The Grandfather

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

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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.

Today is the feast of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal. It is also the anniversary of the death of the Grandfather, who had great devotion to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal.

Our Father didn't speak much about his family, but he let it be known very clearly that God had used his parents and his family, Aunt Carmen, and all the events of his family life to shape the spirit of Opus Dei. He saw very clearly that part of our spirit is that we should be a family, not just an organization or a group of people that have come together to do something good and nice in society.

He saw that the family spirit was something very central, very crucial, the will of God. It's something that we have to try and decipher in all situations, to see in all its richness and beauty, and to take very good care of, because Opus Dei is a family, a supernatural family.

St. Josemaría liked to say that we belong to the family of Nazareth. He said in Spanish, A esa familia, partenecemos. We belong to that family.

Everything related to the family for us is important. Our Father had a horror that we might live like strangers. He wanted us to be very close to our sisters and our brothers, those people that God has placed around us. To think out of the box like any family.

He gave us the criteria to put our hearts on the ground so that others could walk easier. He said we have to try and steal a little bit of heaven so that other people can experience that heaven around us.

He said nobody has the job or the assignment to mortify other people or to make life difficult for them. Part of our role is to make life easier for others so they can feel the family. There are occasions when all of us in our life need to feel the family: I'm surrounded by people who love me, who care for me, who watch out for me, who watch my back, who are thinking and praying about me all the time. That's why it's wonderful to belong to such a family.

Our Father pointed out that one of the greatest acts of supernatural love we can practice with others is fraternal correction.

If ever we have to give the fraternal correction and we find it a bit difficult, it can be helpful to think, This is the greatest act of supernatural love that I can practice with any person God has placed beside me. It's a sign that I love them, that I care for them, that I want them to be holy, I want them to get to heaven.

It's one of the greatest acts of love of our family that we can have. We preserve our spirit through fraternal correction, through living this family spirit.

Likewise, if we ever receive a fraternal correction, it can be really helpful also to go over those ideas in our mind: this is the greatest act of supernatural affection somebody can practice with me. It's a sign I’m not alone, that I belong to a family, and that people love and care for me.

In this very rich family spirit, our Father [St. Josemaría] saw that God wanted to use his own family to mold this spirit. The family spirit of Opus Dei is molded by the family spirit of the family of Escrivá de Balaguer. That's why they occupy such a prominent place in our life.

God used the Grandfather, the Grandmother, and Aunt Carmen to shape our spirit. Today is a day that we highlight that particular aspect of our family spirit. Our Father said that devotion to the Grandparents and Aunt Carmen is a very central aspect of our spirit.

Today is a very good day to pray to the Grandfather. Grandfathers are people who tend to be a little bit in the background, sort of watching everything that's taking place, but keeping quiet. But they see and understand everything that's going on.

Grandfathers are people that you can go to who always have a soft heart. Often grandparents will grant things to their grandchildren that their parents won't grant them for various reasons. They spoil them.

Today is a really good day to ask the Grandfather to spoil us a little bit, to grant us this virtue, or this other favor, or this other little thing, and live our spirit very much.

Our Father left us a very beautiful picture of the Grandfather. He was a very good man in the town of Barbastro. He had a lot of tragedy in his life: those three sisters died one after the other. We hear a lot about the impact that that had on the Grandmother. But you get the impression that the Grandfather was there in the background, sort of handling all these things. A bit like St. Joseph. Solving the problems, going forward, and helping the family to get through these trials.

At the same time, very open to life: they had that other child later on in life. It can't have been so easy with all the responsibility that that brought with it.

We know that his business did not go so well. There was a big crisis and he had to leave Barbastro and go and get a job in Logroño. The family took a step down the social ladder; and went through difficult times.

It's a very interesting thing for us to remember because our own blood families, or the families that we know, or families of the Work might go through similar things. It's a normal thing in this life. Some people have to take a step down or a step backward or whatever, and go through rough times.

