Anniversary of the Ordination of St. Josemaría Escrivá

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We're told in the Book of Isaiah, “But you shall be called priests of the Lord. You shall be named ministers of our God. You shall enjoy the wealth of nations, and in their riches, you shall glory” (Isa. 61:6).

Today is the anniversary of the priestly ordination of St. Josemaría Escrivá. It's a day that he wanted us to use to pray for priests all over the world, and in particular, priests of the Prelature.

It's also a day in which we could remember each of the priests, or some of them, who have influenced our life in some way: the priest who baptized you, the priest who gave you your first Holy Communion, the priests who have heard your Confessions down through the years, the priest who said Mass in your local parish when you were small and in primary school and in secondary school, possibly the priest who married you, and also you could pray for the priest who will bury you.

God has chosen various priests to influence our lives at various moments, to be there for our spiritual nourishment, to administer the sacraments to us, perhaps to give us some formation at some particular point through the giving of a retreat or a recollection. All these people have been instruments of God.

St. Josemaría liked to encourage people on a day like today to pray for priests. One way of praying for priests would be to remember them every time you go to Confession, and perhaps to repeat the penance the priest gives you for the sanctity of the priest who heard your Confession.

St. Josemaría liked to emphasize how we all have a priestly soul. It's something we acquire at Baptism. That indelible mark that we get in our Baptism gives us a participation in the priesthood of Christ.

The Second Vatican Council talks a lot about the common or universal priesthood of the faithful (Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, Point 10). There is the ministerial priesthood that is received at Holy Orders, but there's also the universal or common priesthood of the faithful, which is proper to all baptized persons.

In that sense, we are all priests called to lead a priestly life and to have a priestly soul, which means we're called to have the same sentiments as Christ on the Cross, and to practice the virtues that He practiced on the Cross: humility, the spirit of sacrifice, the spirit of service, obedience, apostolic zeal.

Our Lord showed all of these virtues in a very special way on the Cross. He lived his priesthood. This was the eternal priesthood of the Son of God made man, Jesus Christ, the eternal High Priest. There is a Votive Mass specifically in His honor.

Every baptized person is called to participate in that priesthood in and through the ordinary circumstances of their life.

Mother Teresa once was asked what were her views on women priests. She said, “I often think that the person who was most cut out to be a priest was Our Lady, because she was the Mother of God. She was immaculately conceived. She was preserved free from any stain of sin in her life. She was assumed into heaven.

“There was no more perfect creature that was ever created. And so, more than anybody else, she who clothed the body of Christ and caressed him and washed him and looked after him and nourished him, there was no person in the whole of human history who was more cut out to be a priest than Our Lady” (The Herald Calcutta, Interview, August 16, 1990).

The journalist who asked her the question printed an article in the newspaper the following day that said: Mother Teresa says that women make better priests than men. She said, “I had to get someone to call the newspaper and say that wasn't exactly what I said.”

Mother Teresa really was saying that Our Lady, in some ways, was also a priest in her priestly soul. She stood beside the Cross. She had the same sentiments as her Son. She lived out her vocation at the foot of the Cross as a Mother, with a great spirit of service, of sacrifice, of generosity, of obedience, of humility, allowing the spiritual sword, to pierce her heart (cf. Luke 2:35). It was a great priestly moment.

Our Lady teaches us how to live out our priesthood in all the ordinary circumstances of our life, in our work, in our family life, in our marriage, in the crosses that God may permit in our life, which He also gives us the grace to carry.

These are priestly moments, great moments to go forward in holiness and to raise up the people of God in the way that we do. These are moments to go forward in holiness and to realize at this moment, God wants me to live out my priestly soul.

St. Peter says, “Like living stones, let yourself be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 2:5).

Living stones. Stones don't really live; they're inert. They're pure matter. They don't breathe or move. But often stones, by being in a wall of a house, of a cathedral, can help the whole structure to stand, to exist.

That's what St. Peter speaks about when he says we are “like living stones.” We're called to be like stones in a structure—the structure of the family, our own particular domestic Church; but also a stone in the structure in the universal family, in the family as an institution in society, building up the family, building up the institution of marriage—using the particular blows that God may send us as an instrument to be a better stone in this structure, so that I can take more weight.

God can rely on me a little bit more—a living stone, whereby I learn to thank God for the crosses that He sends me.

A lady told me once in another country how she had lost her only daughter in a car accident. A week or two later, she told me, “I've been thanking God for the crosses that He sends me.”

And this was a widow, who had a lot of crosses in her life. She was widowed early, and now, at the age of 21, she lost her only daughter.

Here she was thanking God for the crosses “that He sends me, because I realize,” she said, “it could have been worse. Something else might have happened that could have been worse. I know my daughter is now in heaven.”

