Passion for Unity

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 vine,” Our Lord said, "you are the branches. He that abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit. Without me, you can do nothing" (John 15:5).

Our Father [St. Josemaría] had a very profound conviction about the importance of unity.

Today, not quite the feast of St. Severinus, I think it's tomorrow, he wanted that all over the world, in all the centers, there would be a meditation on unity, because the bones of the saint are in one of the altars there in Villa Tevere.

Our Father used this as a motive for thinking about unity, and praying about unity, and encouraging unity.

Don Álvaro used to say that one of the greatest miracles that our Father [St. Josemaría] had achieved in his life was the unity of our supernatural family: unity of so many people in so many places all over the world living the same spirit.

The unity that we hear about is not just a unity to be more effective, which it is, but it's much more than that. Unity in any organization is important.

Henry Ford used to say that coming together is one thing, staying together is a second thing, working together is success.

In any human organization, no matter what the enterprise is, unity is essential: in any football team, in any volleyball team, in any hockey team, in any organization.

That's one aspect of unity. Our unity is something much more profound, something much more divine.

“In the Priestly Prayer at the Last Supper,” said Don Javier in 1990, "Christ asked that they would all believe in His name, so that they might be all consummati in unum, together as one. ‘As you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they might be one in us’” (John 17:21).

"The unity of Christians," he says, "among themselves is derived therefore as a participation in the ineffable unity of the Divine Persons."

At the same time, within the Mystical Body, there is a very tight union among the members for different reasons, when they find themselves very close, one to another.

In one of these ways, as happens in Opus Dei, this comes from having received a common vocation: a common, divine, specific vocation.

"As a prolongation," he quotes our Father, "of this love from heaven, we feel surrounded by this marvelous unity of the Work."

One of the things we have seen on many occasions, felt probably in the course of our vocation, we witnessed that great unity of our family all over the world.

We are moved by news that we hear from faraway places, from people perhaps we have never met, but we know that they are part of this great supernatural reality.

Don Javier is pointing out here the profound theological, defined reasons for this business of unity. In all sorts of ways, we have this virtue emphasized to us.

Like any virtue, it can always be growing. Hopefully, in the course of our vocation, with the graces we receive, we learn how to be more united. We get a deeper appreciation with each year that passes, with a deeper maturity in our vocation, of how essential this is.

We come to see in a different light the words that Our Lord has spoken to us. “If anyone abide not in me, he shall be cast forth as a branch and shall wither; and they shall gather him up and cast him into the fire and he shall burn" (John 15:6).

Our Lord says some pretty strong things about unity and about the consequences of lack of unity.

The very fact that our Father wanted this meditation every year is sort of like a little light to us, a little beacon. Be careful. This can be a great instrument of the devil, to drive wedges between us and other people, between us and those who have the duty and the grace of state to command. If the devil can drive a little wedge there, he's won a great battle.

Great evils come from lack of unity, so our Father wanted us to have a special sensitivity about those things. Be sensitive with comments, with actions, with thoughts.

In one of his Instructions, Redemptionis Sacramentum, Pope St. John Paul II points out that there is a principle of disunity in each one of us. Because of the wounds of original sin, the devil has an easy pathway.

Because of that principle of disunity, and the fact that we are aware of it, then we see the importance of making acts of the virtue of unity.

How do we do that? By consulting plans, for example. Maybe by writing down ideas that we may have for the future, things we plan to do; passing them through the chat; exposing them to the light of those who have the grace of state so that we can be sure that what we're doing is Opus Dei, not Opus Diaboli or Opus Me or something else.

It's possible from all the influences that we may be exposed to in the world that we could end up with a completely different spirit. If all of the books we read were to be a Franciscan spirituality or a Carmelite spirituality, we might end up as very holy people, but not with the spirit that God has intended for us.

That's why it's important that we expose ourselves to things that speak to us of our spirit.

Obviously, the classical works of spirituality have something to say to us. Maybe not everything to say to us, but they have something very deep and profound and important to say to us: the great spiritual treasure of the Church there in the spiritual infancy of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, or some other characteristic of some other saint. But they're not models for us in everything.

Somebody once asked our Father: Father, the Curé of Ars is an intercessor for us in the Work, but how can he be an example for us if he only ate boiled potatoes in his life and he never made his bed?

Our Father said: The saints are models for us in some things, but they're not models in everything. They're not models for our spirit in certain aspects of their life. For that we have to look to our own spirit.

