74. First Thursday of Lent
Meditations no. 120 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
We should pray for the Church and for all souls, with the desire to make reparation.
Let my words reach your ears, Lord; listen to my groaning, and hear the cry of my prayer, O my King, my God. Todayâs Entrance Antiphon encourages us to pray for the Church and all souls.
This model of prayer is also set before us in the First Reading. It records the pleas of Queen Esther who, fearing the perils that threatened her people, prayed to the Lord, the God of Israel, and said: O my Lord, you alone are our King, help me ⌠Remember, O Lord; make yourself known in this time of our affliction and give me courage.
But we must pray with desires of reparation, our Father recommended. There is so much to make amends for, outside and inside the Church of God. Look for some words, compose a personal aspiration, and say it many times a day, asking our Lord for forgiveness, first for our own failings and then for all the sinful actions that are committed against his holy Name, against his Sacraments and against his doctrine ⌠Ask for forgiveness, my children, for all the confusion, for the iniquities which have been allowed to happen within the Church ⌠If we donât do this, if we donât travel this road of penance and reparation, we will not get anywhere.
The needs of the Church and of souls must move us to pray to God like that continually, and to do so with still greater urgency when circumstances clearly call for it. Our prayer must always be full of trust.
You say there are few of us for such a great multitude! You say we are full of frailty and weakness! You say that humanly speaking we can do nothing! Meditate with me on these words of St Paul: But the foolish things of the world has God chosen to put to shame the wise, and the weak things of the world has God chosen to put to shame the strong, and the base things of the world and the despised has God chosen, and the things that are not, to bring to naught the things that are; lest any flesh should pride itself before him.
In spite of our mistakes and failings, in this very difficult period of the Churchâs history our Lord has chosen us to be his instruments. My children, we cannot hide behind our personal nothingness. We cannot bury the talent we have received. We cannot ignore the offences that are committed against God and the harm that is done to souls. You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, beware lest you be carried away with the error of lawless men and lose your own stability.
All of us, each in our own state and all with the same vocation, have said yes to the divine call to serve God and the Church and to save souls. Thus we have a greater obligation and a greater right to be watchful. We all have a greater obligation to be unyielding; and we have also received more grace.
Christâs promise to those who pray in a humble, trusting and persevering way, fills us with optimism, even when circumstances appear least promising from a human point of view. For our Lord says: Everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it will be opened.
The best help we can give the Church is fidelity to our commitment of love and our daily fight for holiness.
In the Work we have all freely accepted a commitment of love to God our Lord. This commitment is strengthened by the personal grace proper to the state we each have, as well as by that other specific grace our Lord grants to the souls he calls to Opus Dei. How that loving divine declaration tastes to me like honey from the comb: Ego redemi te, et vocavi te nomine tuo, meus es tu! I have redeemed you, and I have called you by your name, you are mine! My children, we do not belong to ourselves. We are his. We belong to God, because we replied, Ecce ego, quia vocasti me! Here I am, because you have called me.
But what does this commitment of love consist of? What does it oblige us to do? To struggle, my daughters and sons. To struggle to make good use of the ascetical means the Work provides us with to become saints. To struggle to fulfil our Norms and Customs, to make the effort to acquire and defend good doctrine, to improve our behaviour, to try to live a life of prayer, sacrifice and work - if possible, smiling. For I appreciate, my children, that at times it is not easy to smile.
You will ask me: Father, do we also have to try to give a good example? Yes, my children, but without seeking applause on earth. Donât hesitate if youâre laughed at, if youâre slandered, if youâre hated and despised ⌠In your struggle as a Christian donât expect a pat on the back or words of encouragement. We have to have a very clear conscience. Do we realize that our interior struggle is necessary in order to serve God, the Church and souls? Are we convinced that our Lord, in these moments of tremendous disloyalty, wants to make use of our little effort to be faithful in order to fill thousands of souls with faith, hope and love? Well then, my daughters and sons, off you go, in Godâs presence and always happy, without seeking praise from men âŚ
Fight, my children, you have to keep fighting. Donât act like those people who say that Confirmation does not make us milites Christi, soldiers of Christ. Perhaps it is because they do not want to fight, and so they are what they are - defeated, conquered, faithless, fallen souls, like Satan. They failed to follow the Apostleâs advice: Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.
As soldiers of Christ we must fight Godâs battles. In hoc pulcherrimo caritatis bello - in this most beautiful war of love! If we truly want to obtain interior peace for ourselves, and Godâs serenity for the Church and for souls, there is no other way but to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to this beautiful war of love.
We have an obligation to be faithful until the last moment.
I want to remind you that we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness ⌠Therefore take the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
On this earth we can never have the tranquillity of those easy-going types who donât make any effort because they think that the future is guaranteed. For each of us the future is uncertain, in the sense that we can betray our Lord, our vocation and our Faith. We must resolve to fight always. Last New Yearâs Eve I wrote a note: âThis is our destiny on earth: to struggle for Love until the last instant. Deo gratias!â
I will try to fight until the last moment of my life, and you must do the same⌠If any of my children lets himself go and abandons the battle or turns his back, let him know that he is betraying us all: Christ, the Church, his brothers and sisters in the Work, and all souls. No one is an isolated agent. We are all members of the same Mystical Body of the Church, and through our commitment of love we are also members of the Work of God. If anyone does not struggle, therefore, he does serious harm to his brothers, to their holiness and to the apostolate; and he would be a hindrance to our efforts to overcome these present difficultiesâŚ
I ask Jesus, through the intercession of his Blessed Mother and our Father and Lord St Joseph, whom I love very much, to help you understand what Iâm telling you. It would be treason to fail to be vigilant, to loosen our grip, to consent to the tiniest act of unfaithfulness, much more so at the present moment. When disloyalty is so rampant we are all the more obliged to be faithful to our commitments of love. Donât worry if it seems as though you have lost the other motives which used to help you keep going and are left with just this one: loyalty to God.
Loyalty! Fidelity! Uprightness! In what is great and in what is small, in little things and big things. Determined to fight even though at times it seems that we donât want to. If the moment of weakness comes, open your soul wide and let yourselves be led gently: today I will go up two steps, tomorrow four⌠The next day none, because we find we have no strength left. But we want to want to. We must at least have the desire to have desires. My children, this is already fighting.
If anyone is not prepared to be constant in his commitments or to remain upright in the faith and irreproachable in conduct, I would advise him to stop being a hypocrite and to go, and let the rest of us follow our way. There is a saying in my country that goes like this: âBlacksmith, either do your job or get off the bench.â Either do a proper Christian job or stop pretending and go awayâŚ
What will you do if you see one of your brothers getting soft and not fighting? For these things are noticeable, donât forget. Well, look after him and help him! If you see that he finds it hard to say the Rosary, why donât you invite him to say it with you? If he finds it difficult to be on time, tell him: listen, itâs only five minutes to the prayer or the get-together. Whatâs fraternal correction for, in the Work, or the chat? And if someone avoids it, or goes on too long, take note of it.
And whatâs Confession for? Donât ever miss it on your day, my daughters and sons, and whenever else you need it ⌠All these spiritual means, which are made easier by the affection we feel for one another, are there to help us begin again, to return again to seek refuge in presence of God, to devotion, to small mortifications, to caring about others. Thatâs what makes us strong, serene and victorious.
Let us ask our Lady, Refugium nostrum et virtus, our refuge and our strength, to obtain for us from God the strength we need in order to persevere in our interior struggle and be faithful to our vocation. In that way we will serve the Church effectively.