The Birthday of St. Josemaría Escrivá

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.

We are told in the Book of Genesis, “Such was the story of heaven and earth as they were created. At the time when Yahweh God made earth and heaven, there was as yet no wild bush on the earth nor had any wild plant yet sprung up, for Yahweh God had not sent rain on the earth, nor was there any man to till the soil. Instead, water flowed out of the ground and watered all the surface of the soil” (Gen. 2:4-6).

This is the first reading chosen for the Mass of our Father. Today we celebrate his birthday.

It's a special day in the family of Opus Dei, a particular day on which to ask our Father for special things: for the apostolate, for our own interior life, for our family, for all the little things that we may need or would like to have. We know our Father has a special ear for all of his children.

It's also a day to look back at the figure of our Father. With time, his sphere grows bigger and bigger.

We come to hear new things about him. We get graces to understand a little more the mission that he fulfilled.

We come to understand in a greater way the role the Prelature of Opus Dei has to fulfill in the history of the Church.

From the different books we may read about the history of the Work, we see the unprecedented way in which it has spread all over the world, reaching so many millions of people.

Our supernatural family is something very special that helps us to see the very special person and very special saint that our Father was.

There was an anecdote told about our Father when he died and we were gathering testimonies of people.

One of the main architects in Villa Tevere, Don Jesús Gazapo at the time, went to contact a lot of the people who had worked on the project in Villa Tevere over the years in the building and different aspects of construction and maintenance.

They had met our Father and all of them remembered how our Father had treated them. They all felt very well treated with great respect, and dignity, and appreciation.

It was a small little anecdote. But all these little anecdotes that we hear about our Father, small as they may be, all serve to shed light on this great personality that God chose to be the Founder of Opus Dei.

The feast of the birthday of our Father revives in each one of our hearts the presence and the memory of our Father.

Don Álvaro liked to say, “We will always be living in the times of our Father. He's not just a memory. Everything that he said, everything that he did, has a constant relevance for us, and we can thank Our Lord that his figure and his teachings are well ingrained in the souls of each one of us.”

While that may be the reality, it's also a work in progress. We will always need to have his figure and teachings more and more ingrained in the souls of each one of us so that we come to be more Opus Dei with the passage of time.

Numerary, supernumerary, associate, assistant numerary—in whatever capacity that we may be called—'I have to be better, I have to be the person our Father wants me to be.’

The message that Our Lord gave him to give to the world continues to spread to the apostolate of all his children in wider circles each time.

We are very much part of that. God has counted on each one of us to be in a certain place at a certain time, to give witness to the message that our Father came to give the world, with our words and with our actions, with our daring, with our apostolic outlook, with our holiness.

The lovable and heroic virtues of our Father shine more and more before the eyes of the world and make him an attractive model to follow Christ.

He liked to say, “Christ is our only model” (Josemaría Escrivá, Friends of God, Point 128), but he's our pathway to that model, a very special intercessor to whom we can turn with confidence so that he speaks to God for us.

He will always have something to say to us—everything he said, everything he did—because the Holy Spirit is working through him all the time.

As we grow in our vocation, hopefully, we come to appreciate a little more his heroic correspondence to the grace of God, something that we have to try and imitate.

That heroic correspondence made it possible for the Work of God and the supernatural vocation of each one of his children to come about. We owe him a great debt of gratitude.

There's a phrase in the Letter of St. John which says, “No greater joy can I have than this, to hear that my children follow the truth” (3 John 1:4).

No greater joy can our Father have in heaven than to see that we live the spirit that he has given to us, the spirit that he gave his life to make it clear and relevant in every aspect of our life.

Don Álvaro liked to say that every time that we fulfill some little aspect of our spirit—a Morning Offering or the expense account or apostolic plans or give a fraternal correction or whatever it may be—all that makes our Father go higher in heaven, because that increases his fruitfulness.

When we by the grace of God see new apostolic works growing around us, things that our Father did not see on this earth, we know that he sees them from heaven.

His life and his correspondence have given rise to an immense fruitfulness, possibly an unprecedented fruitfulness, in the history of the Church.

