254. Tenth Tuesday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 244 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

God never breaks his promises.

Quare fremuerunt gentes, et populi meditati sunt inania? - Why do the nations conspire, and the peoples plot in vain? The words of the Psalm - the word of God - can give us optimism today. Our failings are not really important if we consider that the Almighty is with us, and that he is always faithful to his promises. What do enemies from outside matter? He who sits in the heavens laughs. All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord abides for ever.

The history of the people of Israel is a clear proof of God’s loyalty. When Adam and Eve sinned, God gave them back some hope with the promise of a Redeemer. A just man, Abraham, fell heir to this promise. And one night God appeared to him, saying: “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness. By faith, the Letter to the Hebrews tells us, Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man … were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

For hundreds of years the prophets kept Israel’s faith in God’s promises alive, by crying out to God: Have regard for your covenant; for the dark places of the land are full of the habitations of violence. Let not the downtrodden be put to shame; let the poor and needy praise your name.

God heeds the prayer of his people. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. When Jesus Christ founded his Church, he promised Peter that the powers of death shall not prevail against it. And God is faithful: For ever, O Lord, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens.

Jesus Christ promises a Paraclete, the Consoler. And from the day of Pentecost onwards, the Holy Spirit has been present in his Church and in all who form part of her. Our life is full of trust, because we are God’s children -Filius meus es tu, you are my son; because he has promised us his help - I am with you always, till the close of the age; and because God always keeps his promises - Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

The consciousness of our divine filiation forms the basis of our spiritual life as God’s children in his Opus Dei. This characteristic feature of our spirit, wrote our Father, was born with the Work, and it took shape in 1931. In humanly very difficult moments, when I felt nonetheless certain of the impossible - what you now see has come true - I felt God bringing to flower the tender invocation, Abba! Pater! in my heart and on my lips, with imperative strength.

Heaven is committed to carrying out the Work on earth

The Work of God has come to fulfil God’s Will. Therefore, have the deep conviction that heaven is pledged to its fulfilment. This certainty should encourage us to be more faithful, more dedicated, and more generous, every day. Dabo tibi gentes hereditatem tuam et possessionem tuam terminos terrae - I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. God wants to carry out Opus Dei on earth. He could of course do it without us; but he wants us to cooperate with him and be good instruments in his hands. Accordingly he purifies us, so that we come to realize that everything comes from him and nothing from ourselves. All the many setbacks we have suffered have never made us lose our joy or our peace for a single moment, because we found how God brings forth sweetness, wonderful honey, from the dry rocks of hardship: de petra, melle saturavit eos (he filled them with honey from the rock).

Our Father has often told us that we need to have certain guiding principles that we can come back to regularly, to strike fire from them anew. One of them is this: we are not alone, because God exists, and he called me into existence, he holds me in being and gives me my strength. What’s more, he has chosen me out with special love, and if I trust him he will give me constancy and firmness for my journey, because when he begins something he completes it; all his works are perfect.

And so, in any difficulties that may come up, tell the fearful person, if need be, those words of Isaiah: Dicite pusillanimis, confortamini et nolite timere: ecce Deus vester … veniet, et salvabit vos. Say to the fainthearted, take courage and fear not, because our God will always carry us forward.

I am convinced, I am morally certain, that the Work will continue for as long as there are people on earth. Therefore you and I have to put our whole lives into making sure that the Work never comes to any harm out of lack of vitality or lack of fortitude.

Because you have to be, as I say, balm and strength for other people, you must be ever-conscious of our Lord’s words: sine me, nihil potestis facere, (apart from me you can do nothing). While our Lord could perfectly well do everything himself, he prefers to make use of us, and even of our shortcomings. Look at the holy Gospel: our Lord’s Apostles were useless, selfish and ignorant. You or I would never have chosen them for the job.

The same is true now, and St Paul is speaking to us when he says: Consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world, to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world, to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are.

We look trustingly towards our Lord, confident that we are doing his Work. Christ is under an obligation to you because of this promise, says St Augustine, and he is true and absolutely faithful.

We are confident of God’s help.

I contemplate the Work as God wanted it to be, our Father told us, and we have got to wait. I see it projected forward in time, centuries away, cutting a deep, broad furrow, bright and fruitful, through the history of mankind, with humble, silent work. But for this to come true we need to pray. Postula a me - Ask of me, Psalm II goes on. God foresaw all the prayers and joyful sacrifices offered by everyone in the Work,

for him to use in order to establish his Work on earth. God wants to be asked, says St Gregory the Great; he wants to be coerced, he wants to be overborne by a sort of importunity. Jesus Christ teaches us this in many parables. The conclusion is always the same: Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. Truly, truly I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name. Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

Although God had decreed the Incarnation of the Word, he wanted to be asked for it insistently. How often, and with what confidence in God’s promise, the just men and women of the Old Testament “demanded” - so to speak - the help he had pledged to give. After one of the many times when Israel had sinned and merited God’s anger, Moses stood up to God in these terms: O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? … Turn from your fierce wrath, and repent of this evil against your people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, “I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven” … And the Lord repented of the evil which he had thought to do to his people. Moses’ prayer was necessary, in God’s Will, for the Jewish people to reach the Promised Land.

To ask for things in prayer is to identify ourselves with God’s Will; and God’s Will is that the Work should be carried out. Pray, pray, is the system; and then work, serenely and joyfully, because God relies on our efforts to do the Work, and our efforts, paradoxically, consist above all of letting God’s power act.

When we’re working for God we have to have a superiority complex, I told you.

But isn’t that a sign of pride? you asked me. No. It is a consequence of humility; the humility which makes me say: Lord, you are who you are. I am nothingness itself. You have all the perfections: power, strength, love, glory, wisdom, authority, dignity… If I unite myself to you, like a child who goes to the strong embrace of his father or sits on his dear mother’s knee, I will feel the warmth of your divinity, I will experience the light of your wisdom, I will sense your strength coursing through my veins.

I trust in you, O Lord. I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hand. Let us put our trust in God: Beati omnes qui confidunt in eo - Blessed are all who take refuge in him. He will perform this sowing of holiness and apostolate throughout the world. But let us also apply our prayer, our sacrifice, and our work to the task, so that the spirit of the Work is always kept as God wanted it to be from the start.

Our Blessed Lady, Regina Operis Dei, Queen of Opus Dei, protects our way. My children, our Father insists, invoke our Lady with all your heart, trustingly. Realize that she has been our greatest protector, our greatest recourse, ever since that second of October 1928, and even before then.