The Grandmother

The Grandmother

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.

“As I have done to you, so do you also to others” (John 13:15).

A few days ago, on the Friday of the fifth week of Lent, we had the feast day of the Grandmother. The Grandmother is somebody who looms very large on our screen. Probably we have a lot of devotion to her and ask her for all sorts of small things.

It is important occasionally that we consider her figure a little more deeply in our prayer, and see how God wanted, as our Father has told us many times, the role of the Grandmother and of Aunt Carmen in the whole of Opus Dei, and in our lives, very particularly.

On one occasion, I think it was in Singapore, Don Javier was talking about how, on the plane when they were going there, Don Joaquin could not find his glasses. He came to the conclusion that he had left his glasses back at the departure lounge of the airport.

Don Javier, sort of pulling the leg of Don Joaquin, was telling the story of how he had turned the whole plane upside down looking for his glasses. He even asked the stewardess to please ask the pilot to radio back to the airport to see if they could find his glasses.

Then a few minutes later, Don Fernando was looking for something in his bag, and lo and behold, what does he pull out but the glasses of Don Joaquin! Don Joaquin had put his glasses into the wrong bag somehow.

The comment that Don Joaquin said was, La Abuela nunca me falla. The Grandmother never lets me down. Lo and behold, there the glasses had appeared. Don Javier was obviously enjoying himself telling the story at the expense of Don Joaquin.

But of course, at the bottom of the story, there was this profound devotion to the Grandmother—for all the little things of each day that can go wrong, the little thing that we laugh at, the little thing we can't find, the thing we want to click in this particular moment, and maybe it doesn't.

Like all grandparents, she's a bit in the background. Often, grandparents will give their grandchildren little things that their own parents won't give them. Their hearts are moved in a special way, they have a special sensitivity, they understand their grandchildren a little more, they want to reach out to them, they have a little more time for their grandchildren perhaps, than others, because they're not short of time, etc.

All these factors can lead us to have a deeper devotion to the Grandmother and a deeper appreciation of her role in the whole of Opus Dei. She was the second last of thirteen children, so she came from a large family. She was born in Barbastro, to a fairly well-to-do family. On the 19th of September 1898, she married Don José Escrivá de Balaguer.

We know that she suffered a lot in her life. She lost three children after a number of years, some of them, one age five, one age eight. Her husband went bankrupt, she lived through the Civil War, she saw and experienced the hatred that people had for her son, a priest, at first hand. She had the concern—maybe the worry—of an extra child later on. She heard all the calumnies against the Work in the early days.

There was quite a lot on her plate. Yet we consistently see how she helped our Father in every single possible way. She somehow had the grace to understand the supernatural origin of the Work and she gave herself completely. Possibly that's the greatest message we get from the life of the Grandmother.

“As I have done to you, so do you also to others”—generosity, service. She has set the bar very high, and did all these without having a vocation to Opus Dei. But yet she gave herself completely. She spent herself. She didn't stop to think of herself and of her own needs.

We could ask the Grandmother in our prayer this morning that we also might have that same disposition; to come to realize, as our Father told us, that we have come to give everything.

There are people who have given everything without having a vocation, because they see the greatness of the Work, and the beauty of the Work, and the role that it has to play in the Church and in the world.

The Grandmother knuckled down with Aunt Carmen and brought everything forward in spite of the difficulties—and those difficulties were many. They lacked all sorts of material things. Under other circumstances, it would be quite normal, it would be quite necessary.

It's interesting how our Father gave the indication that we should try and have all of the machines that we could possibly have to do the work that has to be done, maybe because he already saw what not having those machines meant for his mother and for his sister.

All through the writings of our Father and of Don Alvaro and of Don Javier, we see a great tone of gratitude. We've been formed in the idea that we have a great debt of gratitude to what the Grandmother did. She gave our family its human tone.

We have high standards in our family. She set those standards. God used the family tone of the family of the Escrivás Balaguer to shape the whole family life and the family tone of Opus Dei.

In our professional work of caring, we are very particularly called to continue that spirit, continue those standards, to take care of that human tone, so that it's not lost.

We are the recipients of a treasure. We can ask Our Lord that we would take care of that treasure, because it's something beautiful, something divinely inspired. It's a good realization to have that it can be lost.

In the book The Ratzinger Report of 1986, Cardinal Ratzinger tells a story of how he was talking to an elderly monk in a monastery, who talked about the changes that had taken place in that monastery over a couple of years.

He said, Before the Second Vatican Council and the changes that came about, we used to get up at three in the morning to pray the Breviary. This had been going on for centuries, ever since our monastic foundation was brought about, maybe ten centuries ago. This was a custom that was built up over centuries.

