29. December 24

Meditations no. 29 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Praying next to the crib where God is born.

Advent draws to a close. Our long wait is over: The appointed time has come; God has sent his Son into the world. God arrives with no outward show - unlike the way he will come at the end of time to judge all men. He comes now to recover what was lost, to save and to forgive. This is why his birth is so simple, lest our poor hearts, filled with wretchedness, be terrified at God’s power. Instead we are won over by his love. We see him in his Mother’s arms, wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a poor manger.

What are we to do on this day when people celebrate the birth of Christ? First of all, we pray in a filial way, which we find very easy to do because we know we are God’s children, God’s dearly loved children.

St Paul tells the Church at Corinth: Si qua ergo in Christo nova creatura, vetera transierunt: ecce facta sunt omnia nova. Omnia autem ex Deo, qui nos reconciliavit sibi per Christum. (If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself. )If someone is in Christ, everything dirty, everything old, everything that stains, everything that hurts has all disappeared. Henceforth, life is truly new. We have told him this, so many times, and yet it still seems to be a mere wish. But we have always advanced a little bit more. And tonight God, through his Mother, will send us many new graces to help us grow in love and divine filiation.

We must ask God for the ability to discern what gives him glory, and what offends him; to know what works for people’s good, and what is to their detriment; what will make us happy, and what will destroy happiness - both eternal happiness and the relative happiness we can attain here on earth.

St Paul tells the Galatians something very beautiful about divine filiation: Misit Deus Filium suum … ut adoptionem filiorum reciperemus. God sent his Son Jesus and made him take on the form of our flesh, so that we could become his children. My children, how grateful we should be to this Brother of ours who made us children of the Father. Have you seen your own little brothers and sisters, or those tiny children of your relatives, who need all kinds of things from everyone? The Baby Jesus is like that. It is good to think of him like that, defenceless. He is the Almighty, he is God, and yet he has made himself a helpless, vulnerable Child in need of our love.

Jesus brings us the grace of becoming God’s children.

In that cold, desolate place, with his Mother and St Joseph, what Jesus needs, to keep him warm, is our heart So uproot from your heart everything that’s getting in your way! You and I, my child, are going to discover whatever it is that is getting in our heart’s way… Out with it! Really and truly. St John says the same thing in his first chapter: Quotquot autem receperunt eum dedit eis potestatem filios Dei fieri. He has given us power to become God’s children. God has wanted us to be his children. I am not inventing anything, when I tell you that divine filiation is an essential part of our spirit. It’s all there in Sacred Scripture. It’s true that on a certain day in the internal history of the Work, there was a definite moment when God wanted us to experience that we are his children, and to incorporate this spirit of divine filiation into the spirit of Opus Dei … It was God’s will that, for the first time in the history of the Church, it should be Opus Dei that would live this filiation in a corporate way.

So let us pray as children pray, and let us pray always. Oro coram te, hodie, nocte et die. I pray before you night and day. You have heard me repeat so often that we are contemplatives, night and day, even when we are asleep; for sleep is part of our prayer. Our Lord has said so: oportet semper orare, et non deficere. We have to pray always - always. We must feel the need to go to God, after every success and every failure in our interior life. Especially in times of failure, let us humbly go back and tell him: “In spite of everything, you are still my Father!” Let us play the role of the prodigal son.

As another part of the Scriptures puts it: pray at all times, not with long vocal prayers but with mental prayer, without the noise of words, without external gestures. Where do we pray? In angulis platearum… While we are walking through the streets and squares, we should be praying constantly. That is the spirit of the Work.

Our childlike prayer: constant and trusting.

Why should we always pray? God tells us through Jeremiah: Orabitis me, et ego exaudiam vos. Whenever you turn to me, whenever you pray, I will listen to you. Exaudi, Domine, vocem meam. I will listen attentively. Christ himself, our model, calls upon the Father. He was totally united to his Father; he cannot be separated from the Father and the Holy Spirit. Yet he raises his heart to his Father before every miracle. And when he is about to choose his first disciples, he spends the whole night in prayer: pernoctans in oratione.

So we should pray, and pray always: there you have two good resolutions for tonight. And how are we going to pray? First of all, let us offer a prayer of thanksgiving. Let us thank God the Father. Let us thank Jesus, who became a Child because of our sins, and gave himself over to suffering, both at Bethlehem and on the Cross, with his arms outstretched in the gesture of an eternal priest. I don’t like images of Christ showing him twisted and tortured on the Cross as though enraged. That’s not the way it was! He suffered as a man for our sins; he felt all the pain of the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the blows, the mockery… But he is on the Cross with the dignity of an eternal priest, without father or mother, without ancestry. He gives himself there, suffering out of love. I thank him because through him and with him and in him I can be called God’s son. This is another point we must consider: thanksgiving in spite of our wretchedness and sins.

Then there is petition. What should we request? What does a child ask of his father? Daddy… the moon! He asks for absurd things. Ask, and it will be given to you, knock, and it will be opened to you. What can we not ask of God? We asked our parents for everything. Ask God for the moon and he will give it to you. Ask him boldly for everything you want He will always give it to you, in one way or another. Ask confidently. Quaerite primum regnum Dei. Seek first what makes for God’s glory and everything that souls have a right to: whatever unites, whatever raises up, whatever joins them in brotherhood. Then he will give us everything else in addition. My children, I have finished. I have said nothing of my own. It is all in Sacred Scripture. It is Jesus’ spirit, and he wants it for his Work.

May you have a happy Christmas feast May God bless you.