215 The homily of Cardinal Bertone, as well as our Founder’s writings and his entire life, show him to be an apostle of merciful love expressed through his concern for the deceased and in his proclaiming the Gospel in the midst of the poor. This way we’ve been encouraged to become untiring messengers of God’s merciful love, following the example of Fr. Papczyński and keeping our eyes on Mary Immaculate. We shall not forget Mary in her mystery of the Immaculate Conception, for which our Founder was prepared to give this life; this mystery, understood as a gratuitous gift of God’s merciful love, has its source in the paschal mystery of Christ. The beatifi cation proved that our Founder was much more Christological than Mariological. It is the same for the charism that he left to us. We, in the Portuguese Vicariate, wanted to express the charism of our Founder in a monument which was built during the Year of Thanksgiving for the gift of the beatifi cation. I would like to give each of you a photo of this monument, which symbolically shows different components of our charism. The source of inspiration is in the merciful and freeing love born out of the cross. The Immaculately Conceived [Mary] was the fi rst to be endowed with this freeing love and thus she became the icon of a human who has attained salvation. Just like Mary Immaculate, Blessed Stanislaus also experienced this merciful and freeing love, which fi nds its roots in the paschal mystery. He is among those “wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands” (Rev 7:9) of whom the Book of Revelations says: “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (7:13-14). The Cross of Our Lord, Jesus Christ has become his glory. To him the world has been crucifi ed, and he to the world (cf. Ga 6:14). Thus, he became able to proclaim the freeing and merciful love of Jesus Christ. Guided and helped by Mary Immaculate, Blessed Stanislaus also learned to show mercy to others, proclaiming the Gospel—Deus caritas est—to the poorest of the poor (who are represented with faces which emanate joy), and through his prayer (represented by the rosary beads) he interceded for the souls in purgatory, symbolically presented as a hind seeking water, the source of which is prayer. This is the reference to Psalm 42: “As the hind longs for the running waters, so my soul longs for you, O God.” The broken chains express the force of love that sets us free. The happy faces of Mary Immaculate, Blessed Stanislaus, and other two people manifest the great joy of those who accept the gospel of merciful love and allow themselves to be transformed by it. In the Bible, the cloud is the symbol of God who is hidden and who reveals Himself. Blessed Stanislaus’s entire life was marked by faith in the hidden presence of God. Here, the cloud also represents longing. It is our Blessed Father’s longing to found our Congregation. To this goal, he is guided
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