Happily, now we have so many books written by so many people of the Work that express our spirit in all sorts of ways.

It also helps us to see how important it is that we go back from time to time and read the early letters of our Father, of Don Álvaro, of Don Javier. Every time we go on a retreat or annual course or even in other moments, those family letters that we have: those are spiritual gold for the whole of Opus Dei for all time.

One of the goals of our life could be to read and reread and reread those things because the Holy Spirit speaks to us through the words of our Father and his successors, the present Father also—so that in all sorts of subtle ways, we get the message wound into us again and again.

There’s a saying in Spanish, con tuerca y contratuerca: with a twist of the screw and with another twist of the screw.

So that we go deeper, more mature in those key ideas that reflect our spirit. So that we come to embody that spirit in the way that Our Lord and our Father wanted.

That's why we find Don Javier speaking in such a profound way about this reality here.

It's so easy to be disunited. Disunited from the others, disunited from the local council, disunited from the Advisory. And then where do we find ourselves? We're all capable of all these things.

The words of our Father and the writings of Don Javier on this topic and the others—they’re a wake-up call for us, reminds us again and again. “The charity that unites us to God and that unites us to the others is the same. That charity of participation in uncreated love, which the Holy Spirit pours out on us with His grace into our hearts, is converted into the deepest foundation of the unity of Opus Dei."

“The deepest foundation of our unity.” We try to be united to the Father, to people around us, and we also bring everybody else into that unity—all the supernumeraries, all the cooperators—so that they truly feel the unity of the Work, feel the warmth of our family.

Our Father used to say, “The farther the distance, the greater the unity.”

When people were going to Japan and faraway places, he emphasized that point to them. The farther away from Rome, the greater the unity, because just distance alone can detach us a little bit.

It’s another reason why our Father encourages us to have a great sensitivity about this. We're taught to be attentive to the little words or ideas that may come from Rome, from the Father, so that we're grazing where he is grazing. What is the Father thinking about? What's he praying about?

Our Father said: "If you haven't passed through my mind and through my heart, you have mistaken the way."

One of the ways to know the mind and heart of the Father is paying a lot of attention to the things that come from him: letters or indications that come through the Advisory.

The same thing with our Father and Don Álvaro: by reading the things they have left as a legacy, and reading them again and again.

Each time we go back, we find new lines, new horizons, new great divine treasures there. Our Lord wants us to go deeper in all of those things in the course of our life.

On that unity depends our fruitfulness. “He that abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit” (John 15:5).

There might come a moment when physically we're not able to do very much. Maybe all our energy and strength and health may have left us. But our unity to the Father makes us effective.

I may have mentioned before that there's a priest who was ordained with me, Don Luis de Moya. You may have heard of him. I read his books.

He was going out to say Mass one morning, many years ago. He maybe fell asleep at the wheel or something, the car went up a tree. He went into a coma. He's been paralyzed from the neck ever since. He's the longest surviving paraplegic, I think, in the world.

He broke a femur about two weeks ago, and he had an operation on it. His heart stopped during the operation, and he's been revived again. All the things that have happened to him are just amazing. For the last thirty or forty years, he's been confined to a wheelchair, and has to have everything done for him.

When I was passing through Pamplona one time, I went to Confession to him. I'll always remember the advice he told me. He said, "You know, our effectiveness comes from our unity to the Father."

I was coming from Asia. I'd been all over the world doing all sorts of things, running around the place, and here was this priest stuck in a wheelchair who can hardly do anything physically—and yet talking about effectiveness.

Very powerful words. "Our effectiveness is tied up to our unity to the Father."

Very profound. He's like a personification of those words.

Don Álvaro, at one stage, many decades ago, told him that the favor he was asking from our Father for the canonization of our Father was the cure of this priest to be put right. That didn't happen. God must have other great plans for that priestly life.

Our effectiveness, wherever we are, should be to work on that unity. What is being said to me in the chat? What's being communicated in the circle? What advice am I receiving and the indications for this apostolic activity, for that intention, for that apostolic push or expansion?

We try and have the mind of the Father and of our Father. What do they want for Opus Dei at this particular moment? Vocations, Lord, vocations. They're for you, they're for your glory. Sanctity, holiness, peace, joy, serenity. Awareness of the treasure of our vocation. A great supernatural optimism in everything we do.

