What aspects of the Gospel message did Poveda embody in his Christian life?
His friends and companions, those who knew him better, saw in him a man of faith that wanted to live the discipleship of Jesus as the locus of God’s Spirit. Don Pedro surrendered to God the Father with trusting obedience, aware of the absolute mystery of the Divine; he contemplated in his Son the love of the Father, a love crucified and resurrected; under the guidance of the Spirit he carried out his activities as the expression of his surrender to the Father and his imitation of Jesus.
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Aware he had been chosen to be a priest, he knew his life was meant to be for others. He lived his self-giving with the constant desire to remain united to God through prayer. He felt impelled by the urgency to proclaim the Good News. Thus, his imitation of Jesus reflects these essential notes:
· The Incarnation as norm
· God becomes man seeking to humanize mankind
· The life of Jesus of Nazareth as the manifestation of the Spirit, as the way of Christians
· To proclaim the Gospel in a society progressively secularized.
· A humble, meek and tolerant attitude that avoids being in the limelight.
The Incarnation lived in the manner of Poveda.
God has taken up a human nature like ours; he has chosen to be part of our reality by sharing our space and weaknesses and by learning with us to walk this earth.
To live the Christian experience in the little things of each day was the vision of Poveda for our times. For this reason he desired to live his life as an experience of the incarnation, echoing the divine dynamics. This is what he offers to those enrolled in his spiritual schooling: “The Incarnation of Christ well understood is the norm to become a saint”, (1916) writes in one of his most classic texts.
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But he set the example of what he said. He bought a cave and lived in the quarter of the Caves in Guadix among the farm laborers. In Covadonga reads and meditates without respite to better understand the reasons for the lack of faith of many educated Spaniards. He sees no incompatibilities between faith and science. On the other hand, he sees so many ignorant women, subjected and utilized, that he decides to work for their promotion. Likewise, he sees the youth without guidance, and he accompanies them in their search for answers. He also sees the families… He makes himself present to them all by being together, thinking and feeling together, weeping and laughing together. It’s that simple.
To understand well the Incarnation means that no human problem can be alien to a Christian.
God manifests himself in Jesus
Poveda strives to follow Jesus embodying his sentiments. He takes up the cause of Christ as his own, “Our raison d’être: to evangelize”. He places Christ in the heart and at the center of his life making his own the words of the apostle “until Christ be formed in you”. Seduced by the person of Christ, he does not hesitate to propose the ultimate degree of identification with Him: “to become living crucifixes”, to risk exposing oneself to the same lot as Jesus, to assume the mission of proclaiming what he proclaimed, of defending what he defended, of paying the price he paid, “To believe firmly and to remain silent is impossible”.
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And in his life, next to Jesus, is Mary, the Mother of the Lord, as the model of a radical openness to the gift and election of God, none better than her to lead us to Jesus. In Pedro Poveda the devotion to Mary is a reality that grows progressively. As a newly born baby he was presented before a painting of Our Lady with a prayer for protection, and that picture of the Immaculate later on presided his life. In Guadix, Mary, under the title of Our Lady of Grace, inspires his vocation “to this kind of apostolate” (the social work of educating the poor). In Covadonga, he prays long hours before la Santina (popular name for Our Lady of Covadonga). And in his heart always Our Lady of Sorrows as the example of “a long suffering, a charity, a strength, and a courage that only the Mother of Jesus could offer”.
The union of faith and science
He lived a very specific priestly projection that he expressed with words from the second letter of Peter, “make every effort to support your faith with virtue and your virtue with knowledge”.
His reading of the signs of the times and his faith and hope in the human person persuaded him of the transforming power of culture and of education, convinced that science and faith should establish a fruitful dialogue for the building of the Kingdom: “If you do not shine off by your knowledge, by your learning, we must then doubt your virtue and fear for your faith”.
Poveda, a man in love with learning, claimed the need to study as a fundamental exigency of his followers: “We have to prove with our deeds that science and a holy life can go hand in hand”. He sees the need to study specially in a culture that has lost its trust in it, in its possibilities to lead us to the truth for which we all hunger.
A tolerant, patient, meek and humble personal style
They are all excellent traits of character that reveal the awareness of human dignity, and that sooner or later yield the harvest of victory.
Poveda lived the virtue of humility as freedom, as opposed to other ways of living not in accordance with the way of Jesus; as knowledge, in order to go through life without prejudices; as solidarity with the more crucified Christian contexts; as dialogue, so as to avoid impositions; with an audacity that liberates from the excessive search for security.