260. Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time (B)

Meditations no. 249 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The parable of the mustard seed comes true in the Work.

Jesus said to the crowds, The kingdom of God is … like a grain of mustard seed which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.

That is how the Church began: as small as a mustard seed. To start the proclamation of his kingdom our Lord chose a handful of poor men who had plenty of defects. He chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. And so in the parable of the mustard seed, Jesus Christ invites his disciples to have faith, as St John Chrysostom commented. He makes them realize that the preaching of the Gospel will be carried out no matter what happens. The mustard seed, he tells them, is the smallest of all the seeds; but when it grows it becomes one of the biggest shrubs, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches. Our Lord’s disciples were the weakest and most insignificant of men, but as God’s own might and effectiveness went with them, their strength unfolded and spread throughout the world. This is the way God chose to give proof of his own greatness.

So too Opus Dei was born small, like the mustard seed. It is founded, our Father wrote in 1934, on stones rejected by the builders. Here you will find no lofty figures from the Church’s hierarchy, nor men of national renown. The growth is as yet barely visible above ground: it is underneath, growing on the inside; the time will come for it to rise upwards.

Everything that is great always began like that. Who was Francis Xavier? Would Ignatius’ companions ever have believed how his Company was going to develop?

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.

It was our Lord who decided to use them as instruments, just as he used our Founder and our first brothers to sow the tiny seed of his Work in the world. The seed fell into our Father’s heart and germinated, putting down deep roots… Only I know how we began, he told us. Without anything human. There was nothing except God’s grace, twenty-six years of age, and cheerfulness. But the parable of the tiny seed has been fulfilled once again, and we must be filled with gratitude to our Lord.

Time and again we relive the parable of the mustard seed as we begin work in a new place, at the start of a new apostolate. Our personal littleness and the lack of resources are always an opportunity for God to display his greatness. But he asks us to have faith.

Faith to overcome obstacles.

My children, that’s how the Work was accomplished - with no money, and no virtues. All I had, our Father stated, was twenty-six years of age and a sense of humour. The Work was accomplished through the holy lives of your first brothers, with their constant smile, with their prayer, their work and their silence. That’s how Opus Dei was accomplished, through its silent but wonderful Cross and Resurrection.

The years have gone by, - not many for an institution that is destined to last for as long as there are people on earth; and the first-fruits of the small supernatural seed are already coming forth in many places throughout the world. Today the whole of the Work has the fragrance of ripe fruit, a field that the Lord has blessed, to use the words of Scripture.

When I survey the path we have covered since 1928, I see myself, my children, as a little child before a very good Father. You don’t give a little child half a dozen things to do all at the same time. You give him one, and then another, and then another, when he has done the one before. Have you seen how a little boy plays with his father? The child has some wooden blocks, of different shapes and colours. And his father tells him: put this one here, and that one there, and that red one over there … and in the end, there’s a castle! Well, my children, that’s how I see that God has been leading me, ludens coram eo omni tempore: Iudens in orbe terrarum (playing on the face of the earth and my delight is to be with the sons of men); as in a sort of divine game. And at the end of this wonderful game, don’t you see what a beautiful castle has been built? Opus sanctum, bonum, pulchrum, amabile! (a holy, good, beautiful and lovable work), a Work of his own, with all that colour, with all that variety of shape and outline, which is a reflection of God’s goodness.

Opus Dei was horn as small as a mustard seed, and like the tree in the parable it has grown so big, by God’s grace, that today it shelters a multitude of souls. This splendid development is a perennial call to us to increase our faith and show it in deeds, by our life of dedication and our faithfulness. Through the things we see, St Gregory of Nyssa tells us, our souls can glimpse more things and greater; and we are set on fire with a growing, untiring desire to achieve them. Faith and fidelity, when obstacles threaten to convince us that our undertaking is impossible; faith and fidelity, when objective difficulties make us feel once again as small as a mustard seed. In times of struggle and opposition, when perhaps “the good” fill your way with obstacles, lift up your apostle’s heart: listen to Jesus as he speaks of the grain of mustard-seed and of the leaven. -And say to him: Disserve nobis parabola, “Explain the parable to me.”

And you’ll feel the joy of contemplating the victory to come; birds of the air, sheltering under your apostolate, now in its beginnings; and the whole of the meal leavened.

Faith and fidelity too, when the obstacles arise from our personal shortcomings, and we feel the threat of our weaknesses and the twisted inclinations in our flesh and in our soul. Faith in God, faith in grace, and fidelity. We have to be very happy: everything will be fine. Things have always worked out, even when we caused obstacles ourselves through our infidelity.

Effectiveness is conditional on our fidelity.

Thus says the Lord God: “I myself will take a sprig from the lofty top of the cedar, and will set it out; I will break off from the topmost of its young twigs a tender one, and I myself will plant it upon a high and lofty mountain; on the mountain height of Israel will I plant it, that it may bring forth boughs and bear fruit, and become a noble cedar, and under it will dwell all kinds of beasts; in the shade of its branches birds of every sort will nest.”

The Work of God is opening up the divine paths of the earth, showing people its divine beauty. And its apostolic growth has no limits. If we are faithful and generous in our sowing, quae autem seminat homo, haec et metet; whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. Look and see how much good grain there will be when time has gone by: the harvest of our desires!” We must sow with faith, every day, through the fulfilment of our Norms of piety, through ready obedience, through heroic faithfulness to our plan of life, and through our beginning again and again in our inner struggle.

We need faith to give ourselves fully, vigorously, to our daily work, without opening so much as a crack where routine can creep in, or discouragement, or weariness, or pessimism. We need faith to fulfil the little duty of every moment heroically if need be, and to carry out our work in due order, tenaciously. This is how a farmer sows his seed, and then carries out one by one all the tasks that are needed to make it grow, with his eyes on the harvest which will come. Let no child of mine fail to feel the weight of this responsibility upon their life, upon their work, upon the whole of their day.

All the difficulties we may encounter now are the apostolic fruits of the future. The poverty and need of the beginnings are a sign of God’s special love. You still haven’t quite realized how much love God has poured out on each of us by calling us among the first. In thirty years’ time you will look back and be astonished. And all you’ll be able to do is spend the rest of your lives saying, “Thank you! Thank you!” God has chosen us as his instruments to do great things. Whether they are done, depends on our daily faithfulness at every moment, in the knowledge that we are working for today and for tomorrow. Our dedication is making a reality of this Work of God, which our Father saw, as he told us so often, projected forward through the centuries, always young, joyous, beautiful, and fruitful. And the birds of the air, of every kind, of every colour, come and settle in its branches.

In the light of this faith and in the warmth of this hope we are about to begin a new day of inner struggle and apostolic work. We will put renewed faithfulness into the way we fulfil the resolutions we have made for today, knowing that our Lord is pledged to the work’s being done. Qui coepit in vobis opus bonum, perficiet. He who began his Work will bring it to completion; you can be quite sure he won’t leave it half-finished.

We also turn to our Blessed Lady’s protection, because our Opus Dei was born and has grown under our Lady’s mantle, and she will always protect it.