There at the high moment of her Calvary, God had given this good mother the grace to see this cross with a supernatural perspective, to live out her priestly soul, so as to be able to thank God and unite her heart and soul and mind to the sufferings of Christ on the Cross.

If we live like that, there will be no cross that will lower us. We'll rise to the moment.

St. Josemaría has a point in The Way where he says, “If we are generous in voluntary atonement, God will give us the grace to love the trials that he sends us” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 221).

The life of the saints was full of trials. The life of St. Josemaría was full of trials. But he learned how to love those trials. God was reaching out to him in a special way.

In that way, we let ourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

St. Josemaría, interestingly, used to say that he owed his vocation to his father. His father was a simple businessman whose business did not go very well. He had to close his business at one stage. The business failed. He ended up with a lot of debt.

But he went to great efforts to pay off all his creditors, even though many of his immediate family thought he was a bit crazy doing that. He was the epitome of justice and of honesty and of loyalty.

St. Josemaría admired these qualities that he saw very clearly in his father. He was willing to accept the hard road, “the narrow gate” (Matt. 7:13-14). He had to move to a different city to work under somebody else there for the rest of his life, which did not last too long. So he saw great virtue in his father's life, which nourished his own calling to the priesthood.

His father could be like a model for all fathers and grandfathers to live out the priestly virtues in all our circumstances, because God may be using those virtues to sow seeds of holiness in the lives of our children. That man was not present at the ordination of St. Josemaría. He died the year before.

When he went through the seminary, St. Josemaría had a lot of contradictions, misunderstandings, but his priestly spirit was evident everywhere.

You could say that like all the saints, God must have been waiting for that priesthood from the whole of eternity, because St. Paul says, “We have been chosen out before the foundation of the world” (Eph. 1:4).

If we have been chosen out before the foundation of the world, God has chosen our priestly vocation, wherever it is that He wants us to live it out—in the ministerial priesthood, or as a housewife, or as a working man, or in whatever role God may place us. It's there that He wants us to live out our priesthood.

God must have been waiting in a special way for the priesthood of St. Josemaría because He was going to use it to bring about a whole new structure in the Church, the structure of Personal Prelatures, which was going to open a pathway of holiness in the middle of the world for hundreds of thousands, and maybe millions, of people in the course of time.

In St. Josemaría's own life, he brought 1,000 priests to the altar. Blessed Álvaro, his successor, brought 700.

That's another reason to pray for priests today, and particularly for priests of the Prelature, for all the future priests that have to come, for the needs of the formative activities of the Prelature of Opus Dei.

St. Peter says, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you might proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9).

As we've been chosen to live out our priesthood in our family, in our environment where God wants us to do great apostolate, one of the characteristics of our priesthood is zeal for souls.

Even on the Cross, in His dying moments, Christ reached out to the Good Thief, and the thief said those beautiful words, “Remember me...” Words of hope.

He was to hear from Our Lord, “This day you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:42-43).

Our Lord didn't say, ‘Well, look, let me check your file. Let me see how much it was you stole. Let me see how worthy you are to come into my kingdom.’

But because the man had spoken words of hope, he had recognized Christ on the Cross, had found faith in Christ in those dying moments, he was rewarded this day with Paradise. And so, there is no moment that Christ does not rise to the moment to win souls.

A number of years ago, the Prelate of Opus Dei said, “All Christians have a priestly soul, infused in us by Baptism and Confirmation. God wants it to be active in everyone, just as the human soul informs with its power at every moment the body's various members.

“Let us always keep alive this priestly spirit, which has to be like the beating of our heart, a spiritual impulse that leads to union with Christ crucified and risen, with the desire to make ourselves entirely his instruments for the salvation of souls” (Javier Echevarría, Letter from the Prelate, February 2009).

It could be that Our Lord wants to make use of words we say to our friends or to our colleagues in certain moments, words of encouragement, words of kindness; perhaps in this time of Lent, as we come close to Holy Week, words of encouragement to take better care of their souls, or to get to Confession before Easter.

There are special graces going in these weeks all over the world to help people to come closer to Christ on the Cross, or to have a greater appreciation of what it means that Christ died on the Cross for our sins.

We're told in The Forge to “live and work for God, with a spirit of love and service, with a priestly soul, even though you may not be a priest” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 369).

All the women who may be clamoring about being women priests, if they really knew their doctrine, they'd realize that they already have a priestly soul. With their Baptism, they're already priests.

“Then all your actions will take on a genuine supernatural meaning which will keep your whole life united to the source of all graces” (Ibid.). Imagine, all our actions, all our words—a genuine supernatural meaning.

