St. Josemaría Escrivá (Feast, June 26th)

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.

A lady told me recently how she felt she had received a treasure from St. Josemaría: everything related to the plan of life that is so special in her own spiritual life.

It was rather nice to hear that word “treasure.”

In St. Luke’s Gospel, we're told, “The good man out of the treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil man out of his evil treasure produces evil, but out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45).

Each of us has received a treasure from St. Josemaría, the treasure of his writings and the treasure of his life, of holiness recognized by the Church.

We have to try and take care of that treasure. Preserve it. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where dust and moths consume, and thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven” (Matt. 6:19-20).

The Founder of Opus Dei has opened the door for us to be able to discover how to store up those treasures in heaven and to realize the treasure of every day, the treasure in the ordinary, in the challenges, in the joys; the treasures in our domestic Church, which is often the environment where we have to reap those treasures for heaven.

Are the treasures in our professional work? “Where your heart is,” we're told in Scripture, “there your treasure is also” (Matt. 6:21).

We can ask ourselves, Where is my heart? Is my heart and my treasure in the things of God, in the things of my Christian vocation, in the things of sanctity and apostolate that God is calling me to in a regular way, in fulfilling that plan of life faithfully every day, with all its aspects and customs and challenges?

I heard a story recently about a lady whose husband was a gambling addict, and in the States he would often go to Las Vegas to gamble, and she would go with him to accompany him.

She had the custom of doing thirty minutes of mental prayer every afternoon. One day, while her husband was gambling she had to do her prayer. She went to look for a quiet place where she could do her mental prayer.

She didn't know where there were churches, but she looked around for a quiet place, and she found a funeral parlor.

When she entered she found a room that was very quiet, very peaceful. There was nobody there. She thought, ‘This is a good place for me to do my prayer.’

There was a dead body there in a coffin, but there was nobody else. But then after a while, two men appeared who were a little bit suspicious. They observed her for a while.

After a few minutes, they approached her and said, “Madam, I have the pleasure of informing you that this man who died here has left his estate to the person who came to pray before his coffin. I now have the pleasure of informing you that you have inherited his estate.”

I don't know how much that estate was worth, but this is certainly one of the reasons why we should always make sure we do our mental prayer each afternoon, so that we try and live out that plan of life that St. Josemaría has outlined for us.

There are treasures there, spiritual treasures, that God wants to give us in all sorts of ways.

With the passage of time, hopefully we come to realize the greatness of the life of St. Josemaría. That’s a bit of a treasure in itself. We come to realize what we're dealing with.

Some saints that God has allowed to rise up in the Church have a special message for certain groups of people. Some saints did special things in founding organizations for schools to educate people, or health care, or the care of the mentally handicapped or the physically handicapped, or all sorts of other social services.

But the message of St. Josemaría was for everybody, everybody in the world, and for all time. There's a universal dimension to his message. He has something to say to every single human person that exists on the planet or will come to live in this world for all time.

We could thank God for his figure and for his teaching, and ask that his message might be well ingrained in the souls of each one of us.

With the passage of time and with the grace of God, the key ideas that he's come to give us can go deeper, can become marked in a greater way in our souls, so that we begin to reflect that message in the ordinary things we do, in our marriage, in our family life, in our work, in our apostolate, because that's a message that Our Lord gave him to spread throughout the world in wider circles each time.

The lovable and heroic virtues of St. Josemaría shine more and more before the eyes of the world and make him a very attractive instrument to follow Christ as an intercessor to whom we can turn with great confidence, so that he speaks to God for us.

He was a most faithful instrument that God used to transmit this message.

On days like his feast day today, we can have a lot of thanksgiving to him for his heroic correspondence to the graces that God gave him, that made it possible for the Work of God and the supernatural vocation of each one of his children to come about—so much effectiveness for so many people all over the world: people who may be far away from God, or people who may be cooperators of Opus Dei, or people who may be members of Opus Dei, or people who are not even Catholics.

