170. Pentecost Sunday (II)
Meditations no. 216 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
The consecration of the Work to the Holy Spirit completes our spiritual itinerary.
You know that the Father is not in favour of proposing particular devotions for his daughters and sons. I prefer you each to have your own devotions, which should be few, simple, and firmly rooted, and which you omit from time to time, only to take up again later on, in order to live them with greater piety. But they are always your own devotions.
Nevertheless, since the beginning of the Work we have felt the need to come together - cor unum et anima una (one heart and one soul) - to consecrate our families to the Holy Family of Nazareth, and to consecrate the Work to the Most Sweet Heart of Mary and to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. And now, when God in his goodness allows us to see Opus Dei flourishing in souls of every race, nationality, and language, I am going to make the consecration of the Work to the Holy Spirit for the first time, on Pentecost Sunday. At this time it is very much needed. It will be an act of dedication and personal prayer that comes from each of us individually and also from all of us together, corporately.
Our Founder said these words to us a few days before the 30th of May, 1971, the solemnity of Pentecost, when he made the consecration of the Work to the Holy Spirit for the first time. They were days of hard trials for the Church which made our Father suffer greatly. In the middle of these very trying circumstances the Holy Spirit bestowed his supernatural fruits on the life of Opus Dei.
Our Founder had practised and spread devotion to the Holy Spirit since he was very young. I can tell you, my children, that, thank God, I have always had a great devotion to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. In the early years of his priestly ministry, after the foundation of the Work, he addressed the Paraclete with intense fervour. Come, O Holy Spirit! Enlighten my understanding to know your commands; strengthen my heart against the snares of the enemy; inflame my will. I have heard your voice, and I donât want to harden my heart and resist, saying: later⌠tomorrow. Nunc coepi! Now I begin, in case there is no tomorrow for me.
It grieved our Founder to think that the Paraclete was known and prayed to so little by most Christians. For this reason he called him âthe Great Unknownâ, and sought to develop a doctrinal, loving devotion to the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity in the souls he was directing. He was speaking of his own interior life when he said: Every day, wherever I am, I speak about the Great Unknown, because I want him to be better known. I love it when you to get to know him. Like that youâll be good children of God.
God our Lord wants us to practise this deeply-rooted Christian devotion in Opus Dei corporately as well as individually. I have led you by the hand to Mary, Jesus, God the Father, the Holy Family, and the Holy Spirit, our Founder told us a short while after the consecration of the Work to the Paraclete. And he added: Divine filiation and love for our Blessed Lady are two of the main characteristics of our vocation, and tender love for God the Son is a lesson which we have been taught by his Mother, who is also our Mother. Now God our Lord has also shown that he wants us to have a special veneration for the Great Unknown, the Holy Spirit - a devotion which was contained in the spirit of the Work implicitly from the beginning. It seems to me that with this consecration we have now completed our spiritual itinerary. It is not the fruit of human understanding, it is not my doing: it is the fruit of the love of God, who has wanted us to follow this path.
The spiritual dispositions needed to renew this consecration fruitfully.
The text of this consecration reminds us of the spiritual dispositions with which our Founder addressed the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity at that time, placing his desire to serve the Church and all souls, which was the motive for all his actions, under the Holy Spiritâs protection.
As for ourselves, O Holy Spirit, we consecrate Opus Dei and our entire life to you. We offer you ourselves and all that we are able to do or achieve: our minds and our wills, our hearts, our senses, our souls and our bodies. We want to be, now and always, holy temples in which you dwell with the Father and the Son. Grant that there may never be anything in us contrary to this indwelling. Our Founder indicated that we should renew the consecration to the Holy Spirit in all the Centres of the Work on the Solemnity of Pentecost every year. We want to do it today with the same vibrant faith with which he did it the first time.
In order to prepare properly, we must strive to practise the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, so that the Paraclete can take possession of our souls more intensely. The invocations which our Founder used for the prayer of consecration help us to pray trustingly to each of the three divine Persons, present in our soul in grace. God himself is listening to us and waiting for our petitions. Moreover, the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.
God the Father in heaven ⌠confirm and renew in us that sharing in the divine nature which by your grace you have granted us.