In another moment in The Way, St. Josemaría talks about “the word you whisper into the ear of your wavering friend” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 973).

That word, or those words, that God has chosen to place on our lips when we reach out to people can have an impact much greater than we ever dreamt of, because the grace of God is there.

The Prelate of Opus Dei continues, saying, “What impact does the Holy Sacrifice of the altar have on your day, your work, your fraternity, your apostolate?”

These are very good days for going a little deeper into our Holy Mass, of savoring the words of the liturgy, and savoring the beauty and the treasure of the liturgy of Lent, and of savoring a little more the meaning of the Sacrifice of the Mass, the summit and the source of our whole spiritual life (Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium, Point 11; Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 1324). We unite ourselves to the priesthood of Christ.

The Catechism says that the Mass makes Calvary present to us (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 1330).

The Prelate of Opus Dei said, “Does your love for Our Lord's Passion grow each day? Do you foster in your soul the need for penance?”

Penance shouldn't be a word we are afraid of. It should be an easy word that sits easy on our lips, because we know how to bring penance as the ordinary things of every day, atoning to God through the little blows or the little sacrifices that He may demand of us, which is what Lent is all about.

At the same time, Our Lord wants us to use this period, this specific Lent, or this specific feast day.

The number of Lents we have in our lives is limited, occasions for us to grow a little deeper each time, to grow in our devotion to the Blessed Sacrament as we prepare for Holy Thursday, and to try and see at this moment, ‘How can I make the events of Holy Week a little more present in my home?’

It's a time to grow in our zeal for souls, a time to be that little more united to the Holy Father and his intentions, with all the things and problems and challenges he has to pray for.

It's a time to grow in our spirit of atonement, to say sorry to God for our sins, as we hopefully grow in a greater awareness of the gravity of sin.

“We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because, by your holy Cross you have redeemed the world” (Prayer, The Way of the Cross).

Lord, help us to grow to understand the virtues that you show to us on the way to the Cross.

In the Way of the Cross, we see how Our Lord falls down three times. Maybe someday those Stations will get renamed—“He got up the first time” and “He got up the second time” and “He got up the third time”—giving us an example of how we have to get up again, begin again, with that spirit of sacrifice, that spirit of service that Christ wants us to have, so that in the course of our lifetime, we grow to have a greater generosity with our time, with our energy, with the things we have.

I'm often reminded of a Christmas party we organized a couple of years ago for some kids in a slum area here in Nairobi. There was one kid who helped us to organize that party together with his friends. He was in the last year of high school, and he was an orphan.

He was in a boarding school, but in holiday time he was looked after by an aunt of his who lived in a slum area. She sold vegetables at the side of the road.

When he told his aunt that he was involved in organizing a Christmas party for some kids in a slum area, this aunt produced three big bags of sweets, which were not cheap.

I can't remember much about the party itself, but I do remember that detail, a very generous detail of that woman who had so little and was doing so much in her life, as she went out of her way to produce those three big bags of sweets. It was so eloquent.

Generosity is a very beautiful virtue. It leaves its mark.

When we contemplate the generosity of Christ on the Cross, who shed all of His blood for the redemption of our sins, try and think of some great act of generosity that you could perform in these weeks, and help your children to perform, with whatever material things they have. Teach them the virtue and the value of this virtue of generosity.

Christ was also obedient on the Cross: “obedient unto death, even unto death on the Cross” (Phil. 2:8). It's a priestly virtue.

Obedience means submitting our will to the will of another. St. Josemaría was very obedient, and sometimes he found that virtue very difficult to practice.

Everybody has to be obedient. Everybody has somebody to whom they have to submit their will at certain moments.

It might be a parent, it might be a teacher, it might be a spouse, it might be a policeman, it might be the laws of the country, it might be a priest. It might be a nurse or a doctor. It could be anybody. But we all have to submit our will.

Growing in that virtue with the passage of time demands a certain humility, another priestly virtue. “Though he was by nature God, he did not consider being equal to God a thing to be clung to, but emptied himself, taking the nature of a slave and being made like unto men and appearing in the form of man. He humbled himself” (Phil. 2:6-8).

If we live our priestly virtues well, we'll also grow in a spirit of unity: unity to the Holy Father, unity to the Church, unity to the Good Shepherd that God may have given us in our life to guide us along our spiritual pathway.

We're told in Scripture, “Every kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. No city or house divided against itself will stand” (Matt. 12:25).

We have to be careful with this business of unity, because John Paul II in a document called Redemptionis sacramentum–The Sacrament of the Redeemer, said each of us has a principle of disunity within us.

He said, “Against the seeds of discord which daily experience shows to be so deeply ingrained in human nature as a result of sin, there stands the creative power of the unity of Christ's body.”