Today is a day to say, “Thank you!”

Our Lord was very happy when people came back to thank Him for the things that He did. The leper came back and fell at His feet in thanksgiving. He appreciated the gift (Luke 17:11-19).

It's rather beautiful to hear from people like that lady that I just mentioned, who has come to realize the gift. What a treasure it is to have those teachings which God has not given to so many other people.

The best present we can give to God to thank Him for this grace is our personal generosity and correspondence in the struggles of each day. That's what God is asking of us: to begin and to begin again.

There was a priest who was in contact with Opus Dei in Colombia. His parish was in the middle of the Amazon jungle. To get to his parishioners he had to go by boat on small little islands all over the place.

When the canonization of St. Josemaría came around, he wasn't able to go to Rome to be present. But he was very happy to hear that it was going to be transmitted live by satellite.

He thought that it would be very nice to try and bring the figure and person of St. Josemaría to be known by all of his parishioners.

But the live stream was going to be transmitted at a time in the Colombian Amazon jungle at an ungodly hour of the morning, at three in the morning or something, it was going to come through.

But he wasn't deterred by that. He told his parishioners, “Look, we're going to watch this Mass coming live from Rome.”

They had a bit of a clay basketball court near one of the outstations from his parish. That's where they were going to watch it. They didn't have a hall.

On the night in question, he got a television set, and he got some sort of an aerial. He put them all into his boat and he was able to get to that little island where there was this outstation and with this basketball court.

They hooked up the antenna to the ring of the basketball court, and some of the parishioners had arranged to bring some coffee and others, some sandwiches, to keep them going at three in the morning while they watched this very important ceremony from Rome.

There was quite a big gathering there, and after the Mass—beautiful occasion, the signal came through OK—one of the parishioners came to him and said, “That priest in Rome, he gathered around him so many people; and you, so few.”

He said, “That was the thanks I got for all of my efforts.”

Sometimes in our apostolate, we may make heroic efforts to try and introduce other people to the life and the person of St. Josemaría. Possibly, we won't get too much thanks for it. But we do know that nothing is ever lost. “My chosen ones do not work in vain” (Isa. 65:23).

Every time we give a prayer card to somebody, a prayer card of St. Josemaría, one of the most powerful intercessors in heaven, we're doing that person the favor of their lives. We're introducing them to a great saint, somebody who can solve an awful lot of their problems.

Blessed Álvaro, in Rome one time after the death of St. Josemaría, in a small gathering, he opened his heart to people who were there and said, “Sometimes, some of the greatest favors that St. Josemaría works are for people who know nothing about Opus Dei. And to me, he gives me nothing.”

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

The people who were there were very moved by such a humble expression. If we find we are in the same situation as Blessed Álvaro—we feel that a lot of our petitions are not answered—maybe St. Josemaría is inviting us to go deeper, to foster deeper desires of personal prayer or deeper desires of personal holiness.

It's a good grace and favor to ask of St. Josemaría on this feast day: “Give me deeper desires to live my Christian vocation better, to hear that call of Our Lord to ‘be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect’” (Matt. 5:48)—deeper desires of a more effective personal apostolate; to face virtues that I have not yet mastered; to focus on defects I need to work on.”

We know that St. Josemaría will obtain those graces for us with the passage of time.

St. Paul says in the Letter to the Ephesians, “This then is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every fatherhood in heaven or on earth takes his name” (Eph. 3:14).

We know that St. Josemaría enjoys a great spiritual paternity in heaven that participates in the paternity of God. He's constantly watching over each one of us and tries to put into practice the message that he has given to the world. He obtains for us so that all the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in our soul increase in number and intensity.

He acts, in a certain sense, like a loudspeaker of the Holy Spirit. Every time that we try to put into practice aspects of the spirit that he has given to us, or points that we read in The Way or The Forge or the Furrow, he goes higher in heaven, because then the fruitfulness of his life, of his work, of his writings, is greater.