Then we were told: That's all past, that’s old-fashioned, we don't need to get up in the middle of the night anymore. We stopped getting up in the middle of the night in order to pray the Breviary. Now, he said, we stay up until the middle of the night, watching Manchester United.

In just one sentence, Cardinal Ratzinger described the 180-degree change that had come about in that particular organization. They had lost a treasure. They had lost something that had been built up over centuries.

There's sort of a lesson for us here. Every small thing that we have been taught, every little detail that God has gone to great trouble to help us to know and to see its importance down in the history of the Work, through the work of the Grandmother and Aunt Carmen, is something that we have to perpetuate, to personify, to transmit to further generations.

We have to walk along the same pathway that the Grandmother has laid out for us—loving it, thanking her, increasing our devotion.

Don Alvaro said devotion to the Grandmother and Aunt Carmen is an intimate part of the spirit of Opus Dei. It’s not just something added on, an addendum of some type.

It's a very clear part of our spirit, and it's something that can bring us great joy—to ask the Grandmother for the solution to this little problem, or that little problem, or something we feel we can't handle, or something we need a bit of inspiration with; but also to learn from her how not to excuse ourselves from certain situations, or our limitations, or our weaknesses; or to say, I can't manage this, or I can't do this, or I can't handle this problem, or I can't solve this situation because I don't have the talents, or I don't have the necessary conditions.

She didn't tolerate in herself that sort of approach. She and Aunt Carmen rolled up their sleeves and they got on with the job. Intense, hard work. They've left us that spirit, that legacy.

This is a very important aspect, Don Javier said, of our spirit—something very clear. She gave herself completely, knowing that God was asking something very special from her son. And so, she didn't hold back.

St. Paul says, “Do not conform yourself to the spirit of this world” (Rom. 12:2)—what other people are thinking, and what other people are doing. He invites us to seek the things that are above.

The life of the Grandmother is like an example for us to see those things. She loved the Work with her whole soul. She loved it almost into existence. She loved its progress. She loved the souls that God was bringing close to our Father.

In some ways it was her work. She loved each one of us, without even knowing us, and put her love into the work that she was doing so that we could benefit from the fruits of her work. Hence, the great debt of gratitude.

Our Father asked her for a lot. We know it came a bit of a given that our Father didn't stop to consider her comforts too frequently. He was demanding them, his mother and Aunt Carmen.

We know that story of when he was leaving to give that last retreat for priests that go to Lerida. She wasn't well and he told her, “Offer your sufferings for the fruits that I am about to receive.” He was demanding humanly and supernaturally.

At the same time, the Grandmother had that great humanity that our Father had. We know that her reply was, “Este hijo!” (this son of mine). He asks me for too many things, or he never stops asking me, or he really pushes me to the limit.

But at the same time, she gave; she didn't hold anything back. She responded to those demands.

I could ask Our Lord that we also might have the grace to respond to those demands. Maybe He asks a little bit more from us, like He asked from the Grandmother through our Father—to be there in certain situations, to go out of our way, to think out of the box, to go that extra mile sometimes when we see that something is needed.

Or even if it's not needed, we try to offer it ourselves, to set that bar very high because that's what we've received, so that we can spread that to others that come after us.

We can appreciate all those little standards that we have. In the dining room, with separation, in the kitchen, in the laundry, in the way we lay tables, in the way we're trying to learn new things all the time to professionalize more and more, to be experts, to be professional in everything we do, which somebody described once as ‘doing our best job irrespective of how we are feeling.’

Now many years later we look back and we see the great job that was done by Aunt Carmen and the Grandmother. But there must have been many times when they really didn't feel like doing all those things. They might have felt a bit fed up from time to time.

In our seminar before we were ordained, there was a priest who gave us a talk who was around at the time when Aunt Carmen was there, looking after the Catering. I think it was Diego de Leon.

He said our Father could not permit himself the luxury of going to see his family too frequently, because there were people in the center of studies that were from different parts of Spain, and they couldn't go and see their family very frequently.

So even though his own family were living downstairs, he didn't go to see them. Sometimes Aunt Carmen would come to look for him. She wanted to talk to him about something. But he would lock the door and wouldn't let her in.

She would have to go back to where she came from, a little bit annoyed. She had the same potential to get annoyed that our Father had.

But then after a while, our Father would relent a little bit and say; "A few months have passed now. Maybe I should go and say hi to them, say hello.”

And he would go to see Aunt Carmen. But she would hear him coming and she would lock the door and not let him in. Aunt Carmen had to put up with all of these things. She fought fire with fire as the strong lady that she was. But they gave us that human and supernatural tone.

