228. Seventh Wednesday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 101 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

A great variety of apostolates in building up the Church.

The lesson Christ teaches us today is all about universality. We see how his immense heart is open to all mankind. As St Mark recounts, the Apostle John approached Jesus and said to him, “Teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not forbid him; for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon after to speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is for us.”

God’s word must reach all souls: Hear this, all peoples! Give ear, all inhabitants of the world. The Church’s mission is a universal one; it is aimed at people of all nations and races. Naturally this mission is carried out in many different ways, inspired by the Spirit of Christ. The Second Vatican Council teaches that the apostolate, through which the laity build up the Church, sanctify the world and bring it to live in Christ, can take on many different forms. These various apostolic initiatives help to manifest the diversity and beauty of the Catholic Church. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the organs in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single organ, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body. The overall health of the body comes from the unity of all the healthy parts, each in its own place: Thus, each limb receiving the active power it needs … achieves its natural growth, building itself up through charity.

In Opus Dei we are very happy to see other Christians working apostolically in the service of the Church. As our Father wrote: You show bad spirit if it hurts you to see others work for Christ without regard for what you are doing. Rejoice when you see others working in good apostolic activities. And ask God to grant them abundant grace and correspondence to that grace.

Then, you, on your way: convince yourself that it’s the only way for you.

Combining universal with local needs.

Through love and faith and hope, we are united to all the members of the Church. We rejoice when they experience success in their service of Christ, while at the same time we strive with all our strength to achieve unity in the apostolate. Our Father urges us: Stir up in your heart the longing to transmit, by your prayer, a new surge of life and strength to the entire earth, even to the utmost corner of the planet where a single person may be found generously spending his life in the service of God and souls. Thanks to the ineffable reality of the communion of saints, we are all joined together - fellow workers, St John says - in the endeavour to spread God’s truth and peace.

As Christian faithful in full union with the Pope and with the bishops in communion with the Holy See, we take good care to ensure that our concern for our own holiness is intimately bound up with an interest in the development and vitality of the entire Church. With your work you will help to spread Christ’s kingdom on every continent. You will offer up hour after hour of work for distant lands being born to the faith, for the peoples of the East cruelly forbidden to profess their faith, and for traditionally Christian nations, where it seems that the light of the Gospel has grown dim and souls are groping in the obscurity of ignorance.

No sorrow, no joy, of our brothers and sisters in the faith, can be foreign to our Christian heart. And within Christ’s Mystical Body we are united in a special way to our brothers and sisters in the Work. Any problems we may encounter in our personal apostolate or in the apostolate of our Region must always take second place to the needs of the Work as a whole, for as St Thomas Aquinas says, there is an order in charity: the common good of the many should be loved over and above the private good of the individual. We must never lose this universal perspective. As our Father wrote: May I never see “cliques” developing in your work. It would make a mockery of the apostolate. For if, in the end, the “clique” got control of a universal undertaking, how quickly that universal undertaking would be reduced to a clique itself!

Specific manifestations in our apostolic work and in the instruments of apostolate.

The sense of responsibility of the members of Opus Dei enables us always to be concerned about both local and universal matters together. This increases the Work’s effectiveness,

In God’s presence we can think what this means in practice. In the area of apostolate, for example, it is a matter of making sure that our apostolate is properly directed and integrated into the apostolate of our Centre. The Centre itself should follow the apostolic directives set out for the whole Region; and each apostolate should be carried out in the way indicated by our Founder and by the Father, and in faithful obedience to all that they tell us. Wherever we are, we should be united in working hard for the monthly intention; and above all we should pray for the Father’s intentions.

In addition, we have to make it our responsibility to help in obtaining the money needed for the apostolic activities of the Work all over the world. As our Father explained: Opus Dei has always needed, and I think it’s safe to assume that to the end of time it will always need, the generous cooperation of many people to maintain its apostolic works. One reason for this is that such activities never show a profit. Another reason is that, even though the number of people helping out increases and the work done by my children expands, if there is love for God, the apostolate grows and the requests multiply.

We can’t be content with just covering our personal expenses. Our good spirit and our sense of responsibility will lead us to consider how we can render effective help to our Centre, to our Region, and to the whole Work, to the extent of our possibilities. True detachment leads us to be very generous with God and with our fellow men. It makes us actively resourceful and ready to spend ourselves in helping those in need. A Christian cannot be content with earning just enough for himself and his family. He should be big-hearted enough to give others a helping hand both out of charity and as a matter of justice.

Our Lady, who spent many years of her life in a small village in Palestine, and who is the Mother of us all, the universal co-Redemptrix, will teach us how to harmonize local apostolic initiatives with the apostolate of the entire Work. She will help us always keep before our eyes the broad picture: the complete, supernatural, Catholic and Roman vision of our mission.