1. The Spiritual Life: the First Element in the Life of Lay Members of Regnum Christi

From the Rule of Life of the Lay Faithful Associated to the Regnum Christi Federation

Orientation of the spiritual life

3. Lay members of Regnum Christi understand the spiritual life as a progressive development of the Trinitarian life within them, which leads to configuration with Christ. Therefore, they live it as a dynamic relationship of love with God, nourished by the sacraments, the Word of God, the liturgy, prayer, and the exercise of the moral and theological virtues. Their spiritual life permeates and harmonizes all aspects of their life

Secular spirituality

4. Conscious of the gift of divine filiation in Christ that they received in baptism, lay members of Regnum Christi live their condition as priest, prophet and king in the midst of temporal realities, aspiring to make the Kingdom of God present in this world so it becomes a worthy home for the children of God in which all things contribute to giving him glory.

Spiritual practices

5. The spiritual practices recommended to lay members of Regnum Christi are means to help them grow in their relationship of love with Christ. With the help of their spiritual director, they gradually learn mental prayer and how to live the other practices recommended in the Prayer Book. As a privileged means to spiritual progress, it is recommended they participate yearly in spiritual exercises or a triduum of renewal.

The Spirituality of Regnum Christi from the Statutes of the Regnum Christi Federation

12. Our spirituality is centered above all on Jesus Christ and born from experiencing his love. We seek to respond to our Friend and Lord with a personal, real, passionate and faithful love. Through the action of the Holy Spirit, we are sons and daughters in the Son who becomes the center, standard and model of our life. We learn to encounter him in the Gospel, the Eucharist, the cross and our neighbor.

13. Bearing witness to, proclaiming, and expanding the Kingdom of Christ constitutes the ideal that inspires and directs us. Our motto — “Christ our King, thy Kingdom come!” — expresses this longing. Therefore:

1. we seek to clothe ourselves with Christ in our hearts and in our works, so he reigns in our lives through a progressive configuration with him;

2. we let ourselves be permeated by Christ’s love for humanity, striving to have him reign in the hearts of all people and society.

The loves that motivate us

14.By revealing the love that burns in his Heart, Christ invites us to love him and all he loves: the Father who sent him to redeem us; the Blessed Virgin Mary, his Mother and ours; the Church — his Mystical Body — and the Pope; all people, his brothers and sisters, for whom he gave his life; and the spiritual family of Regnum Christi as a way to make his Kingdom present in our hearts and in society.

Video: Into the Deep — The Spiritual Life of the Laity in Regnum Christi

Member Testimony: Mike Williams on The Spiritual Life of a Regnum Christi Member

I am delighted with the opportunity to share with my Regnum Christi family a small testimony of how the Movement has enriched my life particularly in the area of prayer and growth in my spiritual life. Regnum Christi’s impact on me began several decades ago when I entered ECYD at the age of thirteen, so I really don’t have anything different to compare it to, but nevertheless I hope you will identify with some of my experiences.

I think my relationship with God really began to develop with the introduction we received in ECYD to the person of Jesus Christ. Our simple commitment in those years was to read one of the four Gospels for ten minutes each day, and after several years my friends and I had read through all four Gospels several times. In ECYD we learned to read those accounts with an eye toward getting to know Jesus as a person that we could identify with, whose fascinating example shed light on what it meant to be fully human, mature, and loving. My favorite has always been the Gospel of Luke, introduced in the Jerusalem Bible as “the faithful recorder of Christ’s loving kindness.” I still remember many passages by the Jerusalem translation that we read in those days, such as Jesus’ response to the leper’s request for healing in chapter 5: “’Of course I want to! Be cured!’ And the leprosy left him at once.”

Beyond a mere study of Jesus, we also were introduced to him as an accessible friend with whom we could relate naturally and intimately. I had the privilege throughout high school of daily receiving Jesus in Holy Communion as our school chaplain was Fr Lorenzo Gomez, LC. Several of us would also congregate at the Regnum Christi Center on Thursday evenings for a Eucharistic Hour with the small community of the Legionaries of Christ. I discovered then that Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist is real and substantial, and I treasure more than anything else the friendship I have developed with Him with the help of Regnum Christi.

Along with fostering identification and friendship with Christ, devotion to Mary has always been a staple of our spirituality. It seems to me that her aid and care are featured in some way in every Regnum Christi activity, and she has had an instrumental role in my life on an on-going basis, with some particular interventions along the way. My family had the practice of offering 54-day rosary novenas for particularly serious needs, with the first half of that period offered in petition and the second in gratitude. As it happened, my romantic relationship with my beloved wife Lisa began on the 27th day of a novena I was offering for help finding good wife. I also vividly remember a day in June of 1988, when sitting upstairs in my parents’ cottage, I realized that at the age of 24 I was losing all taste for anything spiritual and in danger of losing my faith. I was moved to make this one-word prayer to our lady: “Help!” At that moment I experienced the presence of God like never before and was given a relish for prayer that has never since disappeared.

In the last few years I have witnessed Regnum Christi’s greater desire to make room for the Holy Spirit, seeking His inspiration and influence in planning, decision-making, and apostolic activity in general. As I have learned from and sought to imitate that example, I have discovered the Holy Spirit’s presence in my own soul, as the principal source of any capacity I may have to more closely imitate Jesus, and even through some particular instances where He gently nudged me to reach out to someone new in friendship or offer to share a spiritual reflection where previously I would have kept silent.

Over thirty five-plus years no doubt there has been an ebb and flow in my prayer and my spiritual life, but through the constancy that Regnum Christi has fostered in my life of prayer, that period of time has given God a chance to work in my soul through both difficult moments and times of greater consolation. I can see that through each of those experiences He gradually has made more vivid His absolute love for me. God has become the source of my identity, security, and happiness, and my deepest desire today is to make each moment of everyday a response to that love, in some way helping each person I meet discover the same love that He has for them. I hope that many more people discover in Regnum Christi a help in fostering their life of prayer and expressing His love to many others in a world that so badly craves for it.

The First Element of Regnum Christi: The Spiritual Life

1. The Spiritual Life: the First Element in the Life of Lay Members of Regnum Christi

From the Rule of Life of the Lay Faithful Associated to the Regnum Christi Federation

The Spirituality of Regnum Christi from the Statutes of the Regnum Christi Federation

Video: Into the Deep — The Spiritual Life of the Laity in Regnum Christi

Member Testimony: Mike Williams on The Spiritual Life of a Regnum Christi Member

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