Loyalty

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.

“It came to pass, as they were on their journey, that a man said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘The foxes have dens, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’ He said to another, ‘Follow me.’ But he said, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Let the dead bury their dead, but do you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’

“And another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but let me first bid farewell to those at home.’ But Jesus said, ‘No one, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God’” (Luke 9:57-62).

Three people come to Our Lord with all sorts of good intentions and nice ideas, saying beautiful things: "I will follow you wherever you go." This statement seems quite universal, generous; it seems to embrace all sorts of situations.

But Our Lord is not easily swayed by those nice words. He tells them very clearly the spirit of detachment that Our Lord is living Himself and that He wants from other people: “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”

Our Lord lifts people up from the realm of nice ideas and nice feelings onto a level of sacrifice, seriousness, commitment, self-giving.

“He said to another, ‘Follow me.’ The man replied, ‘Lord, let me first go and bury my father.’”

Again, Our Lord gave a rather strong answer: “‘Let the dead bury their dead. But do you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.’”

Our Lord is demanding a total commitment, a lot of generosity, no halfway measures. He seems to be very demanding on the one hand, but He's placing this great ideal before them: to proclaim the kingdom of God.

“And another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but let me first bid farewell to those at home.’”

They’re all full of good desires, but they all have conditions. What Our Lord wants is an unconditional surrender, total self-giving.

This meditation is about loyalty.

This fellow wants to turn back, take his leave of the people at home. It might be the last opportunity. He wants to spend a little more time with his family.

He seems to have put his hand to the plough and quite sincerely wants to follow Our Lord. But Our Lord's call is urgent. In each of the responses that Our Lord gives, He underlines that urgency.

“The harvest is great, but the laborers are few” (Matt. 9:37). Some harvests are lost because there's no one to gather them in.

To look back or to start putting conditions on our proposed commitment all comen to the same thing. Our Lord tells this prospective disciple that once the hand is laid on the plough, “no one who looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62).

He compares this task of the harvest to driving the Palestinian plough, an implement that it seems is not easy to direct. The fields beside the Sea of Galilee are of hard soil. So after having once gripped the plough, there's no looking back.

One can't turn back when God calls. To be loyal, and happy as well, we must “have our eyes fixed on Christ” (Heb. 12:2).

We can tell Our Lord in our prayer this morning: Lord, help me to have my eyes fixed on you. That's the goal, that's what it's all about.

Once Eliud Kipchoge starts to run in the marathon where he's going to break the two-hour record, he doesn't turn his head back to the start. No serious marathon runner looks back or goes back.

The only important thing is the finishing line, to get to the tape and win the race, break the record. Part of running in the race once the event has started is not to think of other things; to be very focused.

Lord, help me to be very focused. If the ploughman looks back, he can't open up a straight furrow.

Our Lord has many great things dependent on our loyalty. We can't imagine the wonderful things over time that God wants to work in us and through us.

I may have mentioned before how there was a cooperator in Singapore who had three children in a school called Stonyhurst in England, and they went there to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the school. This school could be one of the oldest in Europe.

It's interesting to think of the 500th anniversary when we are focused sometimes on our 25th or 50th anniversaries. A lot of other people have done great things before us.

This person brought back a small booklet about the school, condensing those 500 years.

On the last page of the booklet was a list of Stonyhurst's most illustrious students. Fifteen of them were saints, and the first twelve of those saints were martyrs.

Between the lines of this small booklet, you could see many lives that have been spent in building up that institution which had provided many Cardinal Archbishops from Westminster, forming the backbone of the whole of the Catholic Church in England for 500 years—those 500 very difficult years of history for the Catholic Church.

Yet those people, whose lives were hidden in silence, hidden in the bricks, through their loyalty, brought about wonderful things—an enormous contribution day by day, little by little.

We don't know how God wants to use our cooperation, our generosity, our total focus on what He's given us to do.

At times, the temptation to look back could come from our own limitations or from an environment that may be patently hostile to the obligations we've taken on.

The temptation might even be provided by people whose example should have been better, but maybe, are anything but.

Possibly, people around us might tell us that being loyal is not one of the basic values. Sometimes we can get that message in all sorts of ways.

