119. Easter Monday

Meditations no. 165 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

We have a serious obligation to do apostolate.

The Lord has risen from the dead, as he foretold. Let there be happiness and rejoicing for he is our King for ever. Now that we are filled with Easter joy, the Church wants us to realise that this joy has to be passed on to others.

The Gospel of today’s Mass describes how the women departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. The risen Christ himself meets them and confirms them in this apostolic resolution: Go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.

We are also apostles who have found Christ and who feel the urgency to spread the kingdom of his love everywhere. St Paul gave a motto to the Christians at Ephesus: Instaurare omnia in Christo: to fill everything with the spirit of Jesus, placing Christ at the centre of everything. Si exaltatus fuero a terra, omnia traham ad meipsum: and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to myself. Through his Incarnation, through his work at Nazareth and his preaching and miracles in the land of Judea and Galilee, through his Death on the Cross, and through his Resurrection, Christ is the centre of the universe, the firstborn and Lord of all creation.

Our task as Christians is to proclaim this kingship of Christ, announcing it through what we say and do. Our Lord wants men and women of his own in all walks of life. Some he calls away from society, asking them to give up involvement in the world, so that they remind the rest of us by their example that God exists. To others he entrusts the priestly ministry. But he wants the vast majority to stay right where they are, in all the earthly occupations in which they work: the factory, the laboratory, the farm, the trades, the streets of the big cities and the trails of the mountains.

Then there will never be any need for us to receive that severe reproach of St Augustine: If you are cold and lazy, and are only concerned with yourself and live content with that, and even say in your heart, “What are the others to me? I have enough with my own soul, I only hope to keep it intact for God” - come now! Do you not remember the servant who hid the talent and did not want to trade with it? Was he condemned for losing it, or was it not rather because he did not want to trade with it? Think of this, my brethren, and never rest content.

All our activity must have an apostolic value.

We love souls for the love of Christ. Hence we must always have a lively desire to give others the joy the Lord puts into our life. Thus, none of God’s children in Opus Dei can be at ease if they do not continually feel the hunger for proselytism, like their own heartbeat.

Hunger for souls is so much a part of our vocation that even our professional work would not make sense without this apostolic intention. It is indeed true that our professional vocation is part of our divine vocation, but only insofar as it is a means for our apostolate and for our own sanctification. It is part of our divine vocation only if it is a means for serving God, for becoming saints and for sanctifying others. If our professional vocation were ever to become an obstacle, then it must be set aside because it would no longer be a means. If it is not a baited hook for catching fish, it is of no interest to me, nor is it a part of the divine vocation; it would no longer be a professional vocation but a diabolical vocation.

Consequently all our activity must have the apostolic purpose of winning all souls for Christ. If you pray for them, sacrifice yourself, carry out your plan of life, do your ordinary work well, and do it all with a smile… you are fulfilling the goal of Opus Dei.

As the Catechism of the Work puts it, each of us should be like a burning coal, continually setting fire to everything it touches. Our Father used to add that the faithful of Opus Dei ought at least to raise the spiritual temperature of those around them, leading them to lead a more intense Christian life. We must set all earthly paths aflame with the fire of Christ. Not to take an interest in proselytism, our Father said, would be a symptom of laziness, of illness, and perhaps of death. Zeal for proselytism! Set those around you on fire! And those who are further away from you as well, through your prayer, your sacrifice, and the smiling fulfilment of your duty…

Now, each of you put your hand on your heart; meditate on what I have just said to you, and make the necessary personal resolutions to do your duty better. I ask my sons and daughters who receive Confidences, for the love of God, to ask your brothers or sisters every week in the chat about their proselytism, no matter whether they are sixteen years old or ninety. I want it to be clear that if there are no vocations, what’s lacking is love of God!

We ask in the Easter liturgy: Father, you give your Church constant growth by adding new members to your family. Help us to put into action in our lives the Baptism we have received with faith.

Apostolic zeal shows the state of our souls.

The effectiveness and value of deeds is to be measured by the degree of sanctity that is acquired through them. If they do not help us to improve, but are rather an obstacle to our sanctification or to true apostolate, then they are of no interest to us. Your personal sanctity has to make you an effective instrument in the Lord’s hands. Sanctify yourself in order to sanctify others. Your sanctity is not selfish. You receive water from God, and it is true that you must fill yourself with that water. But afterwards you must generously pour it out from the abundance of your heart into the hearts of all who live on earth.

We must sanctify ourselves by sanctifying others. There is no love for God where there is no zeal for souls. There is no zeal for sanctity if there isn’t also the zeal to spread it. It is not possible to find God if we are not concerned that other people should find him too. If someone is not prepared to win new vocations, there are only two possible explanations, our Father warns us. Either they are cowardly and unable to defend and spread the truth, or they are unhappy and incapable of loving, in spite of having received God’s best love in their soul. In either case they need to do something about it.

God has given us our head, our hands and our mind, along with our marvellous vocation, so that we can make those talents bear fruit I will use words which stick in your mind and in your soul because they call for personal responsibility. The Lord wants to work constant miracles, raising the dead and giving hearing to the deaf, restoring sight to the blind, and enabling the lame to walk. He wants to do this through our activity, through our work which becomes a true holocaust, an offering to God of everything, including our own selves, because we belong to him and we have already joyfully and freely said “Yes”, we want to give him everything.

With God’s help and Mary’s motherly protection, the zeal in our heart will never die out. But we must often ask ourselves: “In the time that I’ve been here, in this job, with these people, what changes have there been in my companions and the people around me?”