263. Eleventh Tuesday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 251 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Charity for people who are outside the Church.

Today the Church’s liturgy wants us to meditate on the virtue of charity and arrive at practical conclusions.

In the Gospel of the Mass, our Lord shows us the lengths we should go to in our love for everyone. You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.

This is how we have learnt to act in Opus Dei: without any kind of bigotry, with our heart open to everyone. Our Father taught us this by word and deed, and we have seen it reflected in the lives of our older brothers and sisters, sometimes to the point of heroism.

In 1956, in a meditation for his sons in the Roman College, our Founder told them, Charity … is an infused supernatural virtue, by which we love God as Supreme Good, for his own sake, and love our neighbour and ourselves, also for his sake.

The material object of charity is God, the Angels, and men; not the damned, nor the devils, because they are incapable of God’s friendship. The formal object of this virtue is God, who is Goodness itself.

Therefore we must love all souls without exception: that is the first conclusion to be drawn when you start reflecting on this virtue. You must have the right kind of understanding for other people’s defects, failings, mistakes and weaknesses. And this understanding will enable you to live together in harmony.

My children, please pay great attention to these natural virtues! If you don’t, there is no way you can do apostolate. In the Work, as a direct result of charity, we practise holy intolerance, which is love for God, God’s own charity. But at the same time, as regards the authors of the errors we are standing firm against, we practise a holy tolerance that can go to unprecedented extremes.

In our internal law … I wrote that there are many people within the ambit of the Work who are far from the house of their Father God, or who don’t hold the fullness of the Catholic faith, but who nevertheless help us by their work, their gifts and even their prayer. These are the non-Catholic Co-operators. If you only knew how forceful I had to be, in a filial way, with the Holy See, before they would let us have people like that as Co-operators in the Work! But it was so obvious. It’s so obvious that the Work must have non-Catholic Co-operators! It is God’s charity that leads us to this kind of understanding and harmony, to holy intolerance and holy tolerance.

When there are people like that, who don’t know Christ, or who half-know him and don’t want to follow him, the members of the Work have to live in harmony with them. They have to work on them with their prayer, their sacrifice, and the good example they set, praying for them through our Blessed Lady’s intercession, that God in his mercy may grant them the light of faith. And they have to try and help them lead Christian lives, gently and in practical ways.

What greater charity could there be? What greater understanding? Who could be kinder? We actually bring them to the heart of our apostolates, have them in the centre of our souls, and make them into instruments like ourselves, for God to use to carry out his Work on earth! More fellow-feeling? More holy tolerance? More holy intolerance? You couldn’t find more anywhere!

Charity for other Catholics.

In one of St Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians he is full of praise for the faithful in Macedonia. When the Apostle asked the different communities which he had founded to contribute to a collection for the Christians in Jerusalem, the Macedonians were outstanding in their generosity. Their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own free will, begging us earnestly for the favour of taking part in the relief of the saints.

At this time the Corinthians were still a prey to conflict and dissension, and Paul spurs them on to have more charity for their brethren in the faith.

In the meditation referred to earlier, our Father went on to say: And what about Catholics? From the very first moment, God placed a great love, in the hearts of his children in Opus Dei, for the mandatum novum: A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. My children, how difficult it is to get along together, when there is no charity! So many factions, so much desire to impose one’s views, such collective pride! I seem to hear St Paul shouting out to the Corinthians and to Christians today, those of us Catholics who live in today’s world: Ego quidem sum Pauli, ego autem Apollo, ego vero Cephae, ego autem Christi. In Corinth, some claimed to follow Paul, others supported Apollo… but we have got to proclaim, “I don’t belong to this party or that or the other one either: I belong to Christ!” Ego autem Christi! To Christ, to Christ, to Christ! Pure gold and silver aren’t given brand-names. If it’s real silver it’s called silver, and if some name is added, it means it’s been alloyed …

Seeing so much pettiness, so much meanness, so much calumny and friction, I had prayed over and over again: oremus pro unitate apostolatus, let us pray for the unity of the apostolate. I thought about the mandatum novum, the new commandment our Lord left us. And I wrote in our internal law that in our relations with other Catholics our highest ambition is to act like Christ’s first followers, making no discrimination on the grounds of family, nationality or language. My children, what greater charity could there be than this?

