Blessed Álvaro del Portillo

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.

“I am the good shepherd,” said Our Lord. “The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep” (John 10:11).

Today is the feast of Blessed Álvaro del Portillo, the first successor of our Father, who after our Father's death was elected and at the helm of the Work for almost twenty years.

We can thank Our Lord today for giving us such a Good Shepherd whose process of canonization is already well advanced.

Over the door of the room of Don Álvaro in Villa Tevere, it was written a phrase from Sacred Scripture, which was Vir fidelis multum laudabitur–The faithful man will be much praised (Prov. 28:20).

In all the things that our Father had to say about Don Álvaro, in some ways these words summed up everything.

From the very early days of the Work, our Father relied very much on Don Álvaro. One of the people who was with our Father in the crossing of the Pyrenees talked about the story we've all heard, of how our Father was at one moment hesitating on whether to go on, or to go back, because he was worried about the people of the Work who had been left behind in Madrid.

One of those people who was with our Father in the Pyrenees, who witnessed all of this, said it wasn't really about all the people who were left behind in Madrid that our Father was worried. It was about Álvaro.

Our Father saw very clearly that Álvaro was the person that God had chosen to be at his side and to be ready to continue the Work at any moment if ever our Father might disappear, because, as our Father often told us, the Work was a great supernatural undertaking in the hands of God at every moment.

We've heard on many occasions and seen with our own eyes, possibly, all the wonderful characteristics of Don Álvaro.

I remember somebody from the General Council giving us a get-together in Rome on one occasion when Don Álvaro was out of Rome. He talked about working with Don Álvaro day after day over many years, and they'd come to see, like everybody else around him, the incredible qualities of Don Álvaro del Portillo.

He was transmitting to us his own personal experience, something we'd sort of heard in various ways. We also knew. But coming from the lips of somebody who was so close to Don Álvaro on a daily basis, it sort of drove the point home.

In the letter that the successor of Don Álvaro wrote, Don Javier de Echeverría, in May 1994, he says, “Pray for the first successor of our Father. Talk to him. Deal with him a lot. Have the sureness that he listens to you, and that he's interested in everything that you have in your soul.”

These are interesting words coming also from Don Javier, who spent so many years, decades, beside Don Álvaro.

“His constant interest for each one of you has remained very much engraved in my mind. For each one of us, we were the motive of his life and the reason for his constant union with the Blessed Trinity. He talked about each one of us on a daily basis with each of the three divine Persons, so that we would be placed in that intimate discourse that he had.

“I can assure you that we will never repay him for his generosity as a good father. That generosity was expressed in daily self-giving, full of a desire to be close to each one of us, very close. May we be very grateful and have recourse daily to his intercession.”

All these words of Don Javier are like a program for the rest of our life, so that we take up that Prayer Card and we use it frequently like we do to our Father’s.

Ask him for all the great graces that we want in the course of our life, for the big things and for the little things, and ask him that we might have the heart of Don Álvaro, so that we might be able to take on great undertakings, to be the continuity as Don Álvaro was, with the great concern that we would pass on the spirit we have received in all of its integrity.

Occasionally we hear of stories of people who are not in the Work and of what they had to say or what they experienced with Don Álvaro.

One of the main theologians in the University of Navarre, Don Pedro Rodriguez, gave a discourse once at a ceremony that was held in the University of Navarre after the death of Don Álvaro—like a eulogy to him, or a special recognition of his great contribution as the Chancellor of that University.

Don Pedro mentioned how he had been talking to a cardinal once, and this cardinal did not know too much about the Work but had met Don Álvaro. He talked a little bit about St. Josemaría, but I think he had not known him personally.

But then he very quickly got on to the topic of Don Álvaro and said: “You know, what a great mind he had.”

At the highest levels of the Vatican’s Roman Curia, Don Álvaro had enormous prestige. All of that was built up over decades of working away, often silently, in matters related to the expansion of the Church all over the world.