"For this reason, it seems very clear that the unity within the Work reflects like an unequivocal manifestation of our unity with God. For this, with a very clear conscience, I've written to you on many occasions, and I repeat it to you now in this moment. If you were not united among yourselves, if you were not united with me, if we were all not united to Our Father in heaven, we would not be united with God."

The pathway of our unity passes through certain channels. This is the divine will for us.

We could ask ourselves in our prayer this morning: Could I be more united to the local council or to the director or to the Advisory?

Sometimes our unity is expressed through prayer, through mortification; sometimes through obedience, but not just through obedience: docility.

"I want to urge you now," he says, "that this wouldn't stay as sort of a general principle, as sort of a theory. It must rule our everyday doings, our thoughts, our aspirations. And this, day after day, in whatever place we find ourselves.”

There was a supernumerary once in the farthest part of Indonesia, possibly the most isolated supernumerary in the world. We had to take three planes to reach this person. We went there every couple of months.

No matter where a person of the Work may be, the most isolated supernumerary for professional reasons—there's where they have to live this unity to the Father—to the whole of this supernatural family. Maybe with a person that is there to help them do this, help them to live that unity.

If somebody happens to be far away, we help them to live that unity, we do it through communication. Now we have all sorts of means of communication. Sometimes little details can be very expressive of great unity.

"The unity of the faithful of the Prelature is manifested in bonds of this special affiliation with the person who governs the work, and with a careful fraternity."

St. Augustine says, "The cement of those living stones is charity."

St. Cyprian teaches that "this theological virtue is the bond of fraternity, the foundation of peace, that which gives strength and permanence to our unity. It's greater than faith and hope. It remains eternally with you in the kingdom of heaven."

Together we achieve an awful lot of things: unity with other people that we work with in apostolic enterprises.

The government of the work is collegial. There's a great wisdom in that; what God wanted. He wants us to work together with other people, wants us to be a team player.

Everything that fosters that is something good: improving our communication skills, the way we say things, what we say, how we put them in writing, not trusting our own judgment.

Sometimes you might think that I have all the answers, or I'm right, or I have the most experience. But God wants our unity more than our great talents and abilities and experience. Together we do more, because six eyes are better than two.

It's interesting how our Father gave an indication to the central Advisory and general council that whenever they were sending a note to any region, two people should read the final version of the note.

It’s a very small little thing. But always when we've typed something, you find a spelling mistake here, or a grammatical error there. And so, the six eyes are always better than two. It fosters perfection; work well done.

What's your opinion on this? Do you think this is okay? Check it, can you? Double-check. Perfection is a good thing. That's our strength.

Even if we've done the greatest job in the world, we need the eyes of other people.

Once there was a new Oratory that was set up in Madrid, and they brought Don Álvaro to see it. It had been up and functioning for a couple of weeks or a couple of months.

When Don Álvaro walked into the Oratory, and written on the front of the altar, there was some inscription. I don't know, was it Ego sum pastor bonus: I am the good shepherd.

Don Álvaro took one look and he said, “Pastor is spelled wrong.”

People had been running in and out of that place for quite a few weeks and months, but nobody had noticed the misspelling that was on the front of the altar. Don Álvaro picked it up immediately. Sometimes seven eyes are better than two.

We see little things that other people maybe don't see, or other people see little things that we don't see. We need that benefit of other people's opinions, judgments, ideas.

For the weakness of each one, there is the strength of the others.

Much more than our great talents, what Our Lord wants is our unity. That might mean that sometimes things go forward slower, but they go forward better in a more solid way. Progress is definite.

"If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask whatever you will and it should be done for you. In this is my Father glorified" (John 15:7-8).

There was a story of two people who were disabled who were on the street in China someplace. One was blind and the other was lame. There was a big festival taking place, organized by the mayor of the town and everyone was invited.

These two were sort of lamenting that they couldn't get to the feast because one was blind and didn't know how to get there. The other was lame; he couldn't walk.

But then one of them had an idea and said, "I'll give you a piggyback." The blind man said, "My feet will carry you and your eyes can guide me." That's how they got to the feast. They achieved together what they could not have achieved on their own.

That's a little bit what we're involved in. In corporate apostolic works, all sorts of things that we're doing, we achieve together what none of us could achieve on our own.

That can give us an enormous joy in our vocation. We're achieving wonderful things. We're changing society. We're evangelizing culture.