Birthdays are good occasions on which to give presents. The best present that our Father might ask of us is a greater generosity and correspondence in the struggle of each day.

We know that our Father constantly looks out for each one of his children. He watches over us. He continues directing the Work from heaven.

You've probably heard the story of the Argentinian pilot who had to bail out of his plane some time during the Falklands War. He found himself in the South Atlantic, bobbing around in the water with his life jacket.

As a member of the Work, he remembered that everybody in Opus Dei prays a Memorare for the person who needs it most. As he was there in the South Atlantic, with no land in sight, he thought to himself, ‘I must be the person in Opus Dei who needs it most.’

He got a great consolation from the idea that ‘so many people are praying a Memorare for me today.’ But then there also came to his mind that our Father never gave anything to anybody without them working for it.

‘If I want a favor from our Father to get out of this situation, I better do what's there on my part to do. I better start swimming.’

He didn't know which direction to swim in, but he chose one direction, and he swam in that direction. He lived to tell the tale.

Our Father is watching out for each one of us. He continues to direct the Work from heaven in every way.

Don Álvaro and Don Javier, in their great humility, often made reference to that fact—that we are just his instrument.

Our Father obtains from each one of us inspirations from the Holy Spirit. He acts as the loudspeaker of those inspirations, helps us to hear them better, to see them clearer, maybe helps us to go a little further along our pathway, to launch out into the deep a little more, to respond to those gentle urges that Our Lord may give us, to give ourselves a little more.

One time, Don Federico Suarez was asked by our Father to write something about Our Lady. He produced twenty pages on Our Lady. If we were to write something about Our Lady, we might produce five or maybe six or maybe four. He produced twenty.

Our Father read it and said to him, “I think you could do a little better than this. Why don't you try again?” He produced 100 pages. That was made into the book Mary of Nazareth.

From being pushed a little more, stretched a little more, he produced something of great value for so many people in the world trying to seek out their vocation.

Our Father had special graces to be able to do special things.

There's a story told that one time he went shopping in Rome with two architects that were there at that time. They went to an antique dealer. They were looking for little items of decor for the center.

On this occasion, they didn't succeed in buying anything. They went to an antique shop that they'd been to many times before. They knew the owner, the proprietor, the person who worked there.

But when they went home, our Father said to the people who were with him that something wasn't right. There was something about this man that was not the same as before. Our Father sensed that there was a problem, but he didn't know what it was.

He asked one of them to call the antique dealer and ask if everything was okay. And the dealer said, “No, actually, my wife is very sick in hospital and so I'm very concerned about her.”

It was an example of how our Father connected with people and was very sensitive about little things that might not be quite what they should be in their lives; little problems that they may have.

If our Father was like that in his life, imagine how much more active and sensitive he may be in heaven with all the little concerns that we might have about family members, or professional matters, or apostolic concerns, or a whole pile of other things.

When we look back at our Father's life, we see an incredible fruitfulness. The book, The Canonical Path of Opus Dei gives a number of statistics which are very interesting.

In 1946, there were four priests of Opus Dei. In 1950, just four years later, there were 23, with 46 preparing, eleven of those in Rome.

Having started Opus Dei in the late 1930s and early 1940s in Madrid, in 1950, there were 100 centers all over Europe.

You look at these statistics and you see an incredible growth in a very short period.

If all those people were coming to the Work, our Father and Don Álvaro had a great challenge and burden of forming them, of helping them to persevere, of giving them spiritual formation, helping them in all sorts of ways.

When we look back at these things, we see the way that our Father must have had to work and to plan and to solve the problems.

Only Christ proposes Himself as full authority as a model for men. Only He is the perfect image of God the Father.

But there are so many graces contained in His sacred humanity. There are numerous ways of being conformed to Christ.

When God wants to open up new pathways in the Church, He showers grace on the person chosen, which allows him to fulfill the mission that has been entrusted to him.

It's as though our Father saw the development of the Work over time; what it meant for the Church and humanity. We're involved in something immense.

I remember a new cooperator in the Philippines telling me how he didn't understand everything about Opus Dei, didn't know everything about it, “but,” he said, “I know I'm involved in something great. That gives me a great joy and pride in life.”