He came to be a very close advisor of John Paul II. But even before that, another person who was not in the Work told the story of how one day three or four important people were talking with Paul VI, deciding on a certain issue. There was a certain disagreement among them about what particular course should be taken.

At a certain moment, Pope St. Paul VI asked them, “What does Del Portillo think?”

Somebody said, “Oh, well, he's in favor.”

Paul VI said, “In that case, let's go that direction.”

From a very early stage, Don Álvaro had enormous prestige. People recognized his great talents.

There was a Spanish Dominican bishop who had been many years in China, who then came to be the auxiliary of Manila. On one occasion he went on an ad limina visit to Rome, which is a visit all bishops make every five years to report about their diocese.

When he came back to Manila—he had a certain affection for the Work and knew some people—he talked about how he had not met Don Álvaro, but he saw him in the corridors of the Vatican.

He saw the way that the most important cardinals of the Curia were talking to Don Álvaro with great respect, great deference. He hadn't heard too much about Don Álvaro; he didn't know too much about him.

But when he saw these things—and this was a man who had been around in the Church for many decades—when he saw the way these super-important people were talking to Don Álvaro, he said, “I was very impressed.”

When he went back to Manila, he told the Regional Vicar: “You know, I saw the way that these people were dealing with your Prelate. Your Prelate has enormous prestige in the contemporary Church.”

Suddenly he got a glimpse of the figure of Don Álvaro. Later they showed him a movie about our Father. In that movie, he saw Don Álvaro sitting at the feet of St. Josemaría and drinking in every word.

The observation of this good bishop was: “My goodness, if the person I saw in Rome, who enjoys such prestige in the contemporary Church, such an important personality, and he's here sitting at the feet of Msgr. Escrivá, what must Msgr. Escrivá have been?”

When we hear these sorts of stories, it can open our eyes to the gifts that God has given to us.

In the funeral homily of Don Álvaro in the Church of St. Eugene (Sant’Eugenio) in Rome, Don Javier in his homily said that Don Álvaro had been a giant in the Church in the second part of the 20th century.

Those are good words for us to ponder. A giant in the Church, but a giant also that to a large extent passed unnoticed.

He hid away and disappeared because he wanted St. Josemaría to shine. He saw his place, his role. He saw himself as nothing.

On Christmas Eve one night in Villa Tevere, there was a custom whereby he would come down to have a get-together with people who work there.

He was always very cheerful. In this case, he was a little more serious. He told the people there, all of them forty years, fifty years younger than him, who had not been around too long, he told them:

“You know, Blessed Josemaría is working many favors for so many people all over the world. Sometimes his greatest favors are for people who know nothing about Opus Dei; and to me, he gives me nothing.”

And then he said, “I've come to realize it's because I don't know how to pray.”

The people who were listening to him sort of swallowed hard. This was a very humble declaration from a very holy man. If there was anyone in the Church at that time who knew how to pray, perhaps it was him.

But in front of them, so much younger than him, he revealed such humility. This is the greatness of the person that was called to be the successor of St. Josemaría.

He came to Manila in 1987. That afternoon when he arrived, I happened to be in a confessional box in downtown Manila.

Some people who came to Confession said to me, “But you know, isn't the Father arriving today?” And I said, “Yes.”

Then they said, “Why are you not at the airport?” In Manila, like in some countries, there's a great custom when somebody is arriving: the whole town goes to greet them.

But I said to this person, “You know, the Father wants something very quiet. He doesn't want to make noise. He wants to pass unnoticed. He doesn't want a big crowd.” You could see people sort of understood, but maybe not fully.

I happened to tell this story to the Regional Vicar. A few days later, I happened to be having dinner with the Father that night, with some other people.

The Regional Vicar said, “Tell the Father the story that you told me.” This was at the get-together.

So I began to tell the Father that I was in this Confessional and somebody had asked me why I was not at the airport.

Don Álvaro sat forward in the chair with a very serious look on his face, and said in Spanish, Y qué les dijiste?–“And what did you tell them?”