At other times, temptations could come from a lack of hope; we see the goal of our vocation as being too far away, as remote an objective as ever. We don’t seem to be going anywhere, and all our efforts to keep on struggling—they don’t seem to achieve much.

St. Josemaría in the Furrow says, “After the initial enthusiasm, the doubts, the hesitations, the anxieties can begin to take effect. You are worried about your studies, your family, your financial situation, and, above all, by the thought that you are not really up to it, that perhaps you are of no use, that you lack experience in life.

“I will give you a sure means of overcoming such fears, which are temptations insinuated by the devil or that come straight from your own lack of generosity! Despise them: eradicate those recollections from your memory. The Master already preached this poignant warning twenty centuries ago: ‘No one who looks behind him…’” (Josemaría Escrivá, Furrow, Point 133).

Our Lord doesn't want us looking back. He wants us looking to the future; keep our eyes on the goal. We shouldn't let crazy thoughts enter our minds, as we're all capable of terrible things.

In such situations, instead of allowing ourselves to be filled with unprofitable regrets, we must on the contrary, resolutely fix our eyes on Christ.

“Be loyal,” He tells us. “On you go!” And whenever we look at Jesus, we continue to make good progress on our journey.

He said in Christ Is Passing By: “There's never any reason for looking back” (J. Escrivá, Christ Is Passing By, Point 160).

Even if it seems we're not going anywhere, there’s no progress, or we don't see the fruits of our efforts, or everything seems to be going wrong in our lives—loyalty, eyes on Christ.

Our Lord permits all sorts of situations to lead us to have a deeper faith, deeper humility, deeper divine filiation. He cultivates a deeper virtue in us.

All the time, those situations that He may lead us through often have great apostolic purposes.

Maybe, somewhere down the road, in a few months or a few years, we might come across someone in a similar situation—perhaps a cooperator, or someone in their marriage, in their profession.

Because we've lived through similar experiences, we'll know how to help them. It's all a seed that God has placed in our soul.

Lord, help me to deeply ingrain that desire to be loyal in all situations, no matter what may happen.

In the Furrow, St. Josemaría says, “A gentle wind is not the same as a hurricane. Anyone can resist the first: it is child’s play, a parody of struggle. —Gladly you bore small contradictions, shortages and little urgent problems. And you enjoyed the interior peace of thinking: now I am really working for God, because here we have the Cross!…

“But now, my poor son, the hurricane has come, and you feel you are being shaken by a force that could uproot century-old trees. You feel this from without and within. But you must remain confident, for your Faith and your Love cannot be uprooted, nor can you be blown from your way…if you remain with the ‘head’, if you maintain unity” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 411).

There may be moments in our life when God permits a hurricane—when everything seems to be the complete opposite of what it should be, or what we would like it to be. But all those things then are permitted by God. They have this purpose.

“The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock” (Matt. 7:25)—the rock of our loyalty, of knowing that we have a vocation.

I was speaking to someone once who was possibly in the worst situation any member of Opus Dei could be in. Having explained all these things, they said, "But I know I have a vocation." That is a wonderful thing, that rock.

In spite of all the winds that may blow and the hurricanes that may come, we have that key idea to focus on, that rope to hang onto.

We know the devil is “like a roaring lion, ready to pounce” (cf. 1 Pet. 5:8). Because of that, we needn't be surprised or scandalized by anything that may happen to us or thoughts that may come. It's all part of the journey.

“But I know I have a vocation.” And this, even after many years, many decades, of commitment, of loyalty, of perseverance.

The devil, like a lion ready to pounce, will seize his opportunity. The greatest temptation for someone who has given themselves to God is a 90 percent dedication.

Our Lord asks us to keep our “hand on the plough,” to keep very focused, to imitate Him who has “nowhere to lay His head” (Matt. 8:20), not to look back in any way.

We should try and repay God's everlasting love. “Love is repaid with love.” Our Lord whispered those words into the ears of St. Josemaría (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 686).

Love is deeds. The people in the Gospel were full of sweet words. Our Lord makes it very clear to them: ‘I don’t want your sweet words’ (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 933; cf. 1 John 3:18).

Lord, help me to love you a little more. For as long as we live on earth, for all eternity, help me to love you. Help us to repay your faithfulness with our faithfulness.