God the Son ⌠increase and strengthen in us the mission of your Spirit who, by shaping us in your image, makes us one with you.
God the Holy Spirit⌠You have always given the Church your peace, joy and consolation amid so many difficulties, confirming our faith, sustaining our hope, and inflaming our love. Grant us your sevenfold gift, so that throughout our whole life, in our thoughts, words and deeds, we may be pleasing to our Father in heaven, the eternal and Triune God.
Our prayer is humble, because we know our own unworthiness before Godâs majesty. That humility will make it extraordinarily fruitful, bestowing on us the dispositions necessary to receive the gifts and fruits of the Paraclete. The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, of knowledge and counsel, of piety, fortitude and fear of the Lord will rest upon us, as he rested upon the Blessed Soul of Jesus Christ. Charity and the other theological virtues will increase in us along with grace, filling us with the welcome fruits of the Spirit: charity, joy and peace, which derive immediately from love of God; patience and longanimity in adversity, kindness and effective good will towards our neighbour, gentleness, faithfulness, modesty, continence and chastity, which will go to make up that sweet fragrance of Christ which we have the mission of spreading throughout the world.
At the same time, the Holy Spirit, who fills our hearts and minds with light, will help us to see the obstacles opposed to his dwelling and acting within us: attachment to sin, resistance to the advice of those who have the grace of God to guide our soul, carelessness in carrying out our resolutions for our interior life and apostolate, and more.
Conscious of our need for his help, let us implore the Paraclete with humility and hope: Enlighten our minds, purify our hearts and confirm our wills. Teach us to accept all things as coming from your hands, in the knowledge that everything works to the good of those who love God. Make us docile to the gentle inspirations of your grace, O Holy Spirit, and help us to respond generously.
Praying for the Church and the Work.
The consecration we are renewing today moves us to ask God our Lord for great benefits both for the Church and for the Work, because he has immense gifts ready for those who invoke him with hope and love.
We ask him to help us be faithful instruments in carrying out Opus Dei, links in the chain of transmission of our spirit, in perfect union with our Founder and with the Father. Preserve always in your Work the spiritual gifts you have bestowed on it, so that, in keeping with your most lovable will, and inseparably united to our Father, to the Father, and to all our brothers and sisters, cor unum et anima una, we may be holy, and, at the same time, an effective leaven of holiness among all people. Keep us ever-faithful to the spirit you have entrusted to our Founder, and help us to preserve it and transmit it in all its divine integrity.
We place our mission of service to the Church of Christ in the hands of God the Holy Spirit, taking refuge in his immense goodness. As our Father wished, we pray especially for the Pope and the Bishops in communion with him, and for all Godâs people.
We beseech you always to assist your Church, and in particular the Holy Father, so that he may guide us with his word and example, and attain eternal life together with the flock entrusted to him. We ask that we may never be without good Shepherds, and that all the faithful may reach the glory of heaven after having lived a life of deep faith and holiness in your service.
Many are the gifts which the Holy Spirit, the uncreated Soul of the Church, seeks to pour out on the members of Christâs Mystical Body, so that all may be inspired by the same spirit of vibrant faith and unbreakable unity, with no divisions or dissension. Therefore we all need to be docile to the inspirations of grace and the commands of our true shepherds. This is a way of asking for unity and peace, which will make the Church a more effective sign and instrument of Godâs saving action in the world.
O God, One and Three, beginning and end of our life, you deigned to call us to share in the intimacy of your glory. Listen to the petitions that, with filial piety, we address to you.
Grant the Church peace, so that all Catholics, filled with the Holy Spirit, may always give to others a firm and true testimony of their faith, genuine proof of their love, and an account of their hope.
The Paraclete, fans vivus, ignis, caritas, / et spiritalis unctio: the living spring, fire, charity, and spiritual anointing, wants to set us on fire with Godâs own life; and he wants to shower his grace upon the world, so that Godâs goodness may produce everlasting fruit in it. We offer him the fertile soil of our own firm determination to respond to his grace. With our human loyalty and supernatural faithfulness, may we always yield the fruit you expect of us, fruit that will last; and thus, living permanently in your love, may we be able to enjoy your eternal glory, together with our Mother Mary, united for ever to the Father who, with the Son, lives and reigns with you for ever and ever. Amen.