Spirituality ~ Fourth Vow

THE MERCEDARIAN BLOOD VOW
When we make our profession, all of us religious take three vows: we commit ourselves to be poor, to preserve chastity and to live in obedience. But, some orders and institutes have sought to reaffirm their particular charism and their essential commitment through a fourth vow.

This is the case of the Mercedarians. The day we made our profession, we committed ourselves in the same degree to observe poverty, chastity and obedience and to risk our lives to save Christians who find themselves in extreme danger of losing their faith in the new types of captivity.

The commitment through a vow was already quite explicit in the l272 Constitutions which friar Peter de Amer compiled when the memory and example of the Patriarch, Peter Nolasco, were still very vivid. The friars promised obedience, chastity and poverty "and to observe the constitutions of the general chapter. " These constitutions explicated how "to visit and to free those Christians from the power of the enemies of the Order of Jesus Christ, all the brothers of this Order, as sons of true obedience, must always be gladly disposed to give up their lives, if it is necessary, as Jesus Christ gave up his for us."

With time, the profession formula evolved and became more forcefully the expression of the fourth vow until the Constitutions promulgated in l588 by Father Francisco Zumel put these words on the lips of novices: "I promise poverty, chastity and obedience and, if it should be necessary, I will remain as a hostage in the hands of the Saracens for the redemption of captive Christians."
According to the power of this vow, even when faced with serious dangers to their lives, all Mercedarian friars and nuns had to be involved in the redemption of Christian captives and all the tasks or activities which preceded or followed that redemption. That is to say that Mercedarians were sacramentally driven to have to go and beg in the towns and cities. They had to preach indulgences. They had to travel to the lands of the Moors, by sea or along exhausting roads. They had to go into the lands of their enemies with Divine Providence as their sole defense. They had to pay for the freedom of a captive whom they found in danger with their own persons when the money to buy him/her back was not enough. They had to take care of the redeemed who were often very sick and always in need of clothing, hygiene and food... In all of this, the friars had to put up with stingy people’s jokes, the real dangers from pirates and highway robbers, the greed of the slaves’ owners, the Moors’ arrogance and the insolence of many of the redeemed.

This vow was not called the Blood Vow for nothing; it cost the lives of hundreds of religious who died as they were coming or going at the hands of corsairs or bandits, in the ups and downs of redemption, because they were defending the oppressed redeemed, talking too much about religion or about looking after the redemption funds; as hostages for months and even years as pledges for the capital that the Order could not always raise, or because of the foreseen pastoral plan to be present with the captives in their bagnios and dungeons.

The last redemption of captives from the power of the infidels took place in l779. When it saw the end of the most specific area of its charism and the motive of the fourth vow, the Order of Mercy was shaken to its foundations. But in the light of the signs of the times and attentive to the Word of God, looking after so many enslaving situations within modern society, the Redeeming Order found its own space and activity whereby the friars take chances and risk their lives to fulfill their fourth vow, in jails, marginal neighborhoods, mission fields, homes for re-insertion, hospitals for patients with contagious diseases... Risks, blood and martyrdom are present there too.