It's good that we remember where our family has come from—what our Father suffered and our Grandfather suffered: humiliation; beginning again when he wasn't so young; having to work as a supporter in somebody else's business.

All this is a very wonderful example of virtue for us. Our Father saw all this taking place before his eyes.

At the same time, we find written down in certain biographies that the Grandfather was able to pay off all of his creditors—people that he owed money to. Some of his relatives thought that that wasn't necessary and that he was gullible, or that he was a bit stupid, or that he put his own family in a difficult situation. But it shows he was a very honest man. A man of great integrity. That can be a great example for us also.

We have a legacy, a family spirit that is very beautiful, and very rich: how to behave in certain circumstances as an honorable person. While reading between the lines, we also find that there were relatives, I think on both sides of the family, who thought he was a bit naive. He would have suffered a bit for that also. I think some other relatives could have helped a little bit, but perhaps they didn't.

All of this can lead us to have great sympathy for the Grandfather, that he might always have a place in our hearts so that we can run to him and ask him for those favors.

In the January 1980 letter, the letter that Don Álvaro wrote on the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Women of the Prelature, he talks a lot about this family atmosphere. It’s a very wonderful letter to go back and read from time to time, and see how central that family atmosphere is to our whole vocation.

In a special way, Catering is entrusted with creating that family atmosphere, of making our centers into homes—homes where we feel that family and feel that family atmosphere. Homes that have little items of décor, taste, or cleanliness, all sorts of little details. Often family life is made up of details.

We’re called in our professional work to be experts in that area. The work of the Catering is the work of caring. It's a profession of caring. We can never care too much. It means our hearts and our minds are theirs. Good professional people.

Blessed Álvaro says this spirit gives a special character, a family air to our personal lives. We are not people without a family. It gives a unique flavor to all our work. It was clearly implanted by God in our Father's heart from the moment He chose him as His instrument to implement the Work. It's not something extra or added on, or sort of an icing on the cake. It's part of the very central aspect of our spirit. Therefore, everything related to the family of our Father is important.

One year I had to wrap Christmas presents when I came to Kenya. I sat the whole of Christmas Eve wrapping Christmas presents because there was a whole pile of people in the center and not a single present had been wrapped.

I had a lot of time to think about that particular Christmas Eve. I remember thinking I don't think I've ever wrapped a Christmas present in the last twenty years, or even thirty years. It sort of all came at once. I was thinking there must be an awful lot of members of Opus Dei in centers all over the world that are spending today wrapping Christmas presents.

Are there people rushing out at the last minute to buy that last little present that is needed? I began to think of all those people in all those centers spending all that time wrapping Christmas presents, and other people that would have gone out to buy them. They would have spent all that money, and even the money on the wrapping paper. If you add all of that up all over the world it must come to something enormous. I had a lot of time to think about this.

I was thinking that our Father must have seen all of this—that it was going to cost an awful lot of time and money for all eternity—that members of Opus Dei who live in the centers, and the associates, have Father Christmas, and Santa Claus and wrap these presents and buy them and have them. That's what must have gone through our Father's mind: look, let's not bother with all of this. Let's focus more on more recollections, more circles, more classes—all these other things we could be doing.

He could have decreed: On Christmas Day everyone in Opus Dei will get a pencil. Unwrapped. The director will come to the get-together after lunch and say: Here's your pencil and here's your pencil and here's your pencil. And that's it. We don't spend any time and money on the business of wrapping Christmas presents.

But our Father didn't say that. He saw that that business of having Father Christmas, and every person getting one or two little things and a little funny little joke—it’s part of our family spirit, a custom that we live. We go to great lengths to live it because we all love to get something that's wrapped up nice. Even if we know what's inside, we still love to get it.

I was living with a philosopher once. And his joke-gift of Christmas: he was always talking about metaphysics and being. He got a matchbox with nothing inside. The little piece of paper that was written in the matchbox said: This is a box full of nothing. A very philosophical idea.

