320. Seventeenth Friday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 296 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

We have to be souls of great and noble desires.

Through the action of the liturgy our Mother the Church shows us the unfathomable wonders of our Christian faith. In the Opening Prayer of the ferial Masses this week she causes us to consider the emptiness of a life without God. Without you nothing is holy, nothing has value. Whereupon she invokes God’s mercy, asking that Jesus our Shepherd may guide us to everlasting life by helping us to use wisely the blessings you have given to the world.

We should certainly be involved in the affairs of this world: God has placed them at our disposal precisely so that we may sanctify them. Our noble human aspirations nevertheless need to be channelled, so that they don’t take us away from God but rather lead us steadily towards him. Moderating them doesn’t mean impoverishing them, but keeping them in perspective and correcting them, while never losing sight of our supernatural destiny. God in his love has chosen us, my beloved daughters and sons, for this way of the Work, a way forever youthful and new, a human and divine adventure, a means of co-redeeming with Christ, and a close and intimate participation in Jesus’ impatient longing to spread the fire he came to cast on earth. Our ambition is great indeed: to gain the whole world for God. We really need to be on fire, since we have to be a guide, a chief, a leader!… , to compel, and push, and draw others, with your example and with your word and with your knowledge and with your authority.

Sacred Scripture teaches us to have great ambitions, to desire with God’s own desire. The prophet Daniel describes in a certain passage how, as he prayed earnestly to Almighty God, his heart was moved to beseech the Lord to fulfil his Will for the welfare of mankind. Suddenly the Archangel Gabriel appeared to him and said: O Daniel, I have now come out to give yon wisdom … for you are a man of desires and thereupon revealed to him the divine designs of redemption. Daniel’s prayer, nourished by his generous desires, became all-powerful, because his daring was the fruit of humility, and his impatience the fruit of his longing to serve God.

We too should foster those divine desires in our heart, and long to bring very many souls to Christ; our weakness counts on the power of God. This is what St John Chrysostom had in mind when he taught the Christians of his time: the leaven, no matter how small, transforms a great mass of flour; so also will you convert the whole world … You cannot excuse yourselves by saying: what can we do in the face of the great multitude of mankind? This is in fact what reveals the splendour of your power. Don’t be discouraged … your light will not go out: rather, you will overcome all difficulty.

Our great desires should include professional ambition.

Lord, all my longing is known to you. Among the great desires that God has placed in our hearts, for us to foster and so give him glory, is our interest in our job or profession. We have been called to the Work to sanctify ourselves in our ordinary work, in carrying out a task which for us is a most effective way of attaining Christian perfection and of doing a fruitful apostolate. Our work, sanctified by our self-giving in

God’s service, itself becomes a means of sanctification. It would be inconceivable for a son or daughter of God in Opus Dei not to be professionally motivated to work at the occupation in which they have been called and turn it into an instrument of holiness and apostolate.

In the world at large, people work hard, whether or not they are the head of a family, and they usually put a fair dose of enthusiasm into what they are doing. Often this professional interest is what motivates people to keep at it when they get tired or don’t feel like it: the noble ambition to achieve promotion, to establish and support a family, or to become an expert in a particular field. We are ordinary people: we live among our equals. Naturally, therefore, job motivation has an important place in our lives as well. You too, our Father says to each of us, have a professional vocation which “spurs” you on. Well, that “spur” is the hook to fish for others.

Rectify your intention, then, and be sure you acquire all the professional prestige you can for the service of God and of souls. The Lord counts on this too.

If we are to strengthen our professional vocation and make it ever more effective, then we need to devote a certain amount of time and energy to study and professional improvement.

The factors that motivate others should inspire us too; but, from the moment we received Christ’s call to his Work, they have become divine. You are ambitious: … for knowledge… , for leadership… , for daring ventures.

Good. That’s fine. -But… let it be for Christ, for Love.

Thanks to our divine call our professional ambition has acquired a superior dimension: it has become an instrument of God’s action. For this reason we are ready to abandon any occupation, however promising it may be, if the needs of the Work so require. Just as a married man, when thinking about his career, cannot just consider his own personal preferences, but also the welfare of his children, our Father wrote, neither can you lose sight of the good of the apostolate.

If it ever proves necessary, we are very ready to change to working internally without in any way abandoning our interest in our chosen profession: on the contrary, our previous interest becomes greater every day. Bear in mind that from that very moment the new task becomes that person’s new profession …

You have to carry out the new job with the same spirit and dedication as before. You have to sanctify the work entrusted to you, sanctifying yourselves and sanctifying others through it, and devoting to it all your interest and all your talents.

Practical consequences of our professional motivation.

Our work is a professional occupation which we carry out in the middle of the world. Therefore, when reminding you of the need to work, I have to remind you at the same time of the need to work well. It is not just a matter of filling in the hours but of being technically and professionally competent.

You can never treat work like a game, something not to be taken seriously, a pastime for amateurs, or some sort of hobby. What am I supposed to do if someone tells me, for example, that one of my sons is a bad teacher but a good son of mine? If he is not a good teacher what good is he to me? Because the fact is that if he has not bothered to improve professionally then he is not a good son of mine at all. We have to work like the best of our colleagues; and if possible, better than the best. A person who has no professional ambition is of no use to me.

Whatever our job happens to be, we should dedicate to it all the care and effort we can, because we know that our professional vocation is not only a part, but a principal part, of our supernatural vocation. Our Founder expressed this in a graphic way: Peter was a fisherman before becoming an Apostle, before becoming a priest, before becoming the head. And he continued being one afterwards. Before becoming an Apostle, he was a fisherman; and after becoming an Apostle, he was a fisherman still. Afterwards he had the same job as before. It’s the same with us. And even our priests, as far as possible, do the same.

The effort to keep up our professional interest is a great field for ascetic struggle. Furthermore, this professional interest is a healthy expression of our secularity, as well as being a sign of our having a responsible attitude in financial matters.

May our Mother Mary keep alive our longing for holiness and apostolate, and help us always maintain our interest and effort in our daily work. Place on your desk, our Father advised us, in your room, in your wallet, a picture of our Lady, and look at it when you begin your work, while you are doing it, and when you finish it. She will obtain, I can assure you, the strength for you to turn your task into a loving dialogue with God.