The Communion of Saints

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 St. Paul, “As with the human body which is a unity although it has many parts—all the parts of the body, though many, still making up one single body—so it is with Christ” (1 Cor. 12:12).

St. Paul draws this analogy between the Church and the human body.

The human body is made up of many different parts. We have a liver, we have a kidney, we have lungs, we have brains, we have hands, we have feet. Yet somehow it all functions as a unity.

He is saying then that the same thing happens with the Roman Catholic Church, where many individuals, many institutions, many supernatural families, all over the world in all sorts of places, doing different things, but yet united into one single body, the Mystical Body of Christ—a rather beautiful idea.

On the one hand, St. Paul is emphasizing the diversity in the Church, but at the same time, emphasizing unity.

We find the same thing in the Prelature of Opus Dei and all supernatural families in the Church. There's a unity of spirit, a unity of juridical nature perhaps, there's a moral unity, but there's also a great diversity.

But because of that unity, every single little thing, positive thing that's done, contributes to the whole.

Every time our little toe is healthy, it contributes to the whole. If our little toe sometimes had some infection, we'd know all about it.

Our little toe sends a message to the brain to tell the rest of the body that ‘my toe is sore, watch where you're walking; I need some treatment’ or ‘I need special care or attention.’

The greatest thing that all the physical parts of the body can do is to contribute health to the whole. We try and keep our body well. We try and keep it in good shape so that it contributes to health.

That’s why every cell of the human body has its role to play. You could say that in the same way, every cell of the Mystical Body has its role to play.

The individual holiness and virtue, human and supernatural, of every last person in the Church, contributes to the good of the whole. All of us have our roles to play. We bring our grain of sand. Now that grain of sand is a great contribution.

St. Josemaría liked to point out how we have to be good channels of grace to everybody else in the Mystical Body of Christ, and also in this particular supernatural family.

This meditation is about the communion of saints.

An interesting idea to think about in the month of November when we think about how all the different parts of the Church are united in the whole: the church triumphant in heaven, the church suffering in purgatory, the church still on her journey here on earth.

We believe that the three churches can help each other. Souls in heaven can pray for us; souls in purgatory can pray for us. We can pray for them and help them to go to heaven.

We're all united in this communion of saints, where nothing is unimportant and where everybody has their role to play.

I used to work for a vascular surgeon and one of his main operations was doing what was called a carotid endarterectomy. An endarterectomy is where you open up arteries and you clean out all of the gunk that may be inside the arteries.

We know from research that too much cholesterol, cigarette smoking, butter, and nyama choma (roast meat), all these things, eventually reach our arteries.

That's why people get heart attacks or strokes or pains in their legs, or all these other things, because the arteries get narrowed and the blood doesn't flow through.

This vascular surgeon and others make a living out of cleaning out the arteries. That's called endarterectomies.

This man focused particularly on the carotid endarterectomy, which was in the neck. It was a delicate operation because you're operating on an artery that's carrying the blood to the brain. It's a very tricky thing, so a lot of precautions have to be taken.

People come to complain about, some have headaches, dizziness, or loss of sight because enough blood isn't getting through, because the arteries are blocked.

If anybody feels a bit unusual after this meditation, it doesn't necessarily mean that you need your carotid artery removed or cleaned out.

Anyway, you block off this particular artery. The patient is normally put on an incline because now all the blood that's going to the brain has to go through the other side.

You want even to get the benefit of gravity and you increase the pressure a little bit, because if the patient wakes up after the operation and they haven't received enough blood flow during the operation to their brain, they won't be very grateful.

You burrow deep down into the neck because the carotid artery is rather deep. You expose the artery and then you clamp the artery, having taken all the precautions beforehand.

Then you very delicately open the artery, taking care that you don't puncture the other side of the artery, because if you do, when the blood flows through again, you'll get the watering effect, like a hose that has holes in it. And again, the patient won't be very grateful.

You open the artery and then you clean it out, a bit like you clean out a drain or you clean out any pipe. Surgery is a bit like that. It has a lot of other similar analogies.

You clean out this artery and you remove all this gunk that is laid down there. Then you sew up the artery very carefully, and then very gently, you let the clamp loose and you let the blood flow through to make sure there are no leaks, because again, if there are leaks, the patient won't be very grateful.

