Taking Advantage of the Means of Formation

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.

“Now as they went on their way, they entered a village, and a woman named Martha received him into her house. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving, and she went to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me’” (Luke 10:38-40).

Mary sat at the Lord's feet, and in some ways is a model of piety. This meditation is about piety—to take advantage of the means of formation.

In the modern world, the word “piety” has come to be associated with being religious. While it does have a religious application, its original meaning was far wider and richer.

The English word “piety” comes from the Latin pietas, which spoke of family love, and by extension, love for those who went before one in one's family, love of one's country, and love of God.

Cicero defined pietas as the virtue “which admonishes us to do our duty to our country, or our parents, or other blood relations.”

For the ancient Romans, piety was one of the highest virtues, since it was the virtue that knit families, and ultimately all society, together in love, loyalty, and a shared reciprocal duty.

Piety also roots us in our past and helps us to give proper reverence to those who have gone before us.

It's like the glue that holds us together. Without its precious effects, we fall apart into factions, our families dissolve, and the “weave” of our culture gives way to tear and dry rot.

Piety is the just recognition of all we owe our elders. The basis of piety is the sober realization that we owe our existence and our substance to powers beyond ourselves.

We are social, communal beings. We are not islands. We’re part of the mainland.

This gift of the Holy Spirit, which comes to us in the sacraments, is “not identified with having compassion for someone or having pity for one's neighbor; but it indicates our belonging to God and our profound bond with Him, a bond that gives meaning to the whole of our life and which keeps us firm, in communion with Him, also in the most difficult and trying moments.

“It is our friendship with God, given us by Jesus, a friendship that changes our lives and fills us with enthusiasm and joy” (Pope Francis, General Audience, June 4, 2014).

Therefore, the gift of piety arouses in us, first of all, gratitude and praise.

It teaches us the meaning of our divine affiliation, the joyful, supernatural awareness of being children of God, and in Jesus Christ; brothers and sisters of all mankind.

It impels us to maintain the attitude of childlike intimacy with God. “Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt.18:3).

The gift of piety means to be truly capable of rejoicing with those in joy, to weep with those who weep, to welcome and help those who are in need.

There is a very close relationship between the gift of piety and meekness. We can pray: ‘Make us meek, tranquil, patient, at peace with God.’

“When the Holy Spirit makes us perceive the presence of the Lord and all his love for us, it warms our hearts, and moves us almost naturally to prayer and celebration. Piety, therefore, is a synonym of authentic religious spirit, our filial confidence in God, of that capacity to pray to him with love and simplicity which is proper to persons who are humble of heart. … May the Holy Spirit give all of us this gift of piety” (Ibid.).

If some time we might feel indifferent towards the things of God, this virtue can help us feel attracted to them.

This doesn't mean that prayer will always be a joy. Even Jesus Himself suffered His agony in the garden.

St. Josemaría in The Forge says, “You must be constant and demanding with yourself in your regular practices of piety, even when you feel tired and arid. Persevere! Those moments are like the tall red-painted poles which serve as markers along the mountain roads when there are heavy snowfalls. They are always there to show you where it is safe to go” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, Point 81).

“Interior life,” he says, “is strengthened by a daily struggle in your practices of piety, which you should fulfill—or rather which you should live!—lovingly, for the path we travel as children of God is a path of love.

“Seek God in the depths of your pure, clean heart; in the depths of your soul when you are faithful to him. Never lose that intimacy! —And if ever you do not know how to speak to him, or what to say, or you do not dare to look for Jesus inside yourself, turn to Mary, tota pulchra, all pure and wonderful, and tell her: ‘Our Lady and Mother, the Lord wanted you yourself to look after God and tend him with your own hands. Teach me, teach us all how to treat your Son!’” (Ibid., Points 83-84).

Through piety, you will know almost instinctively that you cannot get through life without prayer any more than you can survive without food.

Adoration and prayer are the principal acts of the virtue of religion. They are also natural obligations.

St. Thomas affirms, “Prayer is proper to the rational creature, because only a creature with an intellect can realize that he is dependent on God. … Only one who is free can acknowledge this dependence as a duty and not just an instinctive tendency” (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II. II. and First Part, Question 83).

St. Josemaría liked to strongly exclaim, “Only animals do not pray.”

Pope St. John Paul II teaches that “prayer is…the acknowledgment of our limits and dependence: we come from God, we exist in God, and to God we will return” (John Paul II, Address to Young People, March 14, 1979).

“Hence, we cannot but abandon ourselves to him, our Creator and Lord, with full and complete confidence. … Prayer is above all an act of the intellect, a sense of humility and gratitude, an attitude of trust and abandonment in him who has given his life for the love of us” (Ibid.).

“Silence and contemplation have a purpose: they serve, in the distractions of daily life, to preserve a permanent union with God” (Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, October 6, 2006).

St. Josemaría liked to say that a sanctity without doctrine is not the sanctity of Opus Dei. Piety leads us to want to be formed and to take advantage of the means of formation.

Superficiality is not Christian. Therefore, our piety stirs an interest to know God through books, classes, seminars; to know His life; to talk to Him in prayer; to understand the workings of His heart.