We have the wonderful task of helping many people to be participants in something great, the great supernatural family that God has called us to.

Those very special gifts that the Holy Spirit gave to our Father were what moved him to work unceasingly from October 2, 1928 to open up a new and deep furrow in the field of God which is the Church, which was to have infinite consequences.

The holy life of our Founder constitutes a clear example for us of how each one of us has to travel along that pathway of sanctity and apostolate to which we have been called. There are many lights for us in that life of our Father.

We have to try and read about him, be attentive to little anecdotes that we hear about him here and there, know the history of our family, of the canonical path, which in many ways is very much associated with the life of our Father.

Through the means of our divine vocation to Opus Dei, all of us participate in this very special grace of our Founder, which moves us to carry out that commandment of Christ with divine help: “Be you perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48), in the specific way that is proper to us.

When faithfully imitating our Father, in corresponding loyally to the spirit that God gave him, we walk along the pathway of imitating Christ.

We point it out clearly to those who come after us in our family, in our neighborhood, in our profession, in our office, in our farm.

Wherever we may be, God has a plan for us there. Our Father will never remain as just a simple historic memory. He'll always be a perennial example.

We can always seek his help as an effective intercessor before the Blessed Trinity. He is and always will be our Father to whom we can try to be similar, to whom we can try to talk, each day making a greater effort to intensify the spiritual similarity.

With that, we have a great responsibility, a blessed responsibility, of transmitting our spirit of filiation, so that the people who come after us can see how we love our Father, how we pray to him, how we ask him for things, how his life and our life are like a great light.

It's the way for us to have a strong foundation in Christ and in the Gospel.

God has given us a great treasure in our Father. “If you knew the gift of God…” (John 4:10), we're told in Scripture.

Our Lord has given us a great gift, a gift that we have to try and appreciate a little more all the time. We could ask ourselves: How could I struggle to be more like our Father all the time?

At a get-together many years ago, Don Álvaro told the people how, when he goes to Confession, one of the things he always accuses himself of is many times of negligence, when he could have been a greater help to our Father, a greater support, a better son of his, of how he could have corresponded better to that responsibility of filiation.

It’s very refined point on which to accuse yourself, but that's something we all have to ask ourselves.

Do I meditate always on the actual example of what our Father has left us? Do I know how to give myself more without holding anything back, the fulfillment of the precise will of God for me in Opus Dei, realizing that there is something there for me in every Circle, in every retreat, in every annual course, in every fraternal correction.

That's how I try to be more Opus Dei each day and to better develop the spiritual characteristics of the spirit that God transmitted to our Founder.

In that process, we have all of the writings of our Father to look to, to go to again and again, some of them in our native language, others in other languages, but mostly more and more accessible to all of us.

We have to sort of gravitate there more and more; read more of the things that our Father wrote, or Don Álvaro wrote, or Don Javier wrote, to bathe ourselves in this spirit.

Bring to our personal prayer more frequently the vocation to which he corresponded in each second, so that we see how I also have to respond.

One very good sign of this is to increase our true filial devotion, to ask him for things, to turn to him in all sorts of moments.

There was somebody once who was out jogging. As they were jogging a bee flew into their eye and stung them, and they woke up in hospital.

They said, “All I remember is that I was jogging, and then this bee came, and I just shouted, ‘Father, Father, Father.’”

There may be many moments of crisis in our lives or emergencies when we turn to our Father with that same filial plea: help me in this situation, solve this problem.

We can try to pass that spirit on to other people also. Devotion to our Father is a magnificent apostolic weapon that Our Lord has given to us.

When we give someone a prayer card of our Father, very often we do them the favor of their lives. We introduce them to one of the most powerful saints in heaven who, with our own personal experience, has done great things for our soul and for the souls of many others, as well as many great favors.

If we bring to our prayer frequently the deeds and the words of our Father, we learn an awful lot. We never stop learning. There will always be deep lights for us there.

His example will go deep into our souls. We'll draw lights that will guide us throughout our whole life. In that way, we'll never forget his teachings.