One time, I remember, we had to bring a patient back to the theater because something did leak and had to be sewn up a little more.

But what's amazing is the following day, after the artery is cleaned, the patient sits up in bed feeling fantastic, because for maybe months and years they haven't had that wonderful arterial flow to the brain.

Now they feel like they have a new lease on life, and all the symptoms disappear. It's a bit like cleaning out your drain and suddenly you get a flow of water that you haven't had in months. It feels wonderful just to be able to fill your glass, or jug, or something.

The same phenomenon occurs. You see the benefit of arterial blood—life-giving arterial blood—which is a wonderful thing.

Those words of St. Josemaría, who said, “We have to send arterial blood to all the other members of the Church, to all the other members of the Prelature, to send it to the Holy Father, to the Bishop” (cf. Andrés Vázquez de Prada, The Founder of Opus Dei, Vol. III).

This is the great role of every Catholic in every parish. This is the greatest contribution we make in the universal Church to the Mystical Body, with the fulfillment of our norms, with our effort to be mortified, to practice our customs.

The main contribution every person in the Church makes to the whole is a spiritual contribution. That's what God is asking of each one of us.

You could say that one of the main purposes of the Prelature of Opus Dei is to help each individual Catholic of all ages, backgrounds, cultures to fulfill that role, to be very much a dynamic Catholic, sending that arterial blood and also, making the effort to remove any of the obstructions that may be there in the passage of that arterial blood: our laziness, our sensuality, our envy, our jealousy, all the bad things that come out of the human heart, our dishonesty.

With regular Confession, we try to remove all these things, and we try to remove them regularly, so that little by little they don't build up, because all those things can re-accumulate.

We keep the channels open; we keep them free. We make our whole soul into a better channel to distribute the grace of God.

This means that all throughout our life that role never ends, and the older we get, the more effective we can get in sending that arterial blood.

I was rather impressed one time when the Prelate of Opus Dei—at the time, Don Javier Echevarría—talked about John Paul II in the latter years of his life, who had his Parkinson's, who was very limited in his movements.

He was a very different man from what he was twenty or thirty years before, when he was traveling the world, speaking to millions. The Prelate of Opus Dei remarked, “He's now more effective than he was twenty years ago.”

Of course, from a human, physical perspective, one might not have thought that. One might have said he's very limited, he doesn't travel so much, but he said, “He's more effective now because he's more holy.”

That's the sort of holiness and effectiveness that God is hoping for and expecting from each of us. The best wine comes at the end (John 2:10).

I was at a deanery meeting in Singapore one time and we were talking a lot about youth. There was a 64-year-old Dutch missionary priest at the meeting. He spoke up very clearly at one point.

He said, “You know, all this emphasis on youth in our Church—I'll have you know I'm 64 years of age, I'm not dead yet, and I'll have you know that the best wine comes at the end.”

It was a very powerful sort of statement. The best wine comes at the end.

Some of the greatest things that God wants from us are there at the end of our life, at that acumen of holiness, at that love of Christ, that desire to serve the Church.

We look at the great example Pope Francis is giving us at the moment. In October 2021, he announced that in the coming year (2022), he wanted to go to the Congo and Hungary (January and April 2023).

Who at 85 or 86 thinks about those sorts of things? He's blazing a trail, reminding us that we have great things to contribute.

St. Paul says, “We were baptized into one body in a single Spirit, Jews as well as Greeks, slaves as well as free men, and we were all given the same Spirit to drink” (1 Cor. 12:13).

We have a single Spirit. The Holy Spirit has come to fill us with the spirit of Christ. We've been given that same spirit as well as the spirit of Opus Dei, which has something very relevant to say to us at all moments.

I was in the garden of Strathmore School last week, surrounded by ten Standard 1 kids who began to fire all sorts of questions at me.

‘Who are you?’ ‘Are you Fr. Francis?’ ‘Are you Kenyan-born?’ ‘Why is your hair white?’ ‘How old are you?’

I said, ‘I'm 68,’ and one of them said, ‘Oh, my grandmother's 51.’ I said, ‘Thank you very much.’