St. Josemaría says, “Doesn’t it make you very happy to see that fidelity depends to a great extent on us? I am excited at the thought that God loves me and has wanted his Work to depend on my response as well. And it makes me happy to be able to tell him, freely, ‘Lord, I love you too; count on my littleness’” (J. Escrivá, Alone with God, Point 324).

We may have the widow's mite (Luke 21:1-4) to come to bring to Our Lord. But he wants that fruit of the total heart, total giving of our heart, freely given.

“And I think of you, each of you, every day,” said St. Josemaría. “I think how you are Opus Dei, and my heart overflows with joy and thanksgiving, because I know you're going to be faithful.”

“I have loved you,” said Our Lord in St. John, "just as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love” (John 15:9).

Lord, help me cultivate this human and supernatural virtue: loyalty in all things, loyalty expressed in small things.

“Well done, good and faithful servant. Because you've been faithful in little things, I will set you over many" (Matt. 25:23).

That loyalty is expressed in the little things of each day—in the way we practice fraternal correction; in our effort to practice the virtue of charity in all the ways it presents itself to us: patience, kindness, enduring all things.

We know that Our Lord is faithful to His promises; He never fails to keep His word. “God is faithful,” says St. Paul, “and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength” (1 Cor. 10:13). This is another consoling thought.

No matter what hurricanes may come, or winds may blow, God will not tempt me beyond my strength. Through these difficulties, He's cultivating a deeper loyalty, leading me forward in virtue all the time.

Loyalty means fulfilling our commitments to God and others. It involves fidelity to our norms, to our customs, each one of them in all of their aspects. We have to try and keep our word in everything we do.

Somebody told me recently, commenting on the state of society, how much integrity is needed—people being loyal to their word, loyal to the truth.

Many people, irrespective of their age, can seem ignorant of that noble obligation to keep their word, to fulfill the commitments which they have assumed with complete freedom, or to behave in accordance with decisions they've made before God or man, in civil or religious life.

Our ‘yes’ must be ‘yes’ and our ‘no’ must be ‘no’ (cf. Matt. 5:37). To say that a person is loyal to Christ—often, that’s the greatest praise we can give them.

After someone has gone to the next life, to say they were loyal to our spirit is another beautiful thing.

They were faithful to the end, “struggling for love until their last moment” (J. Escrivá in Andrés Vázquez de Prada, The Founder of Opus Dei, Volume III, Chapter 8), their last heartbeat.

Many people in their ordinary daily work have fulfilled their duties loyally, doing a good job. A bus or a train driver that goes through the night with the lives of hundreds of people on board—their lives are in the hands of that driver, or maybe, a signalman.

Perhaps, in spite of tiredness, or hunger, or a whole pile of things, they stay at their posts. Many people, in the fulfillment of their ordinary duties, have to stay at their posts.

[Georges] Chevrot in one of his books says, “The life of a whole country, the life of the world, depends on the loyalty of people fulfilling their duties at work and in society, in adhering to their contracts, by being faithful to their word” (cf. Georges Chevrot, But I Say To You).

A little-known detail about nuncios and nunciatures is that for the apostolic nuncios in each country, there is a tradition, that if ever a country goes to war, the nuncio stays in that country.

There might be a temptation, you see, if a country goes to war, and the nuncio is not from that country—they’re always from a different country—is to say, ‘I’m not from this country, so the safest thing for me is to get on the next plane and get out of here.’

Many people flee war-torn countries. It’s the logical, normal thing to do. But the nuncios stay there. Many ambassadors leave the country, but the ambassadors of the Holy See stay at their posts.

Very often, they are key people that governments use in civil wars and in other wars to broker a peace agreement—another aspect of the work of nuncios in the Holy See that’s not too well publicized in the international community. Many wars have been ended by the work of nuncios.

Staying at our posts has a lot of relevance for us—in the department where we are, in the apostolic assignments that we've been given, in this particular job or task.

Over time, we might like a change, or we might prefer to be somewhere else, or be doing a different thing. But that business of staying at our posts can bring great fruitfulness.

The whole of the apostolic enterprise goes forward because we are there, because God and the directors have wanted to rely on us being there, and possibly fulfilling a small thing—giving this talk, organizing this seminar, making this retreat go forward.