Even if we get a little matchbox full of nothing—probably we won't in our whole life; that only happens to philosophers—we also get a little bit of a kick out of this thing. It's a childlike little spirit. All those things in our family are important.

I have no doubt whatsoever, Don Álvaro says, that this spirit, which is both a supernatural and a wonderful human reality, was already alive in the soul of our Founder, brought to life there by his sacrifice and that of his own family: the Grandparents, Aunt Carmen, and Uncle Santiago.

We can ask the Grandfather today for many special things. Big things. Perhaps things we don't dare to ask our Father for are a great love of our vocation, a great love of our family spirit, and a great love and care for all those things that make up that family spirit.

Care of get-togethers: we come with things to say. Some people find it very easy to talk in get-togethers, and some people don't find it easy at all. We might be one of those people who find it easy to talk. Maybe we have to stop talking so much and let other people talk.

Or we might have to make a bigger effort to be more loquacious and say more things; find those apostolic anecdotes to bring to the get-together to brighten up everybody's life around us, so that they can also savor those moments of family life, and all the activities that are family activities: our prayer in the morning, our Mass, other events that we do together, our recollection, our retreat, our annual course. We also take very good care to live that family spirit. Punctuality, order, presence—all these things are important.

We show our love and our importance to the family gatherings by being there a few minutes before and seeing the example we receive from people older in the Work of how they take care of those things.

Most sacrifices, we're told, have been foreseen in God's plan to shape His work. Listen now, my children, to these confidential words of our beloved Founder: “I don't find it easy,” he said, “to talk about my parents. And the same probably happens to you, my children. I feel rather sensitive about this. I see it as God's providence that my mother and my sister Carmen should have helped us so much to have this family atmosphere at Work. God wanted it that way.

“To give an example, there are 300 people living in the central house, and yet each part of this house is a family home, with bonds stronger than those of any natural family. We are united in our hearts, wills, and desires. The promised hundredfold can be seen so clearly. I can assure you, my children, that it is you, my daughters and sons, who reign uppermost in my heart.”

He gives us this example of 300 people living together, and yet every part of this house is a part of a family home. The numbers don't matter. We live that spirit in every corner.

Our Father used to say that in every corner of the homes of the supernumeraries and the associates, that same family atmosphere has to reign there. It speaks to us with sometimes immaterial details of care, of cleanliness, of hygiene, of taste, all these things.

He said, “I love all the members of my natural family because I am bound to it in charity and justice. But there are so many things that take precedence over them.”

A very important statement: “So many things that take precedence over them.” I love my natural family, but they're on a secondary plane. They're not the big thing in my life.

There's a very important Christian concept, which is that the family we form is more important than the family we come from. In many cultures that's not so clear.

In Asia, grandparents sometimes have great authority in their children's homes. They can decide what color the painting should be on the wall of their living room.

But in Christianity, that's not the way. When children form a family, they decide what color they want on their living room wall. There are all sorts of other little details.

Natural parents have to take a step back when their children get married. Let them follow the pathway of their vocation in life. They have to learn how to be in the back seat.

When we come to the Work, we come to give everything. We come to find this family and take part in it. So our own blood family takes a secondary place. We love them very much, but they're not the most important. We try to take care of them, very often spiritually, and if we can, materially. But we see that our place is in my home.

Our Father always emphasized that the greatest service that we give to the members of our blood family is fidelity to our vocation. Very often we are their ticket into heaven. If we have brothers and sisters who are far away from God or the Church, and their lives are not what they might be, maybe that becomes all the more important.

Our greatest gift is to live our spirit well, to give priority to the things of our family, the apostolate, our availability to go here, to go there, to do this, to do that.

I heard one of the early numeraries in the Philippines once was asked to go to a certain center, and a few months later, was asked to change to another one. She told me she was a bit advanced in years, and all this change wasn't so easy, moving around the place. But she said, “When I brought it to my prayer, I saw that, well, that's why I'm a numerary.”

There's great wisdom in those words. “That's why I'm a numerary.” God can move me around the way he wants. Plug me in here, plug me in there, solve this other problem, move here, change center, change country, wherever I'm needed.