There are all sorts of subtle ways of getting messages across to people. We may be told all sorts of things, but we know that we still have a mission to fulfill.

He says, “The body consists not of one member, but of many. If the foot were to say, ‘I'm not a hand and so I do not belong to the body,’ it does not belong to the body any less for that.”

St. Paul goes into a lot of detail here. The foot might say, ‘You know, I don't want to belong to this body,’ or ‘I don't want to be in this place.’ The ear might say, ‘Look, I'm tired of being on the left side of the head. I want to be in the middle of the head where the nose is.’

If we started to move all the parts of the body around as they wanted to be, we'd end up in an awful mess.

“But God has placed each one of the parts of the body in that particular place where he wants them to be” (cf. 1 Cor. 12:14-18).

Likewise, He's placed us in this marriage, in this family, with these children, with these defects, in this parish, in this diocese, in this particular town, in this particular challenge. This is where He wants us to be holy.

He doesn't want us to be saying to other parts of the body, ‘You're not needed here’ (cf. 1 Cor. 12:21) or ‘You're not as good as me.’ He doesn't want comparisons.

He wants a great humility, just focusing on our mission, because other people have a different mission. Maybe, they have different crosses that we don't see.

“But if the ear were to say, ‘I am not an eye, and so I do not belong to the body,’ that would not stop its belonging to the body. If the whole body were just an eye, how would there be any hearing? If the whole body were hearing, how would there be any smelling?” (1 Cor. 12:16-17).

He says that each part of the body has its role to play. One thing we can be very grateful for and proud of is that our Church does so many things.

You may have heard me say many times before that I was at a pro-life meeting in Manila once.

This lady doctor from Liverpool said, “We can be very proud of our Church because our Church is the number one healthcare worker in the world, and also, our Church is the only Church in the world that has stood firm on the sanctity of human life in the last fifty years.”

We may discover different supernatural families in the Church doing different things—some taking care of the physically handicapped, or the mentally handicapped, or the elderly, or the newborn babies, or orphanages.

It's an amazing panorama of social work that the Church is involved in, all because of Christ, all making their contribution.

As children of the Church—the Church is our Mother—we should always try and have something good to say about all these supernatural families, which have done so much in the past, and will do so much in the future.

You think of all the great teaching orders, and what they've done in the world, in each country, in the last two hundred years. All the health care workers. It's quite amazing, really, standards, enormous contributions.

We can be very proud of our Church. ‘I'm proud to be part of such a wonderful institution.’ Also, I have to see what I can contribute and what I can bring. How can I help this great Body to be more effective?

“As it is,” he says, “God has put all separate parts into the body as he chose. If they were all the same part, how could it be a body? As it is, the parts are many but the body is one” (1 Cor. 12:18-20).

We're not here to criticize or wonder about other supernatural families of the Church, or what contribution this person makes or this institution makes.

“If you can't praise, say nothing” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 443). Keep our mouths shut. St. says that in one of the points of The Way. Very good common sense. Can't praise, say nothing.

Maybe you don't know what sacrifices people made to make this school function, or this hospital function, or to bring catechesis to a certain part of the world. We don't know all these things; we’ll find them all out in heaven.

But they were all chosen by God to fulfill this role. People who were encouraged and nourished by the communion of saints, the prayers and sacrifices people made to help them to go forward.

Because of that unity, when we hear that a certain part of the Church is suffering in some way through persecution, that has to lead us to pray a little bit for them.

There was a piece of news in the paper yesterday (November 11, 2011), how I think 32 members of the Salesian community—Don Bosco Fathers in Addis Ababa—were arrested in Ethiopia, because they are Tigrayans. They were taken away someplace that nobody knows where they are.

When we hear these sorts of things happening, we can pray for those brothers of ours. A very good thing to read in history sometimes is what the missionary orders have done in places like China; what people have suffered to bring things forward. Very moving.

I go to see a 95-year-old Kiltegan priest in Thigio every so often. He was the first missionary to go to Pokot in 1952. He has some amazing stories.

He said, ‘When I went there, there was no education, no medication, and no Revelation.’