All this is so as not to get carried away by sentimentalism or superficiality.

There's a difference between flying a plane for the first time with a manual of instructions under your arm and flying it with ease, with your eyes closed.

That ease in the spiritual life is given by familiarity with God—not knowing Him in theory or because we've heard about Him, but it is to be joyful with Him, to weep with Him.

Knowing a lot about God but not loving Him more is not so useful. “With your life of piety,” says St. Josemaría, “you will learn to practice the virtues befitting your condition as a child of God, as a Christian. —And together with those virtues you will acquire a whole range of spiritual values which seem small but are really very great.

“They are like shining precious stones, and we must gather them along the way and then take them up to the foot of God's Throne in the service of our fellow men: simplicity, cheerfulness, loyalty, peace, small renunciations, little services which pass unnoticed, the faithful fulfillment of duty, kindness…” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 86).

We're encouraged to grow in piety but not in pietism, a sort of an excessive piety or a piety without doctrine.

I heard someone say once that our doctrinal formation prevents us from becoming “pious nuts.” It's a funny phrase but perhaps we know or have seen examples of what that means.

In our piety, we know the reason for our actions. We avoid anything unusual or odd. Our doctrinal formation helps us to be very normal, balanced.

Man is an intellectual being. He can only love what he knows. The better he knows, the more he can love. To love God, we need to know Him as much as possible.

To get the most out of the means of formation, the right disposition is piety. “You need interior life and doctrinal formations,” said St. Josemaría in The Forge. “Be demanding of yourself!

“As a Christian man or woman, you have to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, for you are obliged to give good example with holy shamelessness.

“The charity of Christ should compel you. Feeling and knowing yourself to be another Christ from the moment you told him that you would follow him, you must not separate yourself from your equals—your relatives, friends, and colleagues—any more than you would separate salt from the food it is seasoning.

“Your interior life and your formation include the piety and the principles a child of God must have in order to give flavor to everything by his active presence there. Ask the Lord that you may always be that good seasoning in the lives of others” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 450).

Elsewhere he says, “We cannot separate the seed of doctrine from the seed of piety. The only way to inoculate your work of sowing doctrine against the germs of ineffectiveness is by being sincerely devout” (Ibid., Point 918).

Pope St. John Paul II talks about modern man. He says, “The temptation towards the opposite is currently very prevalent—the kind of arrogance that leads man to fail to recognize that he is a creature and therefore inherently dependent on another.

“Contemporary man, especially, has fallen prey to this illusion. Child of the modern pretensions to autonomy, and dazzled by his own splendor, by his wondrous fashioning, he forgets that he is a creature.

“As the Bible teaches us, he suffers the temptation to set himself up against God, following the serpent’s insidious suggestion in the Garden of Eden: ‘You will be as God’” (Gen 3:5).

“The consequences of this pretense to autonomy are disastrous for man, since, when he fails to acknowledge his dependence on God, he inevitably ends up going astray. His heart claims to be the sole measure of reality. His will no longer recognizes the law inscribed in his heart by his Creator.

“And he ceases to pursue the good. Seeing himself as the final arbiter of both truth and error, he imagines these to be equally elusive and thus deceives himself. In this way, the spiritual dimension of reality fades from his experience. And as a result, his ability to discern what is mystery as well.”

St. Josemaría talked a lot about piety as the remedy. He said, “the remedy of remedies is piety. Train yourself, my child, to live in God's presence with fixed points of struggle. You are supposed to travel along close behind Him throughout the day.”

One should be able to ask him at any moment: And what about you? How many acts of love have you made today? How many acts of reparation? How many aspirations to Our Lady?

We have to pray more. This is the conclusion we must come to. Perhaps we're still praying too little, and God is expecting a more intense prayer from us for His Church.

A more intense prayer means to have a stronger spiritual life. This requires a continual reform of one's heart. A permanent conversion. Think about this and draw your conclusions.

“Our first contribution to fraternities,” said Don Javier, “is piety. When you pray, work, or rest in the various moments of your day, strive to pray, work, and rest close to Our Lord, accompanying your brothers and sisters throughout the whole world, especially those who live and work in places where the Church faces more difficulties.

“How aware are you that people need your fidelity, your fraternity? Does this thought help you to raise your mind to God, to feel the urgency of a new evangelization?” (Javier Echevarría, Letter, November 1, 2007).

There's a story more than a century ago of a proud university student who boarded a train in France and sat next to an older man who seemed to be a farmer of comfortable means.

The brash student noticed that the older gentleman was slipping beads through his fingers. He was praying the Rosary.

The student inquired, “Sir, do you still believe in such outdated things?”

“Yes, I do. Don't you?” the man responded.

The student laughed and admitted, “I do not believe in such silly things. Take my advice. Throw the rosary out the window, and learn what science has to say about it.”

“Science?” said the older man. “I do not understand this science. Perhaps you can explain it to me,” the man said very humbly.

The university student noticed that the man was deeply moved. To avoid hurting his feelings further, he said, “Please give me your address and I will send you some literature to explain the matter to you.”

The man fumbled in the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out his business card. On reading the card, the student lowered his head in shame and was speechless.

