The Anniversary of the Women of the Prelature

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.

In the Entrance Antiphon of today's Mass, we read, “Sing psalms and hymns and inspired songs among yourselves, singing and chanting to the Lord in your hearts” (Eph. 5:19).

Today, the 14th of February, is a day of celebration and of thanksgiving in Opus Dei for all of the graces that God has given to us.

As we realize another year has passed, a year of our vocation, a year of the history of the Work on the earth, another year of the fulfillment of God's plans, of how He's using His Work to do all sorts of wonderful things in us and through us.

Our Father said, “Always be giving thanks to God constantly for everything: for what seems good and for what seems bad, for what is sweet and for what is bitter, for the white and for the black, for small things and for big things, for what seems meager and for what seems bountiful, for what is temporal and for what reaches unto eternity.”

We all have great reasons to give thanks to God for the women of the Prelature and also for the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, whose founding we also celebrate today: very special gifts that God has given to His Work. He crowned them in a special way.

Don Álvaro, on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the women of the Prelature, wrote that on the 14th of February 1930, Our Lord wanted to offer our Father a tangible proof of the divinity of the Work.

Before that date, as we all know, our Founder was very sure that there would not be women in Opus Dei. He told us on more than one occasion, “I had written down, because of the difference between Opus Dei and another institution that existed outside of Spain, that we would never work with women.”

This must have been, he said, around 1929. “Shortly afterwards, on the 14th of February 1930, I was celebrating Mass in the house of an elderly lady, when the women of the Prelature came into the world.”

Don Álvaro continues, “It was a super clear, supernatural light which our Founder received in the Mass, after Communion, on that Friday, 14th of February 1930. As always, when Our Lord manifested His will to him in an extraordinary way, in the first moments, his first reaction was that of feeling a bit disturbed. Then he perceived in the intimacy of his being, those words of Our Lord to Our Lady: ‘Do not be afraid’ (Luke 2:10). And he remained full of peace.”

He began, as he did in 1928 with men, to work apostolically, particularly from the confessional box, with the women and young girls who came to seek his advice.

With what great thanksgiving and gratitude to Our Lord, He liked to remember the help that a sister of ours gave him who was taken up with great pain from a great illness. She offered this treasure of her sufferings for this divine enterprise.

When we go back and hear the words of Don Álvaro speaking about the beginnings, we can make a great act of faith, and also of thanksgiving, because we see how God has acted in the world, and very particularly, how He acted in the life of our Father.

When we look around at the reality of Opus Dei, what it is in the world today, it's a very different phenomenon to what was there in 1930. There was almost nothing. Yet because of our Father's correspondence, his holiness, his humility, that spirit of Opus Dei has spread all over the world.

Everything that our Father has done and everything that he has written has great relevance for us. God speaks to us through his life and through his correspondence, beckoning us, calling us, encouraging us to walk in the footsteps of our Father, as the pathway that Our Lord has laid out for us in order that we might know Him and love Him.

When the Confessor of our Father heard about this new manifestation of the will of God, without intervening in any way in the organization of the Work, he confirmed to our Father with great sureness that “this is just as much from God as the rest.”

Don Álvaro continues, "Look at how Our Lord works. He loves us with all of His goodness. He takes care of us with the refined diligence. He gathers us up with His immense mercy. He never leaves us alone. Even more, He always reaches out with a hand to us.

“Fill yourself with joy, my daughter, my son, because this God of ours, omnipotent and eternal, speaks to us constantly in the silence of our prayer. And we know His voice, also in moments of dryness, because if we are ready and open, as our Father was, to put into practice what Our Lord asks of us, even though we have to go against the grain, He leaves in us, or gives us, that unequivocal sign of interior peace.”

We can thank God also for that peace that we have in our vocation, in our life, in the means of formation, in our own personal apostolate, in the bringing forward of all the apostolic works, in taking on our shoulders the economic responsibility for all of this great apostolic work that God wants us to do, so that we take our vocation very seriously, we are willing to carry the cross, because we know God will fill us with His interior peace.