I sort of took a deep breath and said, this looks very important. I said, “Father, I told them that you want to pass unnoticed, and you don't want to make noise, and you don't want a big crowd, etc., etc.”

Immediately, Don Álvaro sort of breathed a sigh of relief and sat back in the chair. With great force and depth, he said, Eso siempre–“That, always.”

I breathed a sigh of relief because I'd obviously managed to say the right thing.

But what was impressive was the conviction of Don Álvaro, that in all the moments of his life, and even in this moment when he was coming to Asia for the first time, treading new ground—St. Josemaría never reached there physically—that his main goal was to pass unnoticed, to sow many seeds, to hide away and disappear.

Over the course of our life and vocation, we have the grace and the opportunity to get to know more and more about Don Álvaro.

We’ll probably never exhaust in our lifetime all the things there are to learn. We'll be like little children discovering new things that we never realized before.

The spiritual director of the Work, on a visit to Asia a number of years after Don Álvaro died, or maybe not too long after, made a phrase which struck in my memory.

He said, “We need to make a lot of noise, un clamor grande, in the world, about the holiness of Don Álvaro. It's like one of the missions that God has given to us.”

In the process of the beatification of Don Álvaro, the secretary of John Paul II, Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, testified, as also did Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. It will be very interesting some day to find out what they said, although probably that won't be possible.

In a letter in 2009, Don Javier wrote also in this month. He was talking about March 19th. It's the date on which our beloved Don Álvaro celebrated his Saint's Day.

“Let us follow the example of this servant of God, who harbors so deeply in his heart zeal for the salvation of souls. Let us pray that the process of his cause of canonization goes forward quickly.

“Without in any way anticipating the Church's judgment, we are sure that the recognition of the heroism of his virtues will be another spur for many people to decide to turn all the circumstances and events of their life into opportunities to love and serve the kingdom of Jesus Christ.”

I heard somebody once who had to go from the Commission in Spain to Rome for a few days to work there, describing how they couldn't sleep at night, so they got up early. They decided they would get their norms done early; get ahead for the day.

They didn't know where the lights on the corridor were. They had to grope their way in the general direction of the oratory.

Then, when they got to the oratory, there was a light coming out from underneath the door of the oratory. They said their immediate impression was, “How strange, somebody here in Villa Tevere has left the light of the oratory on all night.”

But they went into the oratory, and they found Don Álvaro there, praying on his knees, alone.

The impact of that was enormous. It was almost the middle of the night, and yet Don Álvaro was there praying.

We have a lot to learn. In some of his biographies, they talk about—there were certain key virtues that shone in the life of Don Álvaro.

One was his cheerfulness. He was always cheerful, always cheerful.

Another was his great peace. One of his biographers, Salvador Bernal, says that you could see that it wasn't a genetic peace. Some people could explode a bomb beside them, and they wouldn't even blink.

But that was not the sort of person Don Álvaro was. You could see that it was an acquired peace. He radiated peace.

Among many bishops and cardinals who went to see him, one of them testified, “When I came away from seeing him, I always seemed to come away with more peace and serenity than when I arrived. He transmitted the peace of Christ that was in his heart.”

On the night he died, we're told in the letter that Don Javier wrote to us, “When he called us to his room, when he got this bit of a heart attack,” he said, “we went to his room, and we found him with the peace that characterized him. Peaceful in life and in death. Totally abandoned in the hands of his Father God, not worrying about anything.”

We've all seen and been witnesses to all the little details of filiation to our Father.

In one of his writings, he talks about how, when he went to Confession every week, ever since he became the Prelate, and the President General before that, one of the things he would accuse himself of in his Confession was not having been as attentive to our Father as he could have been on some occasions, or not having lived that detail of filiation when he was the one placed beside our Father. A great supernatural refinement there.

And also, another of his great characteristics was his humility—always wanting to follow in the footsteps of St. Josemaría in being humble, in passing unnoticed, in hiding away and disappearing.

That phrase of Don Javier in the homily of his Funeral Mass, that he had been “a giant in the second part of the 20th century in the Church,” that's a very interesting phrase to delve into. What does that mean?