The card read, Louis Pasteur, Director of the Institute of Scientific Research, Paris. The deluded science student had encountered his country's leading chemist and bacteriologist.

Liturgical piety leads us to a love for the liturgy. St. Josemaría taught us to love the liturgy in very concrete ways: to take care of liturgical things; of a sincere interior attitude; to see respect for liturgical norms and liturgical details as an expression of faith and love.

“Love Our Lord very much,” he said in The Forge. “Maintain and foster in your soul a sense of urgency to love him better. Love God precisely now when perhaps a good many of those who hold him in their hands do not love him, but rather ill-treat and neglect him. Be sure to take good care of the Lord for me, in the Holy Mass and throughout the whole day (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 438).

He encouraged us to have a contemplative spirit. Place all our heart and mind in the spiritual things. To pray calmly and with attention. To say many aspirations. To take care of our genuflections, Signs of the Cross. Take care of our moments of silence. To sometimes read the prayers that we may know by heart. To take care of our Thanksgiving after Mass, no matter where we are.

He also taught us to take material care of the liturgical items: the Missals, the linens, the vestments, the sacred vessels—to make sure they're all clean, dignified, and in good condition.

He has taught us how to give God the best—to let the splendor of divine realities shine.

John Paul II liked to say that we go to the great spiritual mysteries through physical signs and symbols (Catechism of the Catholic Church, Point 1146). The liturgy is full of those physical signs and symbols.

A certain finesse in our piety is called for. We are the aristocrats of love in the world. We've been taught how to materialize our spiritual life, to foster the love of God in small details, to have refinement in the fulfillment of the norms.

We are told in St. Matthew, Ubi enim est thesaurus tuus ibi est et cor tuum–“Where your treasure is, there your heart is also” (Matt. 6:21).

Our treasure is meant to be in the Blessed Sacrament, with Our Lord on the Cross, and everything that relates to the Holy Mass.

We foster that finesse when we glance at the images of Our Lady and ask her for little things.

St. Josemaría says in the Furrow, “You need a heart which is in love, not an easy life, to achieve happiness” (J. Escrivá, Furrow, Point 795).

The life of St. Josemaría was full of piety. He liked to kiss the image of Our Lady of the Kisses before going out back in the early days in Madrid. He was unafraid to show his piety. It was real, tangible.

He was shown an image of Our Lady once in Rome that had been brought to him. Immediately his heart poured out in prayer, saying, “From where have they thrown you out now, Mother?”

He was responsible for millions of images of Our Lady all over the world and all the centers of the Work, and maybe the homes of his supernumeraries and associates, daughters and sons.

He had a great sensitivity for Our Lady. He taught us how to do many pilgrimages to her shrines.

He liked to say the aspiration, “The waters will pass through the mountains” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 12; The Forge, Point 283). He's given us many other aspirations that can be the answer to so many little difficult moments in our day, that can help us to turn to God.

He's taught us the value of Memorares, the three Hail Marys at night. How many people around the world fulfill this custom because of St. Josemaría?

He's taught us about the Scapular devotion, the celebration of Marian feast days, a Novena for December 8th,^,^ how to place flowers on the altar on Saturdays in May and all feast days.

How many people in the world are saying the Salve Regina because they've learned this from attending meditations in centers of the Work at a certain stage in their life?

Helena Serrano, who was on the Central Advisory for many years, wrote that they have loads of photos of St. Josemaría celebrating Mass, saying the Angelus or the Rosary, kissing the wooden cross or an image of Our Lady, giving Benediction or making a genuflection when passing in front of the tabernacle.

He is not distracted in a single one of them. The cold, mechanical, inexorable camera does not forgive wrinkles, sneers, or ungrateful, disappointed, inattentive expressions, or bad posture, or being overweight.

Even if there were no other witnesses, we would only have to go to the photograph archives to see St. Josemaría's piety in his face. The camera saw it and the camera never lies.

We learn to live our piety with naturalness. The family, said St. John Paul II, is a school of piety, a school of love, a school of virtue. We learn many things in and through the family and the family spirit that we have.

Through our Marian piety that St. Josemaría has taught us to have, we find that Our Lady is always in our midst. She is theomnipotentia supplicante. We can ask her for all things.

Adeamus cum fiducia ad thronum gratiae ut misericordiam consequamur–“We go to the throne of grace with faith in order to obtain mercy” (Heb. 4:16).

“Blessed are you among women” (Luke 1:42). We can have recourse to her with the confidence of children. Jesus gave her to us as a mother.

It corresponds to us to talk to her as her child; receive her in our home. It's a gift and a task. We can always try to get personal with Our Lady who is always smiling at us.

Our Lord said to her, “Behold your child” (John 19:26). She sees us with human eyes and with a human heart.

The Angelus is her favorite story. She's “our sweetness and our hope” (Prayer, Hail, Holy Queen).

St. Josemaría says in The Forge, “A person in love doesn't miss the tiniest detail. I have seen it in so many souls. Those little things become something very great. Love!” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 443).

We can ask Our Lady to teach us how to treat Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament, and in all the ways He comes to us, with that same love with which she treated Him.

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.

DWM