Canonization of St Josemaria Escriva

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(proofread)

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

St. Paul says that all who are guided by the Spirit of God are children of God. The spirit we received was not one of slavery to bring us back into fear, but the spirit of adoption, which allows us to cry out "Abba, Father." The Spirit himself joins with our spirit to bear witness that we are children of God.

If we are children of God, then we are heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, provided that we share in his suffering so we can share in his glory. October 6th, the feast of the canonization of St. Josemaria, is a special day in the history of Opus Dei and the church. This is because a special founder was raised to the altars. Everyone who attended the canonization has a special memory of the occasion, something that touched them in a special way.

For some people, it was the moment when St. Josemaria was proclaimed a saint or some other special moment. Personally, the thing that impressed me most was when I arrived at St. Peter's Square the afternoon before the canonization and walked up the approach road, the Via Conciliazione, and saw a tapestry of St. Josemaria hanging from the central balcony of St. Peter's. For his beatification, it was on the left-hand side, but now it was in the center. It was very impressive to see St. Josemaria's picture being lifted up on the facade of St. Peter's, as though he was being lifted up on the face of the church. I thought about how just a few decades ago, he lived just a few kilometers away and now he was being lifted up. With him being lifted up was his message, the universal call to holiness, which is that every person on the planet is called to be holy in the ordinary situation in which they're placed. This message has great relevance for all of humanity, including every person in China.

Some saints in church history have had messages that were specific to certain groups of people, such as the physically or mentally handicapped, the poor, or those related to education or healthcare. But St. Josemaria's message was universal, touching every person on the planet. The significance of his canonization was therefore very special.

Today is a day of thanksgiving for St. Josemaria's life and gift, and everything he has meant to the church and our lives. It is a great gift from God, a grace that not everyone receives, and one that we will be held accountable for.

St. Josemaria was a faithful instrument that God used to do great things in the world. His life was great because he responded completely and faithfully to his calling. We can ask God for the same fidelity in all aspects of our lives, including attention to detail, holiness through work, holiness in our family, carrying the cross faithfully, and responding to our Christian vocation. We can also ask St. Josemaria for the grace to be more fruitful apostles in all situations.

Sometimes we don't realize the gift of God, but over time and with grace, we come to understand what he has placed in our hands. We can thank God for knowing St. Josemaria and his life, and for the spiritual treasures he has left us in his written works such as The Way, The Forge, and The Furrow. This is a call to responsibility and we can ask God for grace to be more like St. Josemaria.

The saints point us towards Christ, and we must try to be consequential in the things we see. We must keep asking God for grace and have a permanent youthfulness of soul because we are madly in love with our Christian vocation. St. Josemaria encouraged people to keep trying and asking God for miracles until the last moment of our lives, for our own personal conversion and the conversion of those around us.

On the occasion of his canonization, a story was shared about a woman from Madrid who wanted her husband to attend the ceremony. Although he was a Catholic, he was not practicing.

He hadn't been inside a church for years, so his wife asked St. Josemaria, who was not yet a saint, to grant her the favor of having her husband accompany her to St. Peter's for the ceremony, which meant so much to her. Eventually, her husband agreed to come to Rome and attend some of the ceremonies.

However, after about half an hour of the ceremony, he turned to his wife and said, "Look, I've done everything you asked. I've come to Rome, to St. Peter's, and to the ceremony. I've had enough. I'm going back to the hotel to have a beer." So, he left his wife there and went back halfway through the ceremony for a beer.

The well-to-do architect from Madrid had no time for religion and as he sat outside his hotel sipping his beer, he noticed a group of poor Peruvian farmers who had come on an enormous journey to attend the ceremony. He became curious as to why these poor people would make such a sacrifice and effort to come.

As he engaged one of them in conversation, he found out that they owed a lot to St. Josemaria and felt they had to come to witness his canonization. They did a novena to him, asking for a double harvest, and he gave them one. With the extra money they earned, they took out a loan to attend the ceremony.

The architect, who had been reluctantly brought to the ceremony, felt ashamed as he realized the sacrifice these people had made. He wrote a check for $30,000 and handed it to one of the women, who exclaimed it was a miracle of St. Josemaria. The architect realized that the lady's prayer for a major favor for her husband had been answered.

The canonization of St. Josemaria means an enormous joy and responsibility. The church is raising the founder of Opus Dei to the altars, which impressed upon us the spirit of Opus Dei as a way of sanctity and urges us to follow it faithfully.

We have a pathway to heaven that we must try to follow and spread to others. We must correspond to the goals of the new evangelization and the civilization of love. Pope St. John Paul placed these goals before us, and we must try to achieve them.

That's what Don Alvaro said: our St. Josemaria attained sanctity because he fulfilled the will of God. This means that he was a good servant of the Lord and has become the father of this supernatural family with which we are in contact.

The Lord entrusted the spirit of the Work to him, so that he could make it the center of his life and pass it on to his children and future generations, just as a father gives life to his descendants. St. Josemaria accepted this paternity with complete conviction that his purpose on earth was to fulfill it. We too can have the same conviction in our life, family, mission, and what God has called us to do, living out our spirit in a concrete way.

Blessed Alvaro also said that it is important to be convinced of the importance of exercising personal freedom, which comes with a corresponding responsibility to get involved in national and international organizations. These organizations can be platforms for promoting Christian values in areas such as family, education, defense of human life, and other issues that should be approached in accordance with the teachings of the church. If your work involves the media, imagine the impact it could have if it performed its informative and cultural roles while also bearing the stamp of your unity of life.