What was the role of Don Álvaro in the Second Vatican Council? He wrote one of the main documents, Presbyterorum ordinis, on the priesthood. He was the Secretary of one of the Commissions.

We hardly know anything, and yet we know, from others who were there, of his magnificent contribution.

In later synods and meetings of bishops and cardinals that took place in the subsequent twenty years, often Don Álvaro had to attend to those things.

There were some sons of his who were involved in the simultaneous translation that there was from Italian to different languages. He would go and greet them in the little box or office where they were, but then he would leave them and say: “I have to go and meet different people.”

They could see Don Álvaro moving around with these different bishops and cardinals, introducing himself, getting to know people, circulating, and all the time bringing with him the spirit of Opus Dei.

It was a small little detail that these people narrated, but of course immensely relevant for us.

That's the way we have to function at meetings, at professional gatherings, at social gatherings. Get to know people, shake people's hands, develop friendships, have many acquaintances, make contacts, use every opportunity.

Really, they saw Don Álvaro living all of those things in the flesh in those particular moments.

On one occasion, the Queen of Spain came to visit Rome. Some of the important Spanish clerics were invited to have afternoon tea with her, maybe eight or ten of them, the most important Spanish people working in the Holy See.

Probably the most important at that time was Don Álvaro; he'd been there the longest. He had a great prestige and influence and importance. But at one stage in the afternoon tea, suddenly the Queen blurts out: “And where is Don Álvaro del Portillo?”

There was an embarrassed silence because he was sitting right in front of her, but she didn't know who he was. It was a bit amusing. People tried to look the other way because Her Majesty had sort of put her foot in it a little bit.

Immediately, Don Álvaro spoke up and said, “Your Majesty, you do me a great favor, because ever since our Founder died, one of the goals of my life has been to hide away and disappear, and you've helped me to do that this afternoon.”

Everybody breathed a sigh of relief. The tension in the air was calmed. There was Don Álvaro passing over this embarrassing moment and helping the Queen to recover a little bit from this faux pas.

“Before the conclave that elected John Paul II—I had arrived in Rome those days—he made a pilgrimage to a shrine of Our Lady every single day, praying for the Church, praying for the future Pope, and in doing so, gave us great example also of our Marian pilgrimages, particularly in the month of May, of having recourse to Our Lady, of asking her for miracles.”

We know that a few days before the conclave, Don Álvaro sent Don Joaquin to see Cardinal Wojtyla, who had been to have dinner in Villa Tevere a few days before or a few weeks before, and to give him an image of Our Lady of Good Counsel, so that he could possibly use it. He did so during the conclave. Small little detail.

Today on his feast day, we have many reasons to give thanks for such a good Father, for such a loyal son, for somebody who has given us an example of what filiation means, and also has given each one of us a great example, for all who come after, of what paternity means, of what loyalty means.

We know that our Father liked to use the word Saxum for him–a rock–because he had made difficult tasks in the history of the Work, some of them impossible.

It's good for us to get to know them and to know the magnitude of what our Father asked him to do. Our Father couldn't do everything, but he relied on Don Álvaro again and again.

It's a good thing for us to think about our sense of responsibility as numeraries, supernumeraries, associates. Do I take on my shoulders the burdens of the Work, the economic burdens, the developmental burdens, the apostolic burdens, in a serious way, to bring forward Opus Dei on this planet like Don Álvaro did?

In the latter years of his life, as the Prelate of Opus Dei, Don Álvaro had to travel. He traveled all over the world, but at that age, it's not so easy to travel. Yet he did so gladly. He gave himself to it completely.

He had a great love for the Holy Church and a great spirit of service in all the things that he did. While he did big things and great things and important things, he also took care of all sorts of little details.

In the early 1980s, it might have been 1980 itself, in Dublin, he had gone there for a few days to visit his children there, and in the early August days, he would write a letter to the people of the Work who were going to be ordained.