Don Álvaro liked to say, “I don't want to place myself as a model, but I can assure you that all that I heard from our Father will never be removed from my mind.”

A good question to ask ourselves sometimes is, ‘How would our Father do this? How would he approach this problem?’

I heard a story from a supernumerary in Chile. At one stage there was a communist government in Chile and some supernumeraries were getting together to see if they could start a school.

But they were doubtful about whether this was the right moment. With the communist government, anything could happen. Everything was ready, they were ready to go, but there were these doubts.

That businessman happened to make a business trip to Europe, and he went to see our Father. He put this dilemma before our Father and said, “Father, we're ready to go and start this school, but we don't know if this is the right moment. We have these fears of the communist government; all the things that might happen.”

Our Father said, “My son, the time for going forward in any apostolic undertaking is now.”

With that, he went back to Chile and communicated it to the other members of the development board. Today, I think they have many schools in Chile and a university. Everything went forward.

Our Father has an answer for every dilemma in our life, particularly answers for apostolic undertakings. We can always turn to him.

He's been through it. There is no situation that we can pass through in our life that our Father has not been there before. That's why he's written down so many things.

If you look at the chapter on Pessimism in The Forge, you’ll find our Father went through some very low moments, because God wanted him to write about those moments, so that any child of his who might be going through a low moment in their life would know how to sanctify those moments and would come to realize, ‘This is part of my pathway to holiness.’

Therefore, at the time of the great spiritual bonanza, it's not a contradiction or anything that says something negative about their spiritual life or their vocation. Quite the opposite. It's all a part of the journey.

Our Father lets us look a little deeper into our soul to examine our conscience a little better. He might point out to us that frequently, almost without realizing it, our intention might not be as good as we would like it to be or as it should be.

We might find that we could put more love into our professional tasks. We might see that Our Lord expects more self-giving from us or a greater spirit of faith in our apostolate.

We have to try and let our Father work in our soul. Allow him to act in our soul in grace so that we can bring about resolutions with deeper humility, greater self-giving, and more committed fidelity.

I remember one time in Rome at the Feast of St. Joseph on March 19^th^, one particular person asked Don Álvaro to talk about St. Joseph.

Don Álvaro turned and said, “Thank you for asking that question. Thank you for allowing me to talk about St. Joseph—how much our Father loved to talk about St. Joseph. Our Father had a sort of a spiritual sweet tooth, and it came particularly sweet and rich when he was able to talk about the Holy Patriarch.”

How happy our Father would be to know that this coming year (December 8, 2020 to December 8, 2021), we have a year of such tremendous joys in focusing on the foster father of Jesus, the custodian of Mary—of so many beautiful virtues that we see in this father who built up family life, who gave himself so generously, who was so humble, so silent, so effective, so influential, so manly.

He'd be so happy to know that each one of us has the opportunity during this year to grow in our love of St. Joseph, the person to whom he wants us to entrust the commitment of our vocation, a commitment of love.

We can try to imitate our Father's life like good children. It was a life dedicated to embroidering a marvelous work in God's honor.

In spite of all this, he felt bad because he felt that he should have been even more generous. We know that he did everything he could.

He said to Our Lord sometimes in his prayer, “Lord, I don't know what more to do. I do everything for you that I can.”

To Our Lady he said, “Show me what you want me to do. Show yourself to be a mother and don't say to me, ‘show yourself to be a son’ because I've tried to do everything, and if there's something more you want me to do, show it to me and I will do it.”

That means that when we have to imitate our Father, we shouldn't shy away in those moments. ‘Help me to face up to those moments with fortitude, with generosity.’

Our Father never liked us to go halfway along the course. He didn't like half-measures.

Think of the impact, of the importance, of our example and fidelity throughout the centuries. We're not here to betray the work that our Father has done. Don Álvaro said, “I have used a strong word, but I don't retract even a letter of it.”

“We can't content ourselves,” he said, “with being rosewater, but rather we have to aspire to be the pure essence.”

On this special day, we can turn to Our Lady, Mother of Opus Dei, and thank her for the great gift of our Father's life and ask her that through her maternal graces, we may come to be the child of our Father that he wants each one of us to be.

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