A cooperator in the Philippines once said that to me: “You know, I don't understand everything about Opus Dei, but I do know that I'm participating in something wonderful.”

That was a very beautiful thing to hear, that sense of participation in something wonderful, something that on my own, I couldn't come within a mile of even reaching in any sort of way. Now I'm part of something wonderful.

We all participate through the Communion of Saints, in all the spiritual treasures of the work, in all the great apostolic works that are taking place in so many countries around the world, changing culture, changing life, supporting families, bringing society forward.

None of us is insignificant. Nothing we do is insignificant because we contribute with our breathing to the health of the whole.

Our Father likes that point, I think it's in The Way also, about the little nut and bolt in the whole machine. Because the little nut and bolt is there, the whole thing works (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 830).

I used to tell the gardeners in the school in Manila: You know, when you go out and you put the lawnmower all over the grounds, the place looks so well. But if a nut and bolt in that lawnmower is out of place, the lawnmower doesn't work. Within two or three weeks, the grass can be two feet high. The place can look awful.

But because that little nut and bolt is there, it does a great job.

Each one of us are little nuts and bolts. You have to do all sorts of little things.

A priest engineer told me in the Philippines how once he was passing through the Catering. The story I was told was that they got a new machine for making hosts. I don't know if you have a machine for making hosts, if such a thing exists, but I think that's what the thing was.

It was a new machine and the people there weren't quite sure how to work it. They couldn't get it to work. They tried everything. This priest engineer was passing through and they knew he was good at this and that and the other, so they asked him: would you ever mind having a little look at this machine?

He got the book of instructions, what they had gone through. Have you done this? Yes. Have you done that? Yes. Have you done this They went through all the things they had to do. Yes, we've done all those things.

And he said: Have you pressed the button? Ah, no, we didn't press the button. They pressed the button and it worked.

Sometimes every little thing is necessary. We can't miss any of the steps to make the thing work. But then things happen. We're like that little button or that little nut and bolt.

Because we're there, enormous things happen: great social consequences, the apostolic trips that we make, the letters that we write, the contacts that we keep up through WhatsApp or email or whatever, saying “Hi” to that person that might be in Lodwar or Marsabit or someplace, maybe Somalia, but someday we reach all those places. Our contact has put down the building blocks there.

"Our charity, my children, has to be permeated with true affection, real affection, placing always before us, as our Father advised, the Most Sweet and Merciful Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

“The sincerity of that authentic affection is expressed in a generous service to the others. This is what Our Lord has pointed out to us, when, after washing the feet of the apostles, he said, 'As I have given you an example, so that you might do one to each other'(John 13:15).”

"Thanks be to God, this charity characterizes the habitual ambience and environment of our Centers and of the other homes of my daughters and sons, in which there always has to breathe the warmth of primitive Christianity. For this reason, we understand well, and the way of speaking of the early Christians seems very familiar to us, that they collaborated one with the other."

One of the old Fathers of the Church used to express it in this way: Struggle united, run together, suffer the sorrows and pains of the other people, remain united in spirit, even during your sleep. In that way, when you wake up, you will be helpers of the others, administrators of what they do.

In all the people who move at our side, we have to discover Christ because we walk in this earth very clear of the truth of those words of Our Lord: “Whenever you did it to one of these, the least of my brethren, you did it to me” (Matt. 25:40).

We also try to act consequentially.

Our Father has also given us that great goal of our life to be an instrument of unity. It's a good question to ask ourselves: Am I an instrument of unity? One thing is to live unity, another thing is to be an instrument of unity, to foster that unity.

With cooperators, with St. Gabriel people, with St. Raphael people, all the time uniting people to the central thrust of the Work, with the general monthly intention or the regional monthly intention. All these little instruments we have to foster unity, so we're grazing in the right place.

Our mind is there. It's not off in a different orbit, dreaming different dreams, but we're focused on where we should be.

"The conviction that we're all children of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, mystically identified with Him, is the basis of our supernatural fraternity that moves us to behave as children of God with the children of God."

We ask Our Lady, she who is so united to the will of God, united to St. Joseph, united also to all the people around her, living as an ordinary person in Nazareth for thirty years: Mary, may you help us to take care of this blessed unity, our supernatural family, the great gift that you've given to the whole of the Work, help us to preserve it, to look after it, to treasure it, and to be living examples of that unity, just like you were a living example of the implementation of the will of God in everything you did.

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.

UI