There are always little difficulties to solve, problems to solve, but just being there gets the things solved—being on the ball, being at our post, answering these questions.

Loyalty in fulfilling the small duties of each day. Not giving in to any temptation to say any untruth.

Lord, may no untruth ever cross my lips; no lies or deceit in our work.

Being simple and prudent, open and plain in everything we say or do. If we are loyal to people around us in the service that we give, then with God's grace, we will be loyal to Christ. That's what really counts.

We are not really loyal to Christ unless we’re loyal in the everyday human things that we come across: giving good service, thinking things through.

If we come to a certain problem, and we’re wondering how to solve this problem, or we have to bring a problem to a person in charge—or a supervisor, or the director, or whoever—we try to think things through and say, ‘Look, as well as this problem, these are possible solutions: one, two, and three.’

Then we leave the decision in the hands of those who have the grace of state to make it.

But at least we think things through. We think solutions. That’s working well—not just recognizing problems.

In Friends of God, St. Josemaría says, “I am convinced that unless I look upward, unless I have Jesus, I will never accomplish anything. And I know that the strength to conquer myself and to win comes from repeating that cry, ‘I can do all things in him who strengthens me’ (Phil. 4:13), words which reflect God's firm promise not to abandon his children if they do not abandon him” (J. Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 213).

Our Lord speaks a lot about loyalty in Scripture. The example of the faithful and prudent servant (Matt. 24:45-51), or the person who is loyal even in small things (Luke 16:10), the faithful steward (Luke 12:42-48)—it’s a very deep notion.

The opposite of perseverance or loyalty can be inconstancy, which inclines a person to break off easily from doing some good or from the practice of virtue, as soon as some difficulties or some temptations arise. Lack of fortitude.

Often, the greatest obstacles to that loyalty can be from our pride, which attacks the very foundations of loyalty, weakens our will to fight the difficulties and the temptations.

Without humility, that loyalty becomes feeble and shaky. At other times, the temptation to be inconstant will come from the environment: people who should be exemplary and they’re not.

We could find all sorts of reasons. Obstacles can have their origin in carelessness concerning little things.

We can ask Our Lord for the grace to see those dangers coming, to cultivate that virtue of constancy, to be there to the end, like that marathon runner who gets to the end and breaks the tape.

Persevering in one's vocation is a matter of responding to the calls that God makes in the course of a lifetime.

There may be larger calls that Our Lord makes to us: change in venue, move here, move there, take on this job, have this responsibility. There may be bigger things that come.

Or they may be big because, what we’re asked—we find that we’re not up to the task, or we don’t have the experience, or it seems to be a bit too big for me, or it’s not to my liking.

There can be all sorts of things that are placed before us—greater calls, but also the smaller calls of each day: to live the heroic minute [to rise promptly]; to respond well to somebody who asks us for something; coping with those little incidents that arise.

Loyalty is a virtue manifested in all aspects of a Christian's life. There’s a great lukewarmness and darkness in the world, and our apostolic mission is a continuation of the mission of Our Lord in the lives of the people around Him.

We also promote loyalty. We cultivate it; we give an example of it.

It's a wonderful virtue for young people to learn: loyalty to the team, loyalty to my friends, loyalty to the class, loyalty to this commitment that I have in front of me, to do this exam honestly and justly.

“Stay with us, for it is toward evening” (Luke 24:29). Stay with us, Lord, because without you all is darkness and our life has no meaning.

Without you, we are disoriented and lost on our journey. On the other hand, with you everything takes on a new meaning: even death itself becomes totally different.

“Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” Stay with us. Lord...remind us always of the essential things of our existence…help us to be faithful and to know how to listen attentively to the wise counsel of those people in whom you make yourself present to us as we constantly travel towards you.

In the Furrow, St. Josemaría says, “‘Stay with us because it is getting dark.’ The prayer of Cleophas and his companion was truly effective. —How sad it would be if you and I were not able to detain Jesus who is passing by! What a shame not to ask him to stay!” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 671).

We can ask Our Lady, Our Lady who is most loyal, Virgo fidelis, intercede for us, so that we may imitate your faithfulness, so that we may say our daily fiat–“let it be done unto me” (Luke 1:38), our daily yes to the friendship with Christ and to friendship with others.

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