He spent the next forty-nine years solving those problems. Wonderful stories.

What some of these people have done in history is incredible. Of course, all of that now to a large extent is passed to lay people. It is the era of the laity in the Church.

There will be a lot to learn from our older brothers about “launching out into the deep” (Luke 5:4), taking on big challenges.

Seeing the evangelization of society and of culture is a big project for us. We know that each of us, with our own personal strengths and weaknesses—we can't do very much. But with the grace of God, we can do everything; the communion of saints.

Because the grace of God can work all sorts of miracles.

“If they were all the same part, how could it be a body? As it is, the parts are many, but the body is one. The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you.’ Nor can the head say to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Cor. 12:19-21).

If we get an infection in our finger, and that finger sends a message to the brain, ‘Tell all the other parts of the body that one part is sick,’ it all functions together.

The rest of the body sends nutrients and lays down a scab reaction, a defensive mechanism to send cells that will heal that particular infection.

All the strength goes there and directs the forces of the body to that infected part.

One of the jobs of the Holy Father, or the Prelate of the Church, or the head of any organization of the Church, is to channel a lot of prayer to the parts of the Body that may be suffering or that need it a little more.

“What is more,” it says, “it is precisely the parts of the body that seem the weakest which are the indispensable ones. It is the part of the body that we consider least dignified that we surround with the greatest dignity; and our less presentable parts are given greater presentability, which our presentable parts do not need. God has composed the body,” says St. Paul, “so that greater dignity is given to the parts which were without it, so that there may not be disagreements inside the body but each part may be equally concerned for all the others” (1 Cor. 12:22-25).

We can thank God for this great spirit of unity the Catholic Church gives us. Catholic means universal.

We don't just live in our little cave, unconcerned about everybody else.

We’re concerned for everybody in the universal Church, our Christian spirit, which we've been given, to be concerned for everybody, to have a love for all souls, to want to bring light and truth and beauty to every single soul that we come to know about, because everyone is important.

Now God has placed us where we are, to create those outer-going ripples in concentric circles radiating outwards, so that we make a bigger splash all the time.

“If one part is hurt,” says St. Paul, “all the parts share its pain. If one part is honored, all the parts share its joy” (1 Cor. 12:26).

If we hear that a part of the Church is somehow suffering in some way, or there's been some contradiction, we feel for that part of the Church.

We love the Church because the Church is our Mother. I love the Church because the Church is my Mother, and I don't let anyone speak badly of the Church. I stand up to defend my mother in all situations because I love my Mother and I know that she's good. I look for ways and means to honor her name in all sorts of ways.

“Now Christ's body is yourselves, each of you, with a part to play in the whole. And those whom God has appointed in the Church are, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers; after them miraculous powers, then gifts of healing, helpful acts, guidance, various kinds of tongues.

“Are all of them apostles? Or all prophets? Or all teachers? Or all miracle workers? Do all have the gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues and all interpret them?” (1 Cor. 12:27-30).

Obviously not. God has appointed people to fulfill certain roles and wants each one of them to strive to be holy in that particular role. We all cannot be archbishops, popes, priests, or nuns.

God wants us in our place where He's placed us, in this family, in this marriage, in this community. But He wants us vibrant there, like a witness, giving off the fragrance of Christ, giving good example.

“Set your mind,” he says, “on the higher gifts. And now I want to put before you the best way of all” (cf. 1 Cor. 12:31).

We look at this great reality of the communion of saints in the Church and in the Work, and at the same time, we come to see our own personal miseries.

St. Paul says, “Wherefore, so that I should not get above myself, I was given a thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan to batter me and prevent me from getting above myself” (2 Cor. 12:7).

As we get older, we may be subject to all sorts of different temptations. The devil may throw at us all sorts of thoughts, because if he can knock us off our perch, he's won a great battle.

But we know that no matter what terrible thoughts may go through our mind—we might think of robbing a bank or we might think of doing things we've never done before in our life; we wonder, where did that thought come from?—we know that we have the communion of saints, the strength of people around us.

“My grace is sufficient for you.”

“About this,” he says, “I have three times pleaded with the Lord that it might leave me; but he answered, ‘My grace is enough for you: for power is at full stretch in weakness.’ It is, then, about my weaknesses that I am happiest of all to boast, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor. 12:8-9).

