61. Saturday after the Epiphany

Meditations no. 55 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Faith in God’s almighty power: Christ’s miracles, the birth of the Church and her rapid growth.

The Church invites us to rekindle our faith, now that God has been revealed. Christ, mighty in deed and word, has come to earth to open the gates of heaven to us.

The Gospels show us some of the Master’s mighty deeds. At Cana of Galilee he changes water into the best quality wine. Afterwards, we see a leper being cured, and the centurion’s servant being restored to health. When the Apostles wake him as he sleeps in the boat, he calms the storm with his word… and there are so many other wonders he performs.

When we bring these miracles of Christ to our prayer, how it strengthens our faith! We know that God’s power to do such marvellous works continues to live on in his Church throughout the centuries. Ecce non est abbreviata manus Domini. God’s arm, his power, has not lessened. The Church’s whole life and history is a powerful reason for believing. In a way, the same could be said of the foundation and growth of the Work within the Mystical Body of Christ. It provides a dazzling new proof of God’s power and mercy, which stirs up our faith and fills our hearts with hope.

My children, heaven is bent on the Work being accomplished Human difficulties, our Father wrote in 1940, such as the painful experience of three years of civil war in Spain, or the new World War that appears to threaten the expansion of the Work to other countries and continents, are difficulties that have never stopped the growth and extension of our supernatural undertaking, nor will they ever do so.

Neither the absolute poverty in which we live, nor the lack at times of the most indispensable human means, are obstacles or difficulties worth considering. Rather, they are a powerful stimulus and spur, because this lack of resources is another outward sign that we are truly following in Christ’s footsteps.

Still less should we be help up, or held back - we go at God’s pace - by the difficulties and misunderstandings we encounter along the way, because no one can put a brake on our holy, divine impatience to serve the Church and souls.

So, increase your faith and confidence in God And also have a bit of faith and confidence in your Father, who assures you that you are walking in the truth, and obeying the will of our Lord, and not the feeble will of a poor priest… who had no desire, no thought or intention, of founding anything.

Faith gives us security and optimism in working for souls.

The doctrine we want everybody to receive is a divine message. My speech and my message, said St Paul, were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and power. If the doors of the will are opened to receive it, God’s word has the power to achieve what it promises. It can work miracles not only in bodies but also in souls. It invites and beckons, and at the same time it provides the strength to answer that call. This is the same word that threw Saul to the ground and turned him into an Apostle. It is the same word that brought Lazarus back from the dead. It is the same word that will also make our apostolate effective.

In Opus Dei, as we each seek sanctity in our own state of life, in the exercise of our own profession, in our ordinary life, I would go so far as to say that God has given us the gift of performing miracles - great miracles.

We give light to the blind… Who could not quote thousands of examples? That person who was blind almost from birth, and who recovered his sight and received all the splendour of the light of Christ. Or that one who was deaf, or dumb, unable to utter a single word befitting a child of God… And his tongue was made clean, and now he speaks like a man, not an animal. In nomine Iesu (in the name of Jesus) we have restored the power of speech to the dumb man. And that person who was maimed, unable to do a single good deed, and that comfort-lover, who saw the things he had to do but did not do them… You told him: Surge et ambula. (Get up and walk. ) And that other person, dead, rotten - really rotten! - so rotten that he stank like a corpse, who heard, as in the miracle of the son of the widow at Naim: Adolescens tibi dico, surge. (Young man, I say to you, arise. ) My child, miracles like the ones Christ did, miracles like those of the first Christians.

The value and meaning of difficulties in the apostolate.

When we carry out Opus Dei on earth, we are Christ’s instruments. God uses us as his messengers. There are bound to be difficulties in the apostolate, but these can never be a source of discouragement or pessimism. Rather they are a forge to help us temper our spirit. We are God’s instruments, and God does not lose battles. If we were ever to let ourselves be overcome by difficulties, it would mean that we were trying to do apostolate on our own, forgetting that we are only instruments which Christ makes use of to accomplish his Work.

You should be firmly resolved not to become discouraged when the work is hard. The conversion of a bad Christian, Catholic or otherwise, is more of a miracle than the conversion of a pagan. That is because those who are poor Christians tend to misunderstand, in a distorted fashion, all that we tell them about Jesus and his teachings, since what they have before their eyes is not Jesus Christ, but only a caricature of Jesus Christ.

If God were to choose not to give us the joy of being able to see immediate results, our response should be to keep on working with the same hope and enthusiasm. Don’t worry, our Father says, if your apostolate seems fruitless now. When you sow holiness, nothing is ever wasted. Others will reap the harvest. Our hearts are filled with the hope and certainty of the harvest, because the things God promises go greatly beyond anything we could imagine. Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you … The Lord will arise upon you, and his glory will be seen upon you. And nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising. Lift up your eyes round about, and see; they all gather together, they come to you; your sons shall come from afar, and your daughters … Then you shall see and be radiant, your heart shall thrill and rejoice.

Our apostolic work should always be carried out in a spirit of cheerfulness, optimism and hope. For it is God who is doing it, and he is no less powerful than before. Let us turn to the Queen of Apostles, who is also our Mother, and ask her, with a child’s daring, to ensure that our daily efforts are always marked by hope and by an unshakeable optimism, which is the result of our faith.