St. Josemaria has opened up apostolic horizons and great challenges for us to face in the environment in which we live, even if it means sometimes clashing with our surroundings, but we can still make a difference and change the culture. The Lord wants his children, those of us who have received the gift of faith, to proclaim the original optimistic view of creation and a love for the world, which is at the heart of the Christian message.

So there should always be enthusiasm in your professional work and efforts to build up the earthly city, which God has entrusted to each of us. As Blessed Alvaro says in The Forge, "You are an ordinary citizen." It is precisely because of this secularity that you must be brave, sometimes very brave, to make your faith felt. People should see your good works and the motivations behind them. St. Josemaria had to be very brave to help the spirit he founded in Madrid in 1928 reach the ends of the earth.

On the occasion of St. Josemaria's beatification, his brother was present. He was asked if there was anything in the ceremony that impressed him more than anything else, whether it was the moment his brother was proclaimed blessed or when the Pope said certain words.

And he said, "Well, all that was very nice, but if you really want to know what impressed me the most, I was introduced to an assistant numerary of Opus Dei from Fiji. And I thought, if the spirit that my brother founded in Madrid could reach the South Pacific and this woman had dedicated her entire life to God through Opus Dei, well, that spirit can only have come from God.

You can't explain it in human terms. And so, there are many things about the life and spirit of St. Josemaria that can't be explained in human terms. His enormous effectiveness all over the world, and the devotion to him being so fruitful, are examples. I once heard of a couple in Taiwan who raised their children well. They had a 10-year-old and an 8-year-old. The 10-year-old often hogged the computer and wouldn't let his younger sister use it, despite being told by his parents many times that he was a genius and should let her use it.

So, the parents decided to punish him by telling him he wouldn't be able to go on the class outing the following Wednesday, which was the most exciting event of the whole school year and everyone was going. When he heard this, he kicked up a big fuss. The parents were happy with their punishment, as they had read all the right books about parenting and attended all the right classes.

The following Monday (which was actually a Saturday), the teacher asked everyone in class to raise their hand, including those going on the outing, and everyone raised their hand except for the boy. The teacher asked why he wasn't going on the outing, and he said it was because his parents wouldn't let him. The teacher later called the parents to find out what was wrong, and found out the full story.

That night, the boy decided to have one last chance and plead with his parents to let him go on the class outing, but they were firm in their decision.

And so he went into his bedroom and locked the door. He stayed in his bedroom with the door locked for a while. But then his mother began to get a bit nervous. He was in his room, silent. Twenty minutes passed, and then twenty-five minutes. At thirty minutes, she found she couldn't take it anymore.

She had read books or heard stories about children committing suicide in their bedrooms. So she went to the door, knocked hard on it, and said, "Open the door, what are you doing?" Eventually, he opened the door, and she asked him, "What are you doing in here with the door locked?" He replied, "I was praying the prayer card to Saint Josemaria Escriva."

Now the mother was a bit aghast. He was praying the prayer card. "Oh my goodness. Now, this changes the situation." And she decided that she had to have a powwow with her husband and discuss this thing again. Ever since he was very small, they had tried to bring him up to be a soul of prayer, to have recourse to prayer in difficult moments, to have faith in God, to grow in his soul, and to be a spiritual person.

And now, in this crisis, here he was praying. As they talked about it, they realized, "Well, you know, if he doesn't get what he wants, maybe he loses faith in prayer, his faith in God, and a whole pile of other things. And that's much more important than a school outing." So after discussing and studying it for a while, the parents realized that they had to relent and allow him to go on the school outing.

And so he got the favor he was looking for. All over the world, in all sorts of places, St. Josemaria has shown his amazing effectiveness and activity, very active in various ways. In The Furrow, he says, "It's difficult to make one's mark through quiet work and the proper fulfillment of our duties as citizens. So that later one can demand one's rights and place them in the service of the church and of society."

"It's difficult," he says, "but it's very effective." And so the pathway of holiness that St. Josemaria has outlined for each one of us is a pathway of quiet work and the proper fulfillment of our duties as ordinary citizens. Everything is very ordinary. It's a help to fulfill our ordinary duties as ordinary Christians.

In The Forge, he says, "The moment you have anyone, whomever they may be, at your side, find a way without doing anything strange to pass on to him or her the joy you experience in being a child of God and living as such."

And so, we have to try and see how we can be more effective than St. Josemaria was. Your task as a Christian citizen, he says, is to help ensure Christ's love and freedom preside over all aspects of modern life, culture, the economy, work and rest, family life, and social relations.

That also means we have to be very much in touch with the world, reading the newspaper, and keeping abreast of current affairs, including sports. We're not just like other people on the street; we are the other people in the street. It means acting with this quality in social, professional, and political life, living out our Christian vocation to the fullest.

And at the same time, we must realize that we are not really doing anything special. We're just living the life that God has given us to live.

So, as we're told in St. Luke, when you have done all you've been told to do, say, "We are unprofitable servants. We have done no more than our duty."

On this special day, we can ask St. Josemaria to give us the grace to have a greater devotion to him and to ask him for more and more things every day. Also, we can extend the favor of prayer to the people we come in contact with, all sorts of people, by giving them a prayer card to St. Josemaria.

In that way, we put them in contact with one of the most powerful saints in heaven and open enormous horizons for them.

And Our Lady, who is the Queen of the Saints, will help all our efforts in the apostolate to be ever more fruitful.

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, St. Joseph, my Father, and Lord, my Guardian Angel, intercede for me.