November 6

Blessed Alfonso Lopez was born at Secorún, in the dioceses of Jaca, on 16th November 1875. He held various civil offices, but he felt to be called to religious life, so he entered the convent of the Franciscan Conventuals at Granollers in 1906. He was sent to Italy, where he was received in the Seraphic Province of Umbria. He spent his novitiate at Osimo, pronouncing his temporary vows in 1908 and his perpetual profession in 1911, the same year of his priestly ordination. He was confessor in the Basilica of Loreto, then he returned to Granollers, where he carried out the task of teacher of the postulants and novices until 1935. He distinguished himself by his virtues, mainly by his love for God, for his neighbour and his devotion for the Virgin Mary. He was an excellent formator of the applicants for consecrated life that he mainly directed with the example of his virtuous life.

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

What is love? What meaning does this word, which everyone pronounces on their lips, contain? What mysterious mysteries does such a word contain? Everyone understands love, everyone understands what it means to love, and yet not everyone knows how to express it. But if the cause can be known by its effects, I would say that love is a certain propensity, a certain ineffable attraction that compels one to unite and identify with the beloved object. But despite being such a simple act, it is stronger than death itself, and when it is true, its bonds are indissoluble.

That's why Saint Paul said: "Who will separate us from the love of Christ?" No creature will be able to separate us from the love of God manifested in Christ Jesus, our Lord. If not, do you want to know how powerful love is? Take a crucifix, contemplate the blackened, torn, and pierced body, look at the disfigured, impurely spat upon and insulted face of the God-Man, and ask Him, if you don't understand, the cause of such desolation. Surely you will immediately understand that Jesus suffers so much only for love of men, only for love of us. Oh love, how powerful you are! Who will hesitate to call you omnipotent, seeing how and to what you force God Himself?

But in our opinion, that omnipotent love, that love that works such great wonders, could do no greater things than what it accomplished in the mystery of our Redemption. Oh, the greatness of love! Not content with bringing our God down from heaven and suffering such bitter torments, it compels him, in his infinite wisdom, to invent an ineffable means to unite and identify himself with us, a means that men would never have dreamed of, a means by which Jesus can always be with us in a real and true way.

Yes, he invented the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, a wonderful sacrament, and since he invented it for our love, since he continues to perpetuate it for our love and will continue to do so until the end of time, since he gives himself to us for our love, is not this sacrament a true pledge of his love? "We are given a pledge of future glory," the Church often repeats. And since the eternal glory of the blessed primarily consists in being loved by the Supreme Good, in saying that this sacrament is a pledge of our future glory, it is as if he were saying: it is a sure pledge of the love of our God. O amiable God! O precious pledge! O ineffable sacrament, which unites God with men!