That year, that occasion, found him in Dublin, and he had to write this letter, which in those days was handwritten; there were no computers in the early 1980s. So, he'd write them with his own hand.

Now halfway through the letter, halfway down the first page, he made a spelling mistake. He started the writing again, went back with a new page. He began again.

He could have just scratched it out a little bit and continued; he could have saved time that way. The second time that he started the letter, he might have made another mistake.

But this time he went through it without making any mistakes. We all know how easy it is to make a mistake when you're writing an important letter.

That page that he half-wrote—he left there in the Commission in Dublin, sort of a memento of his visit. Of course, it was much more than a memento of his visit.

It was a testimony of how he did things well, of how he wanted to take care of details, of how he wanted that aspect of his work to be well done, properly finished, a model that you could hold up for all eternity.

Don Álvaro also had the fortitude to correct. Father Joseph de Torre, a great philosopher in the Philippines who passed away a few years ago, talked about how at one stage he was functioning as the secretary of Don Álvaro.

One day he did something wrong. Don Álvaro said to him, Otro que no sabe escuchar–“Another one who does not know how to listen.”

You could see the fortitude of Don Álvaro to teach the young people that were coming after him to do things right. He didn’t let an occasion pass, because these people would be going to the ends of the earth to bring our spirit there.

He wasn't just a nice, sweet, characteristic, paternal person that we knew at the end of his life. In earlier days, there was great fortitude to do things right.

Our fidelity is always proselytistic. Our deep, personal, familiar, and intimate friendship with Our Lord infects us with His desire to save souls.

Don Álvaro fired us with that enthusiasm. Proselytistic fidelity.

“I have come,” Our Lord said, “to cast fire upon the earth, and what would I but that it was already enkindled?” (Luke 12:49).

He had this great apostolic zeal that he wanted to transmit to each one of us. He dealt with everyone with a great affection.

A person of the Work in Kenya who has now passed on, and became a priest, has left a written anecdote: “On the 11th of April 1990, I was attending a get-together in Cavabianca with seven other people from Kenya, in a place called the Piazza dell’Orologio.

“Even though the sun was out that morning, the place was a bit chilly, and we were under the shade of a building. There must have been a thousand people, maybe more, in that particular little square.

“When the Father got onto the stage, one of the first things he said was, ‘Who put my Kenyan sons under the shade?’ Because he knew they'd find it a bit cold in a different temperature.

“Then the get-together continued normally until somebody quite near us asked a question. Then he looked in our direction, and as he answered the question, I could see him removing the cardigan he was wearing.

“After answering the question, he held the cardigan in his hand and he threw it at me, saying something like, ‘Luigino, put this on so that you don't feel cold.’

“There followed a deafening, thunderous clap from all present. I couldn't believe what I was seeing and hearing. The fact that I wasn't actually feeling cold didn't matter. What was important was that the Father realized where we were and was concerned about me.

“Even more moving was that he remembered my name after one year of not seeing each other. I promptly put on the cardigan on top of my jacket until the end of the get-together.

“Just before the end, he turned towards us and said, ‘Luigino, you can now return my cardigan.’ I made use of the opportunity to go up on the stage and greet him.

“In the next get-together on Saturday the 14th of April, in the same place, he looked for us at the beginning of the get-together and commented that it was now better that we were no longer in the shade.”

These are some of the beautiful details that Don Álvaro has left us. We could ask him that we might have that same fidelity that he had, a fidelity that is contagious.

Our Father says, “Mary, Virgo fidelis! Virgin most faithful, intercede for us, so that we may imitate your faithfulness, so that we may say our daily fiat, our daily yes to friendship with Jesus Christ and to friendship with others.

“There are many people around you, and you have no right to be an obstacle to their spiritual good, to their eternal happiness. You are under an obligation to be a saint. You must not let God down for having chosen you. Neither must you let those around you down; they expect so much from your Christian life” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 20).

Virgin most faithful, may you help us to imitate the fidelity of Don Álvaro on this particular feast day.

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.

OLV