Also in the supernatural things: detachment from God's family; supernatural spirit, when they didn't have a vocation. They created that atmosphere of Bethany.

Lord, thank you for the family that you have brought us to. Our Father has told us that without the work of the Catering in Opus Dei, our homes would be a bit like an army barracks.

But we know that's not the reality. We have something very different. The apostolate of apostolates is the key thing to that family spirit, the family tone wanted by God and built up by the Grandmother and Aunt Carmen.

Part of that family tone is the human and supernatural affection that we try to have for our sisters and for everybody around us, because each one is Christ.

Our Father said, “I love all of you because I see in your veins the Blood of Christ.” Even if, at times things on the human plane might be difficult or challenging, we bring things on to a supernatural plane, then things look better, or easier.

At the Priestly Prayer of Our Lord at the Last Supper, He prays not only for the apostles, but He prays, “That they may be one, as the Father and him are one.”

As the Grandmother looks down from heaven, she must be very happy when she sees the care we take of things, the material things; when we live out that truth of “something divine hidden in every human thing” (cf. Josemaría Escrivá, Conversations, Point 114).

She must be particularly happy when she sees that family tone in our spirit, in our affection, in our kindness, in our patience, in our charity. She receives the hundredfold.

Don Álvaro used to say that every time that we fulfill a little better some aspect of the spirit that our Father has given to us, our Father goes higher in heaven, because that's an extra foot of his life of holiness.

But we could also say the same about the Grandmother. Every time we put something away carefully in a store room or in a pantry, or we put the sugar back on the shelf, or we load the salt cellar well, or we take that second glance at the table we've laid to double-check, or for every room that we've cleaned we look back to have one final look—all those little details in our work—or that little effort that we make to think of somebody else a little more, when we're not feeling well, or look after somebody who's a bit sick. Make that time or that energy or stop what we're doing.

Every time the Grandmother sees us doing something like that, she also must have a wonderful glow in heaven. Pride and joy must move her heart. God must lift her higher in heaven, because we're living the spirit that she made every effort to inculcate in each one of us.

Our Lord prayed “that they might be one.” The first thing we have to do is prayer. Charity first and foremost involves prayer. It helps us to love with the heart of Christ, to realize that God is love. Love is divine. The underlying message from the life of dedication of the Grandmother is that “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and He wants us to put that love into practice in concrete ways.

Our Lord shows us that at the Last Supper, when speaking about charity, He washes the feet of the apostles, including that of Judas: “If I, the Master and Lord, have done these things to you, so do you, do this to others” (John 13:14).

In Matthew 25:40, Our Lord identifies Himself with “the least of the brethren.” So Christ is present in each one.

When the Grandmother and Carmen were fulfilling their work, they were serving everybody. There might have been ones that reached their hearts in a special way, but they were serving all, because Christ was present there in all.

We can ask her to help us in knowing a little better the people that God has placed around us, in knowing how to be smart. Affection is smart. Charity finds a way. Love is very inventive, it's dynamic, it has initiative. Love leads us to solve problems. It opens our eyes to understand.

The people that Carmen and our Grandmother were caring for must have had a special antenna. When somebody was a bit sick or needed something special, they’d think a little bit out of the box.

We hear stories of people who came to Rome many years later who perhaps were sick and they were trying to find a solution to help them to be better. Our Father suggested to some sister of ours who might have been from that particular part of the world who knew some special dish that that person might like. That sister of ours was able to make that dish, and that person became much better very fast.

It's as though our Father knew that little trick that he must have learned from his mother and his sister—that little inside track, a little bit, in the heart and the life of each person.

Love is not blind, we're told. It's bound, and the more bound, the less blind. Our Father has told us how people respond to affection. Our Father had a horror that we might live like strangers.

Frater qui adiuvatur a fratre quasi civitas firma.. A sister who is helped by a sister, or a brother who is helped by a brother, is like a strong-walled fortress.

Our Father formed us so that that grandmotherly affection might be there in the heart of each one of us to understand, to go out of our way, to have an extreme refinement in our dealings, in our conversations, in our familiarity, in our ways of doing things, in our ways of speaking, in details of human manners.

Human manners ultimately are charity—behaving or doing or acting in a way that doesn't irritate other people. These are external things, but we're told by our Father that they're very much related to our interior life, to our refinement.

We get the impression that Aunt Carmen and the Grandmother were very refined people—tremendous interior sensitivity, which they brought about in that family of the Escrivás de Balaguer, which God wanted to use to spread that spirit to our families.

