary renunciation of them (affective poverty): indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ (Phil 3:8).

63 The evangelical counsel of poverty implies a poor life both in deeds and in spirit, following the example of Christ. A life that is eagerly restrained and detached from earthly riches. A life that implies a dependency and a limitation in the usage and disposal of goods, according to the Constitutions.[67] Thanks to this renunciation of temporal goods, the vow of poverty[68] turns into an unceasing worship of Divine Providence since there is the certainty that “bodily danger does not threaten those who with the intention of following Christ, abandon all their possessions and entrust themselves to Divine Providence.”[69] The Father, full of goodness, who takes care of the birds and the flowers of the field,[70] will not abandon those who surrender their lives to Him.

64 The practice of this vow constitutes the utmost sign of humility: “in one who, like Christ, is poor willingly, poverty itself is a sign of maximum humility.”[71]

65 Poverty assumed for the sake of Christ increases the liberty of the spirit and the princely spirit that the religious must possess due to his consecration: “Poverty is good and contains within itself all the good things in the world. It is a great domain – I mean that he who cares nothing for the good things of the world has dominion over them all.”[72]

66 Therefore, the religious must not regard anything as his own, or attach his heart to anything, nor dispose himself of anything without the Superior’s permission, always living poorly. Thus, he will better imitate Jesus Christ who was “poor in his birth, even poorer in his life, and utterly poor on the Cross.”[73]

67 Our Lord Jesus teaches sell your belongings…provide moneybags for yourselves that do not wear out… an inexhaustible treasure in heaven… for where your treasure is, there also will be your heart (Lk 12: 33-34). One day these words resounded in our heart and we decided, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, to follow Christ by way of the vow of poverty. The religious poverty can be exercised with greater or lesser perfection. There are four main degrees:

- To abstain from possessing something as his own or from accomplishing an act of ownership without the superior’s permission. This is the obligatory matter of the vow. Its non-fulfillment, though it be small, is always a sin, grave or venial depending on the case.

- To deprive oneself of the superfluous (even of the appearance of riches and luxury), being content with the necessary, with the heart detached from it. Its non-fulfillment will not break the vow but rather the virtue of poverty.

- To prefer for his own use and to choose, whenever possible, that of least value, the last pleasant and the most uncomfortable. To gladly accept, and even to ask for, the lowest offices, the most difficult assignments… that which makes us most like the poor. From here the perfection of poverty begins.

- To accept with joy, for the love of God, privations even in necessary things for the sake of holy poverty. To boast as Saint Paul in hunger and thirst, in privations of every kind, in cold and nakedness (2 Cor 11:27). It was said of Saint Francis of Assisi that “no one was as ambitious for gold as was he zealous for poverty.”[74] This degree constitutes the perfection of poverty.

68 We can practice the fourth degree of poverty even more intensely and so gain total detachment not only from material goods – the proper object of the virtue of poverty – but also from everything that is not God himself. This supposes the perfection of charity and a complete and consummated holiness. As Saint John of the Cross expressed, “to love is to labor to divest and deprive oneself for God of all that is not God.”[75] The soul will not concern itself with:

- the esteem and good opinion of men,

- health and corporal strength,

- the charges and offices that will be given to or taken from him,

- the events of prosperity or adversity that may happen,

- dying young or old.

“Live as though only God and yourself were in this world, so that your heart may not be detained by anything human.”[76] And “nothing, nothing until it is left behind the skin and the rest for Christ,”[77] “… when with self love I did not want it, it was all given to me, not going after it… after I have come to nothing, I have found that I lack nothing.”[78] Conclusively, we have to love everything that God wants us to love, not being slaves of our affection for creatures, that is to say, to love without being chained, to possess without remaining imprisoned, to use without selfish pleasures, to keep an absolute independence, to look for God’s glory in everything and for everything.

69 We make our own the instruction given by Friar Francisco de los Angeles to the twelve apostles of Mexico, who warns them that they will go “to the vineyard not hired for pay, as some others, but as true sons of so great a Father, seeking not your own things, but those of Jesus Christ…Who wished to be made the last and the least of men and who desired that you, his true children, will be the last as well, trampling underfoot the glory of the world, dejected through disgrace, possessing a very deep poverty, and being such that the world will scorn you and will judge your life as foolishness and your end as without honor. Thus, by being made foolish to the world you may convert that same world with the foolishness of your preaching. And do not be troubled, for you are not hired for a price but sent without promise of a pay.”[79]

70 The members of the Institute with the vow of poverty retain the capacity of having patrimonial goods. However, before professing their temporal vows, the members must cede the administration of their own patrimonial goods and freely dispose of their usage and profit.

We aspire to live poverty to the maximum degree. And because of this, before perpetual profession they will make a will which is valid in civil law, renouncing all goods, in accordance with Can. 668 §1: “…[a]t least before perpetual profession, they are to make a will which is valid also in civil law.”

All that a brother gains with his own work or because of the Institute, as well as what he receives as pension, subsidy or insurance, he receives it for the Institute.

Before perpetual profession, a brother totally renounces his goods. This renouncement is effective starting the day of profession and is also valid, if possible, in civil law.

To modify these norms with just cause a license from the Provincial Superior is required.

The professed who has renounced all his goods loses the capacity to acquire and possess. Therefore, his acts against the vow of poverty are null. Whatever he acquires after the renouncement belongs to the Institute.[80]