“He also speaks to us,” said Don Alvaro, “through other people in spiritual direction. It was Our Lord who spoke to each one of us at the beginning of our vocation, when somebody opened up for us this joyful horizon so that we would give ourselves to the Work. Later on, we count on that blessed personal experience. Our Lord continues to reach out His hand to us all along our pathway until our final pilgrimage on this earth, making use also of spiritual direction to show His will to us.”

There is a conclusion from all of this, and that is that in our interior life, we have to have initiative. Initiative, but at the same time we don't direct ourselves. Our apostolate is a directed apostolate. We need that obedience, that docility, from those who are there to guide us.

We have this great treasure of the spirit of Opus Dei in our hands. There are aspects of our Father's life that we are discovering and rediscovering all the time, every time that we read some of his writings, or we discover something new about his life, or the new things that people are writing about him.

One of the ideas that is worth thinking about is that our Father was one of the greatest Christian feminists of the 20th century. Possibly nobody in the history of the Church has done as much for women in the world as our Father has done.

He encouraged women to use their talents to the full in all fields of human endeavor: in business, in politics, in medicine, in engineering, in the home, in science, in all sorts of areas. He wrote very dramatic things about the role of women in society that in many ways were ahead of their time.

In Conversations he says, “The development, maturity, emancipation of women should not mean a pretension to equality, to uniformity with men, a servile imitation of a man's way of doing things. That would not get us anywhere. Women would turn out as losers, not because they're better than men or worse, but because they're different.”

He liked to outline these particular characteristics of women and the great talents that they bring to any enterprise. He said, “Women, like men, possess the dignity of being persons and children of God. … They're called to bring to the family, to society, and to the Church, characteristics which are their own and which they alone can give: their gentle warmth and untiring generosity, their love for detail, their quick-wittedness and intuition, their simple and deep piety, their constancy” (Josemaría Escrivá, Conversations, Point 87).

Pope St. John Paul liked to say that every man coming into the world is entrusted to the care of a woman. He liked to say that while both parents play a role, it's the woman in particular that teaches the man what it means to be human. Ultimately, she teaches him what it means to love, and then this is his greatest maturity.

One American educationalist says that every baby coming into the world comes into the world like a self-satisfying, hedonistic gorilla. The role of parents is to turn that hedonistic, self-satisfying gorilla into an adult.

The little baby screams for its milk. ‘Give me my milk, and even if it's three in the morning, get up out of bed and give me my milk because I am the most important person in the world. And I'm going to scream and scream and scream until I get it.’ The role of parents is to turn this little gorilla into an adult.

He says that adults are not just people who can take care of themselves, because a dog or a cat or a hothouse plant can do that. An adult is somebody who fundamentally can take care of others. An adult is somebody who can forget about themselves.

That's what love is. That's why some people never become adults, because love is sacrifice. The mother has sacrificed herself for her child. She, more than the father, teaches that lesson to the child: what love is, how to forget about yourself, how to give yourself to others.

He continues in Conversations, “It is not only outside the home that a woman achieves her perfection, as though time spent at home was time stolen from the development of her personality. … The attention given to her family will always be a woman's greatest dignity. In the care she takes of her husband and children...in her work of creating a warm and formative atmosphere around her, a woman fulfills the most indispensable part of her mission. It follows that she can achieve her personal perfection here.”

While encouraging women to take their place in the world, to go as far as they can, to use all their talents, to play a great role in society, he also emphasizes the fundamental role that a woman plays in the family, in the home—of forming new human beings, of making that home and that family a school of deeper humanity, a school of virtue, a school of piety, the domestic Church.

He continues, “In all spheres, women have their own valuable contribution...which will be rendered to the extent that they are humanly and professionally equipped. Both family and society clearly need this special contribution, which is in no way secondary to that of men.”

We can think of all the great ways that the Catholic Church has promoted the authentic development of women all over the world through our history—the great education orders that have educated girls in every last part of the globe, the healthcare orders who took care of the sick in all sorts of ways, giving great example,

The Church has always promoted the care and education of women as much as possible. But St. Josemaría has sort of brought it to a different level. Their great contribution will be “insofar as they are humanly and professionally equipped.” He encourages women to go as far as they can, to be experts in various fields.

