244. Ninth Monday of Ordinary Time
Meditations no. 236 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
God has raised us up to the life of grace
We have been raised to the supernatural order, a dignity which completely surpasses anything that is due to our nature as human beings. St Peter reminds us how God, in his infinite goodness, has granted to us his precious and very great promises ⌠that you may become partakers of the divine nature. He made us, and has called us to be his own children.
Through our vocation to the Work we have been called to this union with God in a very special way, to the point where, as our Father writes, nothing makes sense to us without the light of Godâs love. But with it, we can make everything divine, hardly being able to distinguish what is temporal from what is spiritual. Supernatural life must form the ultimate basis of our whole personality. Human things and divine things must come together as one, because we have been chosen by God in the middle of the world to take Christ to the summit of all human activities, to divinize the things of this earth. By yourself, if you donât count on grace, you can do nothing worthwhile, for you would be cutting the link which connects you with God. With grace, on the other hand, you can do all things.
Our Lord Jesus Christ calls grace âliving waterâ, St John Chrysostom teaches, because it is always acting. The grace of the Holy Spirit, when it enters the soul and settles there, has greater power than the most torrential river; it never fails ⌠or dries up or ceases to come. To express this inexhaustible gift, this indescribable energy, the Lord calls it a fountain and a river ⌠And it is more than a river: it is a whole network of rivers. He also calls it water that springs up, to express its force and impetus.
If you want to understand all this thoroughly, just think of Stephenâs wisdom, Peterâs teaching, Paulâs vigour. Nothing could restrain or diminish their drive: neither the anger of the people, nor the violence of tyrants, nor attacks by demons, nor the daily threat of death. Like a river in full spate, they swept all before them.
That is how our life will be if we respond faithfully to Godâs grace. There is nothing that can withstand the force of grace: The waters shall make their way through the mountains. For God fills all things and makes them fruitful with his grace. With his strength we can achieve anything; all we have to do is get rid of whatever impedes his action. Then we will have all the power of our Father God. Anchored in this confidence, our Founder encourages us: With Godâs grace, you have to tackle and carry out the impossible, because anybody can do what is possible.
The need to turn to God for help in the struggle for personal sanctity.
The goal of sanctity, the fullness of the life of grace, is totally beyond our capabilities. With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible. God himself is engaged in building up the edifice of our sanctity, for apart from me you can do nothing. Our attitude must be one of profound humility before him. Therefore if discouragement were ever to threaten us in our ascetic struggle, because of some difficulty we encountered, we would have to ask ourselves whether we were not trying to sanctify ourselves by sheer will-power alone. We can never manage on our own. The more keenly we feel this helplessness, the more docile we will be to Godâs grace.
It sometimes happens, as our Father points out, that our soul is filled, not with a lack of peace, but with uneasiness and questioning. At such times I go up to our Lord and say: âYou will do it all sooner, more, and betterâ; and I am filled with peace. Just put yourself in Godâs hands like a small child in its fatherâs arms. It is a surrendering of oneself to him that requires hope, faith, confidence and love.
We must never forget that we can do nothing supernatural without the aid of grace. No one can say âJesus is Lordâ except by the Holy Spirit. Godâs grace saves you each day from the snares the enemy sets in your path, our Founder writes. And the Psalmist sings, in Godâs name: Because he cleaves to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him because he knows my name. When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble.
But feeling the power of Godâs hand in our lives is not enough. We have to make sure we respond by stretching out our hand to take hold of his. When Godâs finger, his grace, meets with a full response, he works wonders. And how can we respond more fully? With the help of prayer. It is true that we have nothing, and our strength is insufficient. But we are Godâs children, and that is the best possible guarantee and the firmest pledge for our hope: if we pray, our Father God will hear us. And so we turn to prayer with confidence. We are nothing, and therefore any effectiveness has to come from God. We do not pray in order to make our needs and wishes known to God, St Thomas says, but in order to realize for ourselves how much we need his help.
Together with prayer there needs to be penance. In order to be heard by God our petition must be upright: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And to identify our will with Godâs, we need to be purified, and, by means of mortification, to get rid of whatever separates us from him. In this way our life will be effective, with a fruitfulness which God will produce through us, in spite of our personal nothingness.
Apostolic effectiveness also comes from God.
Apostolate and proselytism form an essential part of the vocation to which we have been called. It is an imperative command of Christ. But without our Lordâs help we will not do anything in this field either. The fruits we seek are supernatural ones: we want real miracles, and it is God who works them and uses us as his instruments. We need to be united to our Lord. Apostolic effectiveness can only come from union with Jesus Christ, the True Vine. The branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine. The branch bears fruit only if it receives life-giving sap from the vine. Vocations to the apostolate are sent by God. But you must not cease to make use of the means: prayer, mortification, study or work, friendship, supernatural outlook⌠, interior life! Our apostolate would be barren and ineffective unless we made use of the supernatural means in the first place. Sine me, nihil potestis facere: apart from me you can do nothing.
Your effectiveness, my children, will be the result of your personal holiness, which will ripen into responsible deeds, not taking refuge in anonymity. Christ Jesus, the Sower, squeezes us like wheat in his wounded hand, soaks us in his blood, purifies us, cleanses us, makes us drunk with his love! And then he flings us generously to the four winds, one by one, as his children in Opus Dei should go, scattering us: wheat is not sown by the sackful but grain by grain.
You are light in the Lord, and you should act like children of the light. The fruit of Godâs light is goodness, justice and truth. If any child of mine were not to bear abundant apostolic fruit, their life would be inconceivable - a double life, a mere act. I will tell you once more that any such child of mine would be dead and rotten: iam foetet (by now he stinks). And as you well know, all I can do with a corpse is bury it piously.
By talking to your colleagues, relations, friends and neighbours on an individual basis, doing what I have often termed the apostolate of friendship and confidence, you will shake them out of their sloth, and open up wide horizons on their selfishly bourgeois ways. You will complicate their lives by getting them to forget about themselves and start to care about the problems of the people around them. And you can be sure that by complicating their lives in this way you are bringing them, as you know from experience, to gaudium cum pace, joy and peace.
The apostolate will be fruitful, and vocations will come in abundance, if we are truly united to our Lord through prayer and our spirit of penance. So we turn to our Lady, mediatrix of all graces. This is Godâs Will, St Bernard tells us, because he established that we should receive everything through Mary.