Introduction
1 We want to be anchored in the sacrosanct mystery of the Incarnation, “the first and fundamental mystery of Jesus Christ,”[1] actually present. From this mystery we want to embark boldly to restore all things in Christ (Eph 1:10). We want to be another Incarnation of the Word so as to incarnate Him in all humanity.

2 Our religion “is a doctrine, but is above all an event: the event of the Incarnation, Jesus, the God-Man who recapitulated in himself the universe.[2]“[3] “It is impossible to find a wholly similar example of the Godhead of Persons and of the mystery of the Incarnation.”[4]

3 We always want to draw out new light and strength from the redeeming Incarnation, since Jesus Christ is the inexhaustible source of Being, Truth, Kindness, Beauty, Life, and Love.

Article 1: Primacy of Jesus Christ
4 We profess the preeminence of Christ, even as man, over all of creation. He has primacy over the souls and the bodies of the members of his mystical Body, and also over all men of all times. He is the Head of all – even of those not predestined, who will only cease to be potential members of the Body of Christ when they leave this world. The Son is “the art of the Father.”[5]

5 We profess that Christ is Head of the Church[6] and of all men,[7] and that he has a triple primacy over all: of order, of perfection and of power.

- He has priority of order because due to his proximity with God his grace is the highest and the first – though not in time. All who receive grace receive it in reference to his: for those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren (Rom 8:29).

- He has priority of perfection because he possesses the fullness of grace: we have beheld his glory... full of grace and truth (Jn 1:14).

- He has priority of power because He has all the power to communicate grace and glory to all the members of his Body: And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace (Jn 1:16).

6 Therefore, heresies of all times have had and will have a common denominator: to diminish the dignity of Jesus Christ. Saint Leo the Great pointed out: “We are assured that hardly any one has gone astray unless he has failed to believe the reality of two natures in Christ, and at the same time to acknowledge one Person.”[8] Saint Thomas teaches that “when one considers the errors of the heretics it is apparent that their main objective is to diminish the dignity of Christ.”[9] “No other mystery exists outside of Christ.”[10] That is why Saint Philip Neri teaches, “the one who wants something other than Christ, does not know what he wants. He who wishes for anything but Christ, does not know what he wishes; he who asks for anything but Christ, does not know what he is asking; he who works, and not for Christ, does not know what he is doing.”[11]

Article 2: Love for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit
7 The contemplation of the mystery of the Incarnation nurtures love for the Holy Trinity – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – who was the actual accomplisher of the Incarnation. This contemplation also ignites in us an ardent love for the Word who “for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven.”[12] It also nourishes love for the Word in his preexistence, his entering the world, his earthly life – works and teachings, his leaving the world, his mystical life, and his second coming.

Article 3: Preexistence of the Word
a. Eternal Person
8 The person of the Word exists from all eternity: in the beginning was the Word... and the Word was God (Jn 1:1). When acknowledging the existence of the Word as prior to the Blessed Virgin and prior to the creation of the world we base our spirituality on the absoluteness of God before whom everything is like nothing.[13] The exhortation of Saint Cyprian “to prefer nothing whatever to Christ”[14] always needs to be of capital importance for us. We have to be convinced that “God loves Christ… more than He loves the entire created universe,”[15] and, as Saint Teresa says “God alone suffices.”[16] In everything and for everything we want to give primacy to the spiritual, and to surrender in holy abandonment to the will of God, since, as a response to the revelation of God, “man freely commits his entire self to God.”[17]

b. Distinct Person
9 And the Word was with God (Jn 1:1). The Word is “the Word that proceeds from silence.”[18] The personal distinction of the Word from the Father and the Holy Spirit moves us to give to our whole life a Trinitarian imprint – the supreme mystery of God, the fullness of man and “the substance of the New Testament”, in Whom men, by means of the Son-made-flesh, have access in the Holy Spirit to the Father and become partakers of the divine nature (2 Pt 1:4). It must be a seal of honor to profess “three Persons equal in majesty, undivided in splendor, yet one Lord, one God.”[19]

c. Divine Person
10 And the Word was God (Jn 1:1). We recognize in Him the fullness of divinity with all the attributes of the divine being and of the divine operations, and that all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made (Jn 1:3). In a particular way, we want to see ourselves and all men in Him, and to see ourselves created “in the image and likeness of God.”[20] “For God and before God, the human being is always unique and unrepeatable; somebody thought of and chosen from eternity; someone called and identified by his own name.”[21]

[1] John Paul II, Angelus Message, September 6, 1981.

[2] Cf. Eph 1:10.

[3] John Paul II, Homily in the Cathedral of Oaxaca, January 29, 1979.

[4] ST III, 2, 6, ad 1.

[5] Saint Augustine, Supplementum, 90, 1, 4.

[6] Cf. Eph 1:22.

[7] Cf. 1 Tm 4:10; 1 Jn 2:2.

[8] Saint Leo the Great, Homily on the Nativity, 8, 4.

[9] Against the Errors of the Greeks, 1078.

[10] Saint Augustine, Epistles, 187, 34.

[11] Lo Spirito di San Filippo Neri nelle sua Massime e Ricordi, Roma 1988, 7.

[12] Council of Nicea I, The Nicene Creed.

[13] Cf. Is 40:17.

[14] On the Lord’s Prayer.

[15] ST I, 20, 4, ad 1.

[16] Poem “Nada te turbe.”

[17] DV 5.

[18] Saint Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to the Magnesians, 8, 2.

[19] RM, Preface of the Holy Trinity.

[20] Cf. Gn 1:26.

[21] John Paul II, Christmas Message, December 25, 1978.

Note: This English translation of the Constitutions of Institute of the Incarnate Word and the Directory of Spirituality is a draft version and is subject to further revision and improvement.