I know that the power of Christ is passing through us. God is using our words, our actions, our example. That arterial blood flows through our soul.

Every time we go to Confession on a weekly basis, we take away a little bit of bad stuff that could hinder the flow of that grace.

Just like you look at a pipe and you take away some little rusty pieces or a little bit of bad things that get laid down there. The stuff that gets laid down in our arteries is called atheroma. It's a rather biscuity type of material that can block the blood.

Our weekly Confession helps us keep the channels open, clean, and effective. We are always at our most effective in the Mystical Body.

God takes into account our weaknesses, our failures. We can offer those miseries, those humiliations, those cracks.

He makes use of them and leads us to be more holy, so that we can go forward to being more effective.

“The power of charity!” says St. Josemaría in The Way. “If you live that blessed fraternal spirit, your mutual weakness will also be a support to keep you upright in the fulfillment of duty; just as in a house of cards, one card supports another” (Josemaría Escrivá, The Way, Point 462).

I don't know if you've seen the story this week of a thing that happened in a school run by people connected with the Work in Madrid.

A mother was collecting her children from school, and she had the kids in the car.

Then she went to engage the gear and instead of going into reverse, she went forward. And she went forward, and she hit three six-year-old kids, killing one of them and very badly injuring two others.

Of course, this was a terrible contradiction. The mother of the kid that was killed was the secretary of the school.

She comes out to the car park rushing and she finds her child dead there in the car park. She embraces her in her dying moments, but then sees the other mother totally distraught as to what has happened, and goes and embraces her.

She forgives her, tells her not to worry. It's been all over the Spanish media.

The Prelate of Opus Dei has sent a message to that school, to those mothers. Some really beautiful things have happened.

The wonderful power of charity, of forgiveness, of helping others in a difficult moment.

Of course, it's a school for girls and the government has been saying that all schools should be co-ed. The commentators were saying these are the beautiful things that happen in single-ed schools. People learn perhaps how to be more human, more understanding, more forgiving, even in very difficult circumstances.

We're told in The Forge, “Think how pleasing to Our Lord is the incense burnt in his honor. Think also how little the things of this earth are worth; even as they begin they are already ending.

“In Heaven, instead, a great Love awaits you, with no betrayals and no deceptions. The fullness of love, the fullness of beauty and greatness and knowledge… And it will never cloy: it will satiate, yet you will still want more” (J. Escrivá, The Forge, Point 995).

“Live a special communion of saints,” he says, “and, in the moments of interior struggle, just as in the hours of professional work, each of you will feel the joy and the strength of not being alone” (J. Escrivá, The Way, Point 545).

St. Josemaría wanted everybody connected with the Prelature to feel very much supported, encouraged, never to feel alone—supported and encouraged, particularly by the communion of saints. ‘Knowing that people are praying for me, I'm not alone.’

There was a story of a guy in the Falklands War—you probably heard many years ago—an Argentinian pilot who had to bail out of his plane.

He found himself bobbing around in the South Atlantic in a life jacket. No sign of land anywhere.

As he was bobbing around in the water, he remembered that all over the world, every member of Opus Dei is praying for the person of the Work who needs it most.

As he was bobbing around in the South Atlantic, with no sign of land, the thought came to him, ‘I must be the person of Opus Dei who needs it most.’ No sign of land here in the middle of the Atlantic.

And he felt rather supported by those words. He asked St. Josemaría to help him out of this situation, very supported by the prayers of all.

But then he remembered that St. Josemaría never gave anything for nothing. He wanted people to use all the human means that they could.

With a lot of common practical sense, he thought, ‘I better use the means that I can. I had better start swimming.’

He didn't know in what direction to swim in, but he decided just to start swimming. Eventually, he found land and he lived to tell the tale, buoyed up by the fact that ‘everybody around the world was praying for me.’

We can ask Our Lady, that we might be very aware of the strength of the communion of saints, so that we might feel buoyed up by all that support that can be given to us; and also, all the arterial blood, spiritually speaking, that Our Lord wants us to send to so many other souls.

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.

PKN