The greatest thing we can do for him is try and put those things into practice in a greater way all the time.

We could try to make a resolution to ask him for more things—big things and little things—to contemplate his holy life, read books about him. There's an inexhaustible treasure there. We can't know aspects of his life too much or too well.

We can also try to spread devotion to him. It's another way of helping people to go higher in heaven. We've heard of all sorts of extraordinary favors he's done for people. Amazing things.

We've heard the prayers of little children, of elderly people. We can have a great faith and confidence in that power of intercession.

St. Josemaría is a pathway for us to reach our model. The only real model for us is Christ, but St. Josemaría teaches us how to put the virtues into practice in concrete ways.

God has wanted to open up new pathways in the Church through which the Holy Spirit will shower His graces, so as to help us to fulfill the missions that have been entrusted to us: the promotion of the family, heroic Christian witness in society, in our professional life, so that we leave a deep furrow where we have walked in the field where God has placed us, in our local Church and in the universal Church.

The holy life of St. Josemaría is a clear example for us of how to travel along this pathway of sanctity and apostolate to which we've been called. It's a concretization or a specification of our Christian vocation.

God gives us special graces to be able to live out those virtues, and in that way we'll get closer to Our Lord Jesus Christ, to God the Father, to Our Lady.

We feel the blessed responsibility of transmitting the spirit of filiation, which is the way to have a strong foundation in Christ and in the Gospel.

Like that lady we mentioned at the start, little by little we come to have a greater awareness of the treasure that God has given to us in St. Josemaría.

We could ask ourselves: How could we struggle to be more like him? How can we put those things into practice that he's given to us? Are there concrete things that he's asking of us?

Through spiritual direction, do we try and concretize the little battles of each day? We meditate on the example that he's given to us, or sometimes read the points in The Way, The Forge, the Furrow, and perhaps try to get to know the Furrow and The Forge as well as we know The Way.

We find the words that God has placed there in and through his hands will speak deep in our soul. They will open new horizons for us.

He used to say, “I'm just the instrument, like the paintbrush in the hands of the artist. God is the artist; I'm just the paintbrush.”

But it's a paintbrush that God has used to transmit some very deep messages to each one of us.

Lord, help me to give myself more. Help me to try and live this spirit a little better. How can I be a better Cooperator of Opus Dei? How can I correspond more to the treasures that God has given to me?

We should try to bring to our personal prayer in a regular way those concrete points that he's given to us, so that we can grow, so that we can learn.

And through His example, we'll go deeper into our soul. We’ll draw lights that will guide our whole life and guide our marriage, guide our family.

His words will encourage us not to “store up treasures for ourselves here on earth, where dust and moths consume and thieves break in and steal” but to use every opportunity that God gives us to “store up for ourselves those treasures in heaven” (Matt. 6:19-21), so that we can be the happiest people on earth.

He liked to say that we are all children of his prayer and of his mortification. He was great because he responded. He prayed for each person that had to come in contact with Opus Dei over time. Nothing is an accident.

The very fact that we are listening to this meditation is like a signal from God that He has brought St. Josemaría into our life.

Our Lord tells us that we have to “read the signs of the times” (Matt. 16:3), the signs of the times that over time may give us different messages, deeper messages, more important messages, messages of a new conversion.

The early conversions of the apostles were important: “Come, follow me, and I will make you into fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19).

But the later conversions were more important. They were deeper. They were callings to a deeper humility, deeper charity, deeper generosity, deeper commitment, deeper responsibility. “Feed my lambs…feed my sheep” (John 21:15-17).

At this point in time, we have an awful lot of documentary movies about St. Josemaría, movies of get-togethers that he gave when he was alive.

It's good to see if in our home area, among our neighbors, our friends, our relatives, we could screen a showing of one of those movies. Help more people to get to know him—people in our family—so that other people can participate in this treasure.