That's very much the spirit of the Holy Family: Our Lady and St. Joseph. Go to Bethlehem, go to Egypt, stay there, now come back.

We belong to this family, with the same spirit. There’s nothing particularly unusual about this. Our Father is telling us that the things of our family have to take precedence over everything. I love my blood family, but so many things come before them.

He says, “They come far behind, my children, on a different level. I'm not ashamed to tell you that you sustain me humanly. I only have to think of you, each one of you, by name, to feel strong and secure, no matter how many things may be going wrong. If, on the supernatural plane, it is the grace of God that keeps me going each day, on the human plane it is you whom I rely on, and I strive to send you pure arterial blood. I cannot allow the body of the Work to become anemic and weak. You see now why I call you my crown and my joy, my staff, and my delight.”

Our Father is teaching us that we have to be thinking about those people God has placed around us, our day on guard, our Memorarefor the person who needs it most. Counting the sheep, thinking of those people God has placed there—how can I help them? What can I do for them? Maybe they need my company, maybe they need an extra hand in their department.

Maybe they're not feeling so well today. Maybe they need a funny story to make them more cheerful or something or help them through this moment. Or maybe they just need my silent presence when they're not well, or their company to go here or go shopping or something.

A very good question to ask: What can I contribute? How can I make the life of the people around me more pleasant today? And often we do that just with our presence, being there.

Imagine if we were all alone in this big center, and here we are, living out the spirit of Opus Dei, with nobody around us. Our sisters give us a great example: their presence at the prayer in the morning, their presence at Mass when they're living their norms when they're talking about apostolate. We're surrounded by good examples all the time, leading us forward, and reminding us every day what is the really important thing in our lives.

“Don't you see, my daughters and sons,” continues Blessed Álvaro, “how good a teacher our Divine Master is? He wants us to be committed and involved in a ceaseless struggle that requires complete self-denial on our part.”

The work is a militia and at the same time, a family. So many homes form just one home. Our Father liked that idea of militia: we're an army. We're a family but we're also an army, and we're an army on the march. We're going places, we're doing things, we have a job to do, a mission. On the one hand, we're a family, feeling very nice together; but at the same time, we're fighting a battle.

We have to have a military-like mentality. A home endowed with human and supernatural affection, but not soft sentimentality.

At the same time that we're a family, our Father wanted us to have a certain hardcore, toughness, an interior toughness, fortitude. It's a place where each one can find, in company with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, a renewal of strength and vigor to persevere in the struggle and to give his life with Christ.

We're coming into a period of Advent where we're going to accompany the Holy Family along their journey to Bethlehem. It's very good to see that it's a very beautiful picture when we see it on Christmas cards or in paintings, but the reality of that journey was nothing with simplicity, or nothing childlike, or sentimentality. It was a tough journey, full of self-denial, abandonment, and uncertainty, and detachment; faith, humility, and hope; and solving problems, getting over the difficulties.

The journey of the Holy Family to Bethlehem is like a model of our vocation, handling the problems of each day, and taking weight. Joseph took a lot of weight, big decisions, handling tough things that were placed in his hands. Sometimes we might have an extra bit of work, and a lot of responsibility on our hands, or maybe something will go wrong someday, and we have to try and solve the problem.

With that same spirit that we see in the Holy Family, we belong to that family, we find our peace there, our hope, our joy. In spite of the difficulties, because we're with the Christ Child because our heart is in the right place, we're full of consolation and joy.

As our Father put it so vividly on the 6th of November 1974, “We are a small corner of the house of Nazareth.” If we place ourselves out on that journey to Bethlehem and watch very closely, we learn an awful lot of the virtues that we need daily: committed; seeing what the will of God is, and giving ourselves completely, generously, to fulfill it; not being put off by the difficulties, rejection, misunderstanding, ‘no room at the inn.’ There is a solution here.

