Institute of the Incarnate Word
Our Lady of Peace Church is now conducted by the Priests of the Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE) with the support of their female branch: the sisters Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matara (SSVM)—a religious family who have taken the vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and slavery to Mary. Since 2002, they have upheld and furthered the traditions of their predecessors.
Institute of the Incarnate Word
The IVE is a Catholic Religious Institute of Diocesan Right founded in Argentina on March 25, 1984 by Reverend Father Carlos Miguel Buela, the very same day that Saint John Paul II consecrated the entire world to Our Lady of Fatima.
Its members are priests, seminarians and coadjutor brothers. Our vocation is to follow Christ more closely under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We want to dedicate ourselves totally to God as our supreme Love, seeking his Glory in a new and special way of life, for the edification of the Church and the salvation of souls.
For more information about the IVE, please visit the web page for the US Province, www.iveamerica.org.
Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matara
The Institute Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matara is an institute of Catholic missionary sisters dedicated to prolonging the Incarnation of the Word through the evangelization of culture. They were founded in 1988 by Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela, IVE and belong to the Religious Family of the Incarnate Word.
They wish to take seriously the demands of the Gospel in going “to make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:18) as modern missionaries, seeking to fulfill their religious vocation to be Spouses of Christ by living deeply the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity and obedience.
The sisters wear a distinctive blue and gray habit as a sign of their total consecration to God and as a living symbol of the mystery of the Incarnation—blue representing the divinity of Christ, and grey the humanity of Christ. Their bright blue scapulars are also a way to honor the Virgin Mary, to whom the sister are consecrated in a fourth vow of Marian slavery of love according to St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort.
The sisters also take new religious names which are all titles of Our Lady as a way to keep her before their eyes always as the model of religious life and the sure guide to bring them always closer to her Divine Son. To sum up in the words of their foundational text (#7 of Constitutions): “We want to be founded in Jesus Christ who has come in the flesh (1 Jn 4:2), and only in Christ, and always in Christ. We want Christ to be in everything and in all, and all of Christ, because the Rock is Christ (Cf. 1 Cor 10:4.), and on no other foundation can anyone lay (1 Cor 3:11).”
For more information about the female branch of the IVE (Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matara aka SSVM), please visit www.ssvmusa.org.