If we spread his devotion in concrete ways, using a certain ingenuity—sometimes there are taxi drivers in some countries that put the prayer card on their windscreen or put them in places where people can reach them—we open new pathways for people to be united to him, and also in that way to be united to God, because like all the saints, that's where He leads us.

On days like today we can thank God for him. Sometimes when you have a great treasure, a great gift, you might not fully realize what that treasure is or what it means. It's something very wonderful.

We can ask the Holy Spirit to let us see, like the blind man who said, “Lord, let me see” (Luke 18:40).

God wants to be thanked for the graces that He gives us and the gifts. He's very happy that we thank Him for those things.

We could also see, How could I try and have that heroic correspondence that St. Josemaría had to the things that God is asking of me? How can I take the risks that he took to lead a life of faith, of generosity, of hope, of charity, to begin and begin again and keep trying until the last moment?

If ever you see a movie of St. Josemaría, you might be struck by his youthfulness and vivacity. He was 73 years of age, but yet he had the energy of a much younger person.

He said, “You might not find too many people in your life who talk about love the way I talk about love” when he was already very advanced in years. But that love made him young, full of energy, dynamism, and initiative.

He was out to discover new ways to open up new pathways of holiness in the world, in business, in medicine, in law, in peace and justice, in all sorts of professional areas.

We could ask ourselves occasionally, How would St. Josemaría do this? How would he approach this problem, or how would he take on this new apostolic initiative?

I heard a man once from Chile. He had got together with other people. They were thinking of starting a school—a group of lay people starting a school in Chile in the 1970s. But they ran into a number of problems.

One of them was that there was a communist government at the time. They were wondering: Is this the right moment to start a Christian school, a school with the Christian ethos?

They were hemming and hawing and hemming and hawing. He had to go to Europe for business purposes and he decided to pass by Rome, and he met St. Josemaría.

He said to him, “Father, we have this dilemma. Should we go forward, or should we wait?”

Very quickly, St. Josemaría said, “My son, the time to go forward in apostolic endeavors is now. Today. We don't wait.”

That man went back to Chile and communicated this to his colleagues. They set up the school.

I think now they have ten schools in Chile, and the university. “The time to go forward with apostolic initiatives and endeavors is now.”

Try to see how we can function like Josemaría functioned. Allow him to act in your soul, to push you a little bit, to demand, so that he can bring about those resolutions of a deeper humility, a greater self-giving, a more committed fidelity.

Try to imitate his life like good children, not just to savor the treasure, but to put that treasure into practice so that other people can savor it.

If a moment comes when we have to, God asks us to imitate Him a little more with our generosity, with our commitment, with our carrying of the cross.

Lord, help me not to shy away from that moment.

Let's not remain halfway. St. Josemaría never liked half-measures. We have to give everything. To only give halfway or to give a little would be to betray the message that he's given to us.

Our Lord wants everything. He wants our whole heart, even completely.

He wants us to begin again with a new beginning, with that new conversion, maybe savoring and learning new aspects of the spirit that God has given to us, knowing that in time God will yield an abundant fruit from our correspondence.

In The Way, he says, “Joyfully I bless you, my child, for that faith in your mission as an apostle which inspired you to write, ‘There's no doubt about it: the future is certain, perhaps in spite of us. But it's essential that we should be one with the Head—'that all may be one!’—through prayer and sacrifice” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 968).

In The Forge, he says, “When you love other people and you spread that affection—Christ's kindly, gentle charity—all around you, you will be able to support one another, and if someone is about to stumble, they will feel they're being supported, and also encouraged, to be faithful to God through this fraternal strength” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 148).

Our Lady, who is the Queen of Opus Dei to whom St. Josemaría encouraged us to go with a great filial piety—we can ask Our Lady to help us to savor this treasure, to grow in it, to realize the gift that God has given to us, and to thank God for it every 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.

MVF