When we start the Work in different places, often there are similar challenges that have to go through. We are called, he said, to share a home with Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, because, as our Father reminded us in a meditation at the Oratory of the General Council on the 19th of January 1975, we belong to that family.

The death anniversary of the Grandfather is a special day for us. It especially enters our hearts. It brings us a special joy that we remember our Grandfather and the great legacy that he's left us that we have to try and transmit to others.

He took care of and built up that family spirit of Escrivá de Balaguer so well. Our Father liked to say that he attributed his vocation to his father. Interesting statement.

Grandfather was a great guy. We have great love for him. He will lead us to the Grandmother and Aunt Carmen. He shaped those souls in so many ways. He shaped the soul of our Father with his virtue.

That's a great idea for our life: to seek holiness and apostolate where Our God has placed us. We all belong, he says, numeraries, assistant numeraries, associates, and supernumeraries—we all form part of that home.

We have all received the same vocation: to bring within our soul the warmth of Christ's love to our family life in the houses where our centers are, or in the family homes in which most of my daughters and sons live. We transmit this spirit to all the cooperators, St. Gabriel people, and supernumeraries.

The family spirit of our homes and our centers is formative. Everything in the center is meant to give formation. We take care of this little ornament, and that painting, and that floor, and the laying of the table, and the laundry, and the care of the departments and the work that we do, because that all contributes to our family spirit. We don't know where the fruits of that work are going to reach.

I remember a person at Work in Singapore telling me, that when he goes to work, some of the people in his office used to say, Who irons your shirts? He couldn't figure out that day by day, week by week, the shirts are ironed so well.

If our sisters could have heard that compliment, I think they would have been purring with satisfaction. These people in the office knew that he was not married, and lived alone—this mystery of how well your shirts are ironed.

A lot of the fruits of our work, we don't see ourselves, what are there. It's an apostolate. It transmits a message to other people that we belong to a family.

In this way, the home at Nazareth is made present in very many physical places in the world, which have been so prepared by God to give a fitting welcome to His Son.

Joseph and Mary, and particularly Joseph, create the family atmosphere in Bethlehem, in a place that was not particularly suited. They turned that dirty, filthy, smelly place for animals into a focal point of family warmth. That's a little bit of what we're called to do with our work every day. Something very beautiful, very rich, to lift souls—we lift the whole of society.

In our care of the oratories, it's a whole catechesis for the universal Church. “Don't think that the virtues and the tone and character of this home are confined to the physical buildings of our centers. Like our Father, I'm speaking to the hearts of all my daughters and sons, no matter where they work or rest, spend their time after their day's work, or enjoy their family life. The home of Opus Dei, like the home of Nazareth, is not confined to a space enclosed by four walls.”

The Grandfather had a great role in this whole enterprise that has reached the ends of the earth. And here we are, speaking about him with gratitude, for we absorbed that spirit, we absorbed all the sensitivity that's there. We have a great responsibility to live that out, giving an example to people.

Very often family spirit and family life are made up of details. Our Father was very attentive to details: this small thing here, this small thing there, this kind word, putting a little picture straight, double checking, the laying of a table, the mopping of a floor, the answering of a door. All these things are part of our journey of sanctification.

The Work then is a militia and a home, struggle, peace, joyous renunciation, and charity full of tenderness. Nazareth and Calvary.

We can ask Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal today that she might help us to go a little deeper into this family spirit, to absorb it a little better, to understand it better, to see and appreciate the role of the Grandfather and to develop a constant spirit of gratitude for what he has done, and to stimulate our devotion to the Grandparents and Aunt Carmen, so that we learn from their example, and we get them to help us to put this family spirit into practice so that everybody around us can feel the family a little more, because of all the details that we look after.

Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, pray for us.

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.

KI

Editor’s Note: José Escrivá y Corzán (1867-1924) was the father of St. Josemaría Escrivá. He is affectionately referred to as “The Grandfather” by the faithful of Opus Dei. He passed away on November 27, 1924, when St. Josemaría was 22 years old.