“The essential equality with men and women,” he says, “demands an understanding of the complementary roles which they play in the Church's growth and in the progress of society.”

In marriage a man does not complete a woman or the woman does not complete a man. They are already complete in themselves. They complement each other.

“Not in vain,” he says, “did God make them man and woman. This diversity should be considered not in a ‘patriarchal’ sense but in its full, rich depth of tones and consequences (Conversations, Point 14).

Diversity is something good. It’s willed by God, something we have to foster. God created the male and female. The male should be more male and the female should be more female.

“In this way,.” he continues, “men are freed from the temptation of 'masculinizing' the Church and society, and women from seeing their mission in the People of God and in the world as no more than showing that they can do equally well the tasks which were formerly reserved to men. I think that both men and women should rightly consider themselves as the protagonists in the history of salvation, but each complementing the work of the other.”

I was on a plane a few years ago and there was a young couple with their young baby. I couldn't help noticing how the mother was looking after the baby very well and keeping him happy.

Then, after a little while she passed the baby to the father. You could sort of see this young father—he did his best, he did what he could. But his way of carrying the baby, looking after the baby, and trying to satisfy the needs of the baby, compared to the mother, was just inadequate.

It was almost amusing to see. In spite of his best efforts, he really couldn't hack it. In that little moment or two, you could see the difference in the quality of the talents of each person. We all have a different role to play.

When we look at the seeds that St. Josemaría has sown in the world by the will of God with the women of the Prelature, we could think, on this feast day—as we begin to look towards the hundredth anniversary that is coming up in a few years, which the Father has encouraged us to focus on—we could think of all the wonderful horizons that are opening up in front of us.

As the Prelate likes to tell us, we have to think back of the early people who went to each country to start the work. There's a book about the first women who went to Japan. They left Rome. Their boat got as far as—I think it was Aden or Suez or someplace—and they found a letter waiting for them there from our Father.

He followed them every step of the journey. He sent these daughters of his to faraway places to plant that seed. He took great care that the seed would find good soil.

When we look back and see how the women of the Prelature have developed in every country, we see this great divine enterprise from a different perspective.

But then also we have to see how that same faith that our Father had in sending out those sisters of ours, and they themselves, who gave themselves so completely—we have to try and have the same dispositions in our apostolate, as we also “launch out into the deep” (Luke 5:4).

In 1988, on the 60th anniversary of the founding of the men of the Prelature, Don Álvaro talked about the spirit of the beginnings.

He said, “This 60th anniversary is an excellent occasion that Our Lord gives us to remind ourselves that we always have to go forward with the stimulating spirit full of the novelty of the beginnings, that spirit with which our Founder started the work of the 2nd of October 1928, to carry out the task that God was entrusting to him, that made him the happiest person in the world because of the confidence that Our Father in heaven gave him.”

Each one of us is called to “launch out into the deep,” to see the new horizons of apostolate that God is placing before us, new people that we get to meet, new possibilities.

The pandemic, the social media, there are all sorts of new means for transmitting the message of the gospel. There are new people who are hungry to hear these things. We have to look to the future.

Recently, Pope Francis has talked about how there is a great spiritual emptiness in the world. Our Father would like to say this is our world. This moment of history—it is the world that God has entrusted to us.

He wants us to fill that spiritual emptiness with all the good things that we have to give, with the apostolate of apostolates, with the care of our homes and of our family, with all sorts of details of taste and elegance—often unconscious details that transmit a great refinement and transmit the message of the dignity of every human person.

Our Father has said that every corner of the homes of every supernumerary, every cooperator, has to become a corner of the home in Nazareth. It is our job to make that happen.

Each one of us has to help our sisters to fulfill that great goal: caring for the work of the Catering, taking care of the dining room, taking care with things of laundry, order, looking after the regulae internae, the criteria of separation that our Father has given us, learning how to serve in a better way so that the work of our sisters reaches further, and so that from each one of our homes and our centers, there radiates that spirit of Christian fraternity that hopefully will help to spread the seeds of many vocations in many families.

Don Álvaro continues, “Without wanting to be exhaustive, I want to remind you of certain concrete points that we have to keep very much in mind as we try to faithfully fulfill the Work of God on this earth.”