Can you see how you are to love all Catholics? Like this! Mandatum novum do vobis: ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos. I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you. I remember how we set up the first corporate work of apostolate, the Academy in Luchana Street, and how I had a plaque put up with the text of the Mandatum novum. I often used to tell the boys there: “This commandment is still new for lots of people, after all these years. So new, they haven’t tried it out yet!” And now, my children, it carries on being new; among Christ’s followers there’s so often no love, no charity. It’s painful to see. It’s a pity, but it’s absolutely true. How often people who claim to be serving Christ try to get rid of others who are also serving him! They resort to lies, malicious gossip, ambiguity and innuendo, in order to sow confusion …

My children, love them too! Love them all! There’s no reason for you to put out a flame that is supposed to be burning for love of Christ If it hasn’t really got any oil, it will go out by itself anyway.

Charity for our brothers and sisters in the Work.

A new commandment I give to you, said the Lord: that you love one another, even as I have loved you. Charity for one another. Supernatural charity and natural affection. Practical charity: Non diligamus verbo neque lingua, sed opere et veritate. Let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and in truth.

Why am I reminding you of all this? Because this is what I think matters most: extreme charity. To put it briefly, the affection you have for each other shouldn’t be there merely because you find each other likeable. Love all the others individually and collectively, without being afraid to love. But your love should be like this: you should love one other with supernatural, practical love, that sets God above any other feeling of affection, beyond all other love. Because the charity we have for God must be appretiative summa, the highest love of all: we must love God our Lord more than any created being, and be ready to lose the whole world rather than lose our friendship with God.

What a shame if there should still be some corners in your soul that haven’t yet been cleaned out! What a shame if your heart were still clinging to one of God’s creatures! Look, we are so pathetic that we always make up plenty of reasons for not putting a stop to things, for not uprooting things and cleaning things out. My child, if you are keeping a place in your heart for something you shouldn’t, I tell you that now is the time for you to put an end to it. Ask our blessed Mother to help you, and she will get you the grace from our heavenly Father to enable you to do it.

And how should you show your charity for your brothers? Well, I’ve told you a thousand times already: by making the path to sanctity pleasanter for them. Many years ago I wrote that the salient feature of the Work of God is exquisite courtesy in the way we treat each other …

Charity should lead you to take care of the smallest details of thoughtfulness for one another. Apparently there was once a major quarrel among a certain community of nuns, which all started because one of them opened a window and someone else wanted it shut In Opus Dei we mortify ourselves to make everyone else’s path to holiness pleasanter, so as to create a family atmosphere and real homely warmth. If you love one another, each of our Centres will be the home I have pictured, the home I want -God wants - there to be wherever we are. If you act like that, every one of your brothers will feel a holy hunger to get home at the end of the day’s work. And having been there, they will be stimulated to go out to carry on our holy war, our war of peace. Home! Because you make sure that everything is in its proper place.

If you notice that someone needs clothes and doesn’t say so, though they really should, then mention it yourself. If someone is not eating properly, bring it to the Director’s attention; and if you notice something broken, you make a note of it there and then.

Charity towards your brothers. This charity will lead you to help them to persevere in their vocation, which is the most splendid gift God has given us. It will lead you to use your talents so that each of us will be saints, and will have a solid interior life.

If you know that one of the others is delaying the meditation, or forgets to go to Confession on the right day, why don’t you help them? “Look, shall we go and do the prayer?” “How about coming to Confession? Today’s our day…” If we notice that someone finds mortification difficult, surely we can make it a little easier for them with a kind word and our own good example?

Charity stimulates us to help other people by our prayer and our mortification, and to work efficiently, both at our jobs and at our apostolate. Alter alterius onera portate, et sic adimplebitis legem Christi. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. But bear the burden happily. Set your life on fire! Burn it up, right to the end! Do it with your eyes on God, uncalculatingly, only wanting to spend your days, hour by hour, in the service of the people around you.

Don’t forget that by your dedication to our Lord, through the blessed Communion of the Saints, you are helping all your brothers and sisters to sanctify their daily work. And it will be a wonderful thing: a burning fire in God’s sight! Give yourselves, out of love of God and love of the others, in unobtrusive service. If you act like that you will see how other people begin to live in the same way, and all together you will be a blazing fire that spreads to everything around it.

As we finish our meditation today let us ask our Lady to teach us to love one another, and all souls, in that way, as her Son has shown us.