65. January 9, Birth of Our Father (III)

Meditations no. 421 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Thanksgiving for the supernatural fruitfulness of the life of our Father. .

When you praise the Lord, raise up your voice as much as you can, he is still far above your praises.

Once more as we celebrate this family feast, we are astounded at the generosity with which God blessed our founder. Our Lord wanted to give him a heart to the measure of the heart of Christ, open to the multitude of souls who would come to the Work with the passing of the centuries, and open too to the entire humanity. It is logical, then, that when we think about the supernatural fruitfulness of his life, there come to our lips the eulogy that Sacred Scripture gives to those just men who were pious men, whose justice was not forgotten. The blessing continues with his lineage. And his inheritance passed to his children’s children… His descendants will remain forever and his glory will not be wiped out.

Spread out to the four points of the compass, the children of God in Opus Dei want their prayer to go up to the Blessed Trinity, full of thanksgiving: because he has given us a founder who loves us with the tenderness of a father and a mother, who bears us continually in his heart and helps us to discover the inexhaustible beauty of divine Love.

While he was physically present amongst us, our Father in his humility would have rejected these displays of gratitude. He would have answered as he did on so many other occasions: I feel the need for all of you; each one of you are my fortitude. So much so, that when I do the prayer I present you to our Lord with pride, as mothers present their children, and I always have to say: Lord, do not look at me, ne respicias peccata mea!…

Lord, I add, I ought to be like a worm in front of You, with my lips to the floor; but look at my children, look at the marvel which is these sons of mine, these daughters who have given you their youth, their clean heart; look at their virtues… I bejewel myself with your daily self-giving, my children, and thus I feel that I have a certain authority to speak to our Lord. Do you see? This is what I have to bargain with, your self-giving.

Now we can give rein to the affections in our heart without annoying him and say: Thank you, Father, for your constant prayers and sacrifices in our favour. Thanks for your example and for your words. Thanks for your self-giving and for your fidelity to the fulfilment of the divine Will. Help us with your constant intercession before our Lord, to follow this pathway, which is the Work, faithfully, this path which you opened for us with your entire life.

The affection of our Father for his children is a reality.

Children of the prayer and sacrifice of our Father, and made into brothers and sisters in this great family through his fidelity to our Lord: thus we all feel that we are very much part of Opus Dei, sure that we are being supported by an affection which, if it was great while our Father lived here on earth, has multiplied since he went to heaven. As it was then, and even more so now, his paternal affection for each one of his sons and daughters overflows in a thousand details which are like a stimulus for our generous response.

My heart goes out to my children, he confided to us on a certain occasion. It’s not something I hide and I think you all realise it too, but it is something which leads me to God: you all push me to be more faithful, and I want to be more faithful, also because of you.

I can present myself as an example of few things. Nevertheless, amidst all my personal shortcomings, I think I can give myself as an example of a person who knows how to love. Your worries, your sorrows, your concerns continually beckon to me. With this heart of mine, which is that of a father and a mother, I want to carry them all on my shoulders.

We feel the truth of these words so clearly! Our Lord continues to make use of our Father to move our souls and to make us more Opus Dei each day. How much I love you all my children!… I love you with my whole soul. I love you more than your parents though I may never even have seen you. This affection that I have for you is not dry, official charity; it’s true charity and human affection that I feel because you are my treasure…

I love you because you are children of God, because you have decided freely to be my children, because you are trying to be saints, because you’re very faithful and good. All of my children are. I love you with the same affection that your mothers’ feel for you: with your bodies and your souls, with your virtues and your defects… because I love you with the same heart with which I love the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the Most Holy Virgin: with the same heart with which I loved my father and mother. I love you like all the mothers of the world put together: and all the same, from the first to the last.

Perhaps our Lord will make use of these words of our Father like an affectionate reproach so that we see that our correspondence might have slackened off a little. We have to feel ourselves urged to begin again once again, to incorporate into our lives - with a total fidelity - the spirit of the Work, to be docile to grace so as not to present obstacles to the work of the Paraclete in our souls. Only in this way will we be the efficacious instruments to do Opus Dei on the earth as our Father himself was. Only in this way will we live our spirit of filiation authentically, because we will do things as our Father would have done them. Only thus will we be truly Opus Dei.

The responsibility of corresponding as good children.

Try to be very faithful, my children. When the years have passed, you will not believe what you have lived through; it will seem like you have been dreaming. What great and beautiful things you are going to see!… I assure you that you will be happy, though at times you will have to suffer. And, I promise you heaven. You only have to be faithful, though at times there will be pain. If some time you go through a bad patch, take courage and don’t worry. Rest, obey the doctors, eat and sleep, and don’t make me suffer, because I love you very much and I do suffer; not for myself but for Jesus. Be faithful my children.

When the Lord calls me to his presence, almost all of you - it is the law of life - will still be here on earth. Remember, then, what the Father used to tell you: I love you very much, very much, even to the point of madness; but I want you to be faithful. Don’t forget it: be faithful. Likewise, I will continue loving you afterwards, when I have left this world, through our Lord’s infinite mercy, to enjoy God’s presence. You can be sure that then I shall love you even more.

These promises have already been fulfilled and every one of us feels our Father very close to us, in our life and work: encouraging us, blessing us and helping us.

On many occasions, conscious of his responsibility before our Lord, our founder directed some words to his sons and daughters which preserve a perennial value, because all of us -including those who did not know him here on earth - deal with him and are the subjects of constant proofs of his affection. I always try to act as if I am at the marriage feast of a Great King, he used to say. Do you remember back when they used to celebrate the King’s marriage and they used to throw money to the people? My daughters and sons, I always try to throw gold coins, the gold of God and not counterfeit, copper coins. I have the obligation to give you good gold, the purest gold coins; if you don’t pick them up you’re doing badly and God our Lord will ask a strict account of you.

These thoughts will help us to be faithful, responsible sons and daughters who only have thoughts for their family, with their heart and their mind and all their energies invested in making the Work go forward. This is the way our older brothers acted, those who incorporated into their lives, with firm faith, the spirit of our Father, and made into reality those words of Sacred Scripture: His inheritance passed to his children’s children; his lineage remains faithful to the covenant, If we act like this we will be the joy of our founder in heaven, and a source of joy and rest to the Father here on earth.

We love Opus Dei with all our soul: it’s our life, that with which we are always occupied, our hope… And, nevertheless, we need to make this love grow each day, to ask God to give us that responsibility of a first-born son who knows how to put his shoulder to the wheel and be the support of his father and fortitude for his brothers; and that he teaches us to lay aside our own interests and personal goals, in order to take up this sweet weight of love, which only comprehends duties which are a joy to fulfil and which we carry out with a superiority complex.

Ask our Lord along with me, my most beloved daughters and sons - this is our Father speaking to us - that, through the merits of his Mother who is our Mother, he make all of us good and faithful instruments … , so that consummati in unum (John 17: 23), we all have only one heart and one mind (cf. Acts 4: 32)…

I ask our Lord for you and for me that he gives us the same mind that Jesus Christ had, so that unanimous, with one single voice, we glorify God, the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 15: 5-6).