Like our Father Abraham, you could say of our Founder that he believed “against all hope” (Rom. 4:18), confiding in the Word of God. That supernatural sureness that the Work would be carried out was confirmed to him by Our Lord on many different occasions. It presupposed the exercise of a heroic faith on the part of our Founder.

As we look to the future, we're also called to have heroic faith in our vocation, in the Church, in the Holy Father, in Our Father God who is beside us all the time—in this particular apostolic task that God has placed in front of me, this Circle, that class, this recollection, this retreat, this town or village that I have to try and bring the Work to, with a number of journeys.

Lord, help me to have the same hope, confidence, fortitude, and perseverance as our Father had in fulfilling these things.

Don Álvaro continues, “Without failing before any of the difficulties that humanly speaking were enormous, difficulties that presented themselves to him along his pathway, he didn't vacillate in any way. He thought of that aspiration: ‘The waters will pass through the mountains’ (Ps 104:10). Our Lord comforted him with that aspiration on the 12th of December 1931 when the obstacles to the development of the Work were truly immense.

“None of us in our efforts to spend ourselves to bring forth Opus Dei will ever encounter the same sort of obstacles that our Father encountered. God placed these aspirations in his soul, in his heart, so that he would transmit them to us, so that we would always walk with faith and optimism along the pathways of the earth, very confident that God is acting in us and through us.”

“With the fortitude of God and the faith of our Founder,” said Don Álvaro, “we have to personify until the end of time ‘waters will pass through the mountains,’ overcoming all sorts of difficulties that will never be lacking.”

We can't be surprised that there are difficulties or crosses or problems. That's par for the course. It's a given. It's a good sign. God blesses us with the cross.

The Father has said that the expansion of Opus Dei goes forward in and from the cross. We're not surprised by the cross in our life. We can thank God for those crosses. They help us to be more supernatural, to turn to our prayer a little more.

One time, many years ago, Don Álvaro went to visit England. He was told that they were redoing a number of the centers, doing a lot of rebuilding and extending and all sorts of developments, and that they had huge financial problems.

Don Alvaro said, “Wonderful. I wish you many financial problems, because then you will pray more.”

The problems lead us to pray, lead us to be supernatural. These were great lessons that our Father and Don Álvaro learned in the course of time that they wanted to transmit to us.

He continues, “This must be our attitude in our personal apostolate, and in the task that the Work confides to us. Sure of the power of God, with the spirit of initiative and the mentality of pioneers, we have to launch ourselves to open up new channels through which the spirit of Opus Dei can circulate, carrying to the most diverse environments that supernatural savor capable of vivifying all honorable human occupations.”

What an enormous horizon! Through our friends and contacts, we come to know of new environments, professions, areas where perhaps the spirit of God and the doctrine of God needs to circulate.

So many people who are in need of new ideas or of doctrine are in formerly Christian countries that have forgotten all their Christian formation and need to be born again.

We are here to carry out this great work of evangelization. God wants to use inadequate instruments with all of their miseries—that is, each one of us.

“We can't dilute,” he says, “our personal responsibility, that of each one of us, into that of the directors or a supposed structure. Our Father affirmed that the Work is a disorganized organization. That means that as a consequence, there could never be lacking our personal spontaneity, and that of all the members of the Prelature, at the time of proposing and bringing forward apostolic activities.”

Each one of us is to think: What can I do? What does God want me to do? Where can I have initiative and responsibility in bringing things forward?

“The organization of the Work,” he says, “does not hem us in in any way. Rather, through its very nature, it stimulates us. It fosters a great liberty of movement not only in professional and political areas, but that of each one of us, in the enormously wide fields of personal apostolic initiative.”

That word initiative is a very attractive word on the lips of a member of Opus Dei. He says, “We cannot forget that a woman of Opus Dei, a man of Opus Dei, must in all moments be a person who is an apostle.”

We can ask Our Lady, Mother of Fair Love, that she might help us to go very deep on this special day, and ask Our Lord to help us to have a greater spirit of wonder and gratitude for our vocation, as we look to the future and all the great horizons that the Father is placing before us.

Mater Pulchrae Dilectiones, filios tuos adiuva!

‘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