Wherever we are, wherever our positions or job we’re in, we function with that sort of mentality, that type of affection, that attentiveness. Living in the presence of God helps us to see things, so that we realize what people need, so that we can be proactive. Also, if something is requested that somebody particularly wants, we'll be trying to do what we can to get that thing.

At the same time, like the Grandmother, we're ready to be last. She's a figure, a personality that looms very large on our screen. But she's very much in the background in the whole spirit of Opus Dei—a rock in the background on which our Father leaned on many occasions.

She was willing to be last. In some way she still is. But she's there like a pillar for us to look at—ready to be last without waiting to be thanked.

Lord, help me not to look for gratitude, to do and disappear. Sometimes, there can be that little detail of our self-love deep inside. We want to be recognized or appreciated.

But in some ways our desire has to be to pass unnoticed. But also, not telling people, “You don't need to thank me.” If ever we hear somebody saying, “You don't need to thank me” or “I don't need to be thanked” you better be very sure you thank that person because that's a very big thing.

We try to do things with greater rectitude of intention, for the love of God. The consolation of our Father, of the Grandmother, and of Aunt Carmen, must have come to a large extent from dreaming of the future, of what they were going to see, not maybe on this earth, but from heaven—the incredible fruits of all their work, of all their efforts, multiplied a thousandfold all over the world in so many homes—homes of supernumeraries, homes of associates, so that that spirit of Opus Dei could breathe there in all those places.

Our Father said each of our homes is like a corner of the house of Nazareth. Those words must have brought great joy to Aunt Carmen and the Grandmother.

She's a very logical person to whom we can entrust our own mothers and our own sisters, every person in our blood family—she must have a special eye for them. She knows what it is to be a grandmother or a sister of a person of the Work. She has the inside track there also.

All those little concerns or anxieties or worries that we might have with our mother or our sister, with our aunts, our cousins—we can entrust them all to her. “You’ll take care of them.”

Keep them within the fold of the Church. Bring them back to the sacraments. Help them to think in a more Christian way. Help them to absorb that formation. Help them to come to understand our vocation a little more with the passing of time, because that's part of the will of God, that maybe they don't fully see all the aspects of Opus Dei—of our joys, of our family tone, of the good things that we have.

We can ask her that we might always take care of that warmth of a home, and what that means in so many ways. Punctuality of family gatherings—once we hear that something is a family gathering, then that is important. I know I have to be there and I have to be on time, like our Father was, knowing that this is the will of God for me, to be in this get-together.

It's interesting how much importance our Father gave to our get-togethers as a means of formation. We don't miss out on it, because it's important.

The Grandmother can help us also to be outstanding in our first proselytism: the care of the sick. Steal heaven for somebody who may not be so well. He must have learned a lot about those things precisely from that heart of the Grandmother—thinking of that sick person, or that person that needed something in a special way.

First and foremost, our care for the sick has to be in the supernatural things. Helping them to do the norms. Can I help you with your prayer? Can I read for you, your spiritual reading? Have you finished your rosary? This is the first priority. We walk into the lives of our sisters with that command to help them in those things.

That first proselytism means also that we're available for our sisters when they need us to accompany them, to go here, to go there, to go to the doctor, to go to the shop to buy things.

In principle, yes, I'm available, because that's why I'm in Opus Dei. That's what I'm here for—ready for anything. So I change my plans, I reorganize my priorities. Whatever it is I'm asked to do, in principle, yes, I'm here, because that's part of building our family tone in this particular moment, in this particular instance. This is the most important thing I have to do. And sometimes that's not too difficult.

There may be occasions in our life when a sister of ours may be very sick. The last thing we have to do is talk to them. You can kill a sick person by talking, talking, talking. They just want to sleep. They just want to be quiet.

One of the most important things we do with our sick sisters is just to be silently there. We all know from being sick that sometimes, that's the most wonderful and encouraging thing, just the presence of somebody there who loves us, who knows to keep their big mouth shut and read their book, or listen to their music with their earplugs in, preferably.

But just to be there—it’s a big thing—maybe for hours or days. It may be one of our finest contributions, because we know the right thing to do. Only people who love know that right word or gesture, that little thing, that comes to be so expressive.

This is all part of a legacy that the Grandmother has given to us. On the occasion of her feast day, we can renew our devotion to her.

Behind her, we know the presence of Mary is there. Grandmother must have prayed the rosary with great piety and devotion. She must have been very close to Our Lady in order to know all that refinement of affection which she was to bring to our beautiful family, that is, to reach to the end of the world, the end of time, to so many families all over the world.

We can ask Our Lady that all the little seeds that she sowed in the heart and mind and soul of the Grandmother may yield an abundant fruit in our life also.

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.

OLV