And so, we need to make acts of the virtue of unity. God wants us to be the instrument of unity in the family, in the parish, in the Church, in society, in the club, in our profession.

We're told in the Acts of the Apostles, “Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything he owned was held in common” (Acts 4:32).

St. Josemaría liked to stress the virtue of unity, an aspect of our priestly soul, so that we might have, he said, “a dominant passion” (J. Escrivá, Letter, August 8, 1956).

It has to become a dominant passion in all of us. Unity to the Holy Father, unity to the Church and her doctrine—we have a great responsibility for maintaining that unity, fostering unity among our friends, our social environment, in our neighborhood; unity to the mind and heart of Christ on the Cross.

What are the enemies of that unity? Pride and vanity, selfishness—these are the things that set us apart from others.

In the First Preface in the Preface of Sundays of Ordinary Time, we're told:

“Father all-powerful and ever-living God,
we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks
through Jesus Christ our Lord, always and everywhere.
Through his cross and resurrection,
he freed us from sin and death
and called us to the glory that has made us a chosen race,
a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, a people set apart.
Everywhere we proclaim your mighty works,
for you have called us out of darkness into your own wonderful light.”

God wanted to use St. Josemaría to be an instrument to found the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, which is an association of priests inseparably united to the Prelature of Opus Dei.

It is a means whereby diocesan priests can benefit from all of the formative activities in the spirit of Opus Dei.

Priests of Opus Dei organize activities for priests that are exactly the same as those that are organized for laypeople, because priests also have to seek holiness in their work, in their professional work. They have to sanctify it.

They also need the sacraments, they need ongoing formation, they need retreats and recollections, they need spiritual direction. Priests of Opus Dei provide all these means.

This Priestly Society of the Holy Cross is an association of priests that has spread all over the world, helping diocesan priests and seminarians to grow in their priestly souls and to fulfill their vocation. This is one of the great fruits of the priesthood of St. Josemaría.

He liked to say, “A priest—whomever he may be—is always another Christ” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 66).

From that, the Church has always requested that priests be treated with a lot of respect, with a supernatural spirit, so that they would receive all the help and encouragement, material and spiritual, that people can give them.

He said in The Way, “To love God and not venerate his priests is not possible” (J. Escriva, The Way, Point 74). And so, he liked to emphasize, especially on certain days of the year, the importance of praying for priests, so that they can be better.

He said in The Forge, “The Church needs priests, and always will. Ask the Blessed Trinity for them each day. through Holy Mary. And pray that they may be cheerful, hard-working, effective; that they may be well-trained; and that they may sacrifice themselves joyfully for their brothers, without feeling that they are victims” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 910).

If you can, try to see in your town, in your village, in your neighborhood, in your parish, how you could help your diocesan priest or seminarian to get to some ongoing means of formation—a retreat, a seminar.

There are many priests in many countries who can't afford to go to a seminar or a retreat. They need the help of their parishioners, and they may find it difficult to ask. Of course, if twenty parishioners get together and each gives something, then certainly that can make it possible for their parish priest to go to a retreat or a seminar. He can benefit from that formation.

Very often it's the parishioners themselves who come to realize the benefit of that formation that their parish priest has received. So it's a very good investment. So, see how you can help priests or seminarians that you know to grow in their formation, to go deeper in their priesthood.

It says in The Forge, “I've been thinking of all the priests throughout the world. Help me to pray for the fruitfulness of their apostolates. ‘My brother in the priesthood, please speak always about God and, when you really do belong to him, your conversations will never be monotonous’” (Ibid., Point 965). He encouraged priests to always speak about spiritual things.

At another point in The Forge, he says, “How great is the value of piety in the Holy Liturgy! I was not at all surprised when someone said to me a few days ago, talking about a model priest who had died recently: ‘What a saint he was!’ ‘Did you know him well?’ I asked. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I once saw him saying Mass’” (Ibid., Point 645).

Try and also see how you can help your priests, in places where you are, to get better liturgical instruments and items for the altar—vestments, chalices, candlesticks—so that the beauty and richness of the liturgy can be manifested in material things.

Pope John Paul II liked to say, “We go to spiritual mysteries through physical signs and symbols” (John Paul II, The Theology of the Body: Human Love in the Divine Plan; Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 1146).

By helping the priest of the parish, wherever we are, the church, the chapel, to have good and beautiful material things, we help souls to go to Christ. We go to the spiritual through the material.

We could ask Our Lady today, Mother of all priests, for the graces for all priests that are being prepared for the priesthood, for all priests throughout the world, the priests of the Prelature of Opus Dei.

I can also thank her for the priesthood of St. Josemaría, which has yielded such abundant fruits over time.

I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, Saint Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

EW