Dear companion:
I am Ignacio Aláez Vaquero, a native of Madrid born on February 1, 1914. My father, Evelio, was a barber; my mother’s name was Marina. We lived in the Madrid of narrow streets, open shops, and neighbors who knew a great deal about other people’s lives. I attended the Piarist school of San Fernando and then entered the Conciliar Seminary in 1930. I loved art. I drew, modeled, embossed, wrote verses, and even composed a play about Saint Francis and the wolf of Gubbio. I worked for a time in the studio of the sculptor Rafael Irurozqui, author of the first project for the monument of the Cerro de los Ángeles to the Sacred Heart. If anyone ever tells you that a priestly vocation must extinguish artistic talent, do not believe it: God does not call us to mutilate youth, but to save and elevate all that is true within it.
My father belonged to the Nocturnal Adoration: it will not surprise you that I grew up in love with the Eucharist. Visiting hospitals, caring for the sick, and drawing near to cloistered convents were part of my life. Adoration without charity is mere posturing; charity without adoration forgets from Whom we learn to serve. I put into verse my “mad” dream: to set the world on fire with eucharistic love, to be a missionary, and, if God so willed, to give my life for Christ.
I would like to set the whole world ablaze…
I would like to become a missionary
and preach your “madnesses” to the unbeliever…
And then die a martyr’s death…
What does it matter to me, Jesus in the Sacrament,
if in the end I have succeeded in making you loved!
It was not a program of adventures; it was the excess of one who has understood that a single Host contains more love than the world could hold.
In the seminary I studied humanities and philosophy; time ran out before I could finish my preparation. We were flesh-and-blood young men, with studies, jokes, and plans in a city that was turning hostile: none of us could know what the next day would bring.
In July 1936 the seminary was stormed and we had to return to our homes or seek refuge. Our pursuers seized documents that contained our addresses: an academic file, symbol of the path to the altar, could become the trail leading to the victim. My father was arrested with me, and without regular trial, on the 9th or 10th of November our bodies appeared on the road to the Quemadero in Fuencarral. We were buried in a common grave.
Must you imitate my verses? Oh, each person has his own music! Perhaps writing or sculpting does not spring from you, but never lose the capacity to be enthusiastic. How sad a seminarian to whom everything is indifferent! The Gospel does not ask for precocious functionaries, but for men capable of wonder. Cultivate your sensibility; let it not be mere sentimentality. Learn to distinguish beauty from the merely showy, fleeting emotion from steadfast love. Good music, serious reading, a well-kept church, a sick person washed and accompanied can enlarge your heart far more than a hundred hours of scattered distraction.
If one day the Mass begins to feel routine to you, be on your guard!: it is not normal to be bored by the Sacrifice of the Lord. If you lose your taste for it, return, humbly, to ask for it; if you are left without words before the Tabernacle, stay there anyway. Friendship with Jesus is remaining in His Love… and in His Silence.
And do not look down on your father and mother if, because you have become too clerical, they seem to you insufficiently refined. I received more theology from my father’s nights of adoration than from many academic sessions.
When your hour comes to speak of Christ, may your word carry fire because you truly believe. Perhaps you will never be a missionary in a distant land; the confessional, the university, a nursing home, a classroom where someone dares to ask a serious question are also mission territory.
If martyrdom prevented me from singing my first Mass, it could not prevent me from offering my life. Do not waste your young years imagining what you will be: begin by already being Christ’s.
With the affection of a native of Madrid who still dreams of souls for the Lord, your brother embraces you
Ignacio Aláez Vaquero
Seminarian and martyr
Note: The articles published as Tribuna express the opinion of their authors and do not necessarily represent the editorial line of Infovaticana, which offers this space as a forum for reflection and dialogue.