332. Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time (B)

Meditations no. 595 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Prayer is the primary means of accomplishing any supernatural task.

I firmly BELIEVE that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me …

Once again, we are moved by this act of faith that we learned from our Father. We have the Lord very close, in the tabernacle and in our souls in grace; and yet, on so many occasions, we lack a more vivid sense of God’s presence. That is why we feel the need to cry out: adauge nobis fidem! increase our faith. We would like to be more immersed in God throughout the day. We wish that we could say about each one of us what the Book of Exodus tells about Moses: that the Lord spoke to him face to face, as one speaks to a friend.

Our prayer must be a conversation of illumination and love, as our Father wrote, because we want the Lord to act in us and for us. It must be He who, with His sovereign grace, lifts us out of our misery and grants us the light and strength to launch us to high goals in our interior life and in apostolic activity, even if they seem difficult or even humanly impossible.

This is how we see what happens with the Prophet Elijah. In the first reading of the Mass, it is narrated that, fleeing from Jezebel, the impious queen of Israel, Elijah sat down under a broom. And he wished himself death, saying, “It is too much, Lord; take my life, for I am no better than my parents.” Then he fell asleep, until an angel woke him up, inviting him to eat bread baked on the coals and to drink a jug of water. This happened twice. He ate and drank; and with the strength of that meal he walked forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mountain of God.

The tradition of the Church has seen the food of Elijah as a figure of the Eucharist. God places at our disposal prodigious means, which raise us from our misery, divinize us and make us capable of feats difficult or impossible in the eyes of men. “The prayer that comes in all purity from the depths of faith,” writes St. Augustine, “rises like incense from the sacred altar. No other aroma is more pleasing to God than this.”

For this, in the first place, we must be pious, very pious. Pray, pray, pray to give glory to the Lord and to work always with rectitude of intention. If we are immersed in God, with prayer and work that merge into service to the Lord, we will never lose our right direction. You can see that prayer continues to be, and will never cease to be, the means by which we do everything. Without this constant and renewed relationship with God, nothing can come of it.

If we live in conversation with the Lord, we will be detached from everything, to be more and more of Him. It will give us great joy to live in one place or in another; to have the opportunity to have certain means, such as lacking them. And in all circumstances our gratitude to God will be evident, because we will feel the reality that we are instruments to do good to souls.

Let us ask the Lord for the grace to discover his goodness in every circumstance, without being discouraged by difficulties. If we continue in our commitment to dealing with God, we will always go forward and understand one day that every suffering carries with it a seed of hope. “It is only in prayer, in the intimacy of immediate and personal dialogue with God, that he opens hearts and minds (cf. Acts 16:14), that the man of faith can deepen his understanding of the divine will with regard to his own life.”

We must always put supernatural means in the first place.

THESE are the means we must always use: a life of prayer, a life of sacrifice, a fulfillment of duty in professional and social work!

We must take great care of the supernatural means at our disposal, so as not to allow ourselves to be carried away by the purely human logic of those who think that two plus two equals four, and do not have the great command that gives value to all others: God.

Saint Paul writes to the faithful of Ephesus some words that we heard in the Second Reading: do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God with whom you have been sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, anger, indignation, shouting or blasphemy and every kind of malice disappear from you. A little further on, he adds: imitate God, therefore, as beloved children, and walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as an oblation and offering of sweet smell before God.

United to Jesus Christ - to his life, to his passion, to his death and to his resurrection - we find everything we need to be always the joy of God, so as not to grieve the Holy Spirit. In this way we will live a life totally linked - fused - with the Sacrifice of Jesus. “The only Saviour, Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, prays for us, prays in us and, at the same time, it is to him that we address our prayer. He prays for us as our priest; he prays in us as our Head; he receives our prayer as our God”.

All this is ensured by fidelity to the norms of the plan of life that our Father transmitted to us. Pope John Paul II recalled this when, during the canonization of our Founder, he invited us to constant interior growth nourished by prayer. “St. Josemaría,” said the Roman Pontiff, “was a master in the practice of prayer, which he considered an extraordinary ‘weapon’ to redeem the world. He always advised: First, prayer; then, expiation; thirdly, very ‘thirdly’, action” (The Way, 82). It is not a paradox, but a perennial truth: the fruitfulness of the apostolate is above all in prayer and in an intense and constant sacramental life. This is, in the end, the secret of holiness and of the true success of the saints.”

The Lord, who sees us and hears us, is waiting for our purposes, because he grants us his light, his grace. Always within the framework of his love, we can ask ourselves how we comply with the Norms and Customs, one by one, giving importance even to the smallest detail, in order to put ourselves in a position to serve those around us out of love. This attitude is not improvised, but is the fruit of a persevering correspondence to grace, which so abundantly reaches us through these means. “Since the Lord helps me with his customary generosity, I will try to reciprocate with a ‘refinement’ of my ways,” you told me. “And I had nothing to add.

Let us often bring to prayer, to examination, to fraternal talk, those supernatural means and those “ways” of dealing with God, to see how we can improve. Let us review with the Lord, who contemplates us from the tabernacle, if our points of struggle are well centered on Christ, on the Crucifix and the Gospel, on the Bread and the Word: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” said the Lord. -Bread and Word!: Host and prayer.

Otherwise, you will not live a supernatural life.

Thanks to the Eucharistic life, we can fulfil the mission entrusted to us.

THE JEWS, then, began to murmur about Him for having said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” we read in the Gospel of today’s Mass.

Many centuries have passed, but after all, these things have changed little. If our world has a hard time understanding the supernatural, it was not easy for that people chosen and prepared by God so that the Messiah would be born in their womb. But Jesus, tirelessly, says to them: Do not murmur among yourselves. No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the prophets: and they will all be taught by God.

Christ is not daunted by the attitude of the people around him and takes another step forward, as we must do, when helping souls to improve and change society is not an easy task. Let us return to the supernatural means, and among them, to the great means that Christ has instituted to give life to the world: the Holy Eucharist. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the desert and muñaron. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that if anyone eats it he will not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.

The promise of Jesus in Capernaum became a reality at the Last Supper, the sacramental anticipation of the Sacrifice of the Cross, and is actualized in the Holy Eucharist. The Lord has placed Himself in our hands. Not only has He given us supernatural means-such as prayer and the other sacraments-but He Himself gives Himself to us in Holy Mass, in Communion and in the Tabernacle. Aware that our strength is and always will be there, our Father wrote shortly after the Blessed Sacrament was reserved in the first Residence of the Work: Since we have Jesus in the Tabernacle of this House, it is extraordinarily noticeable: He is coming, and increasing the extent and intensity of our work.

The Lord now lives habitually and permanently with us: he is the center of our Centers. Don Álvaro, in order to encourage us to behave in accordance with that Presence, invited us to point out the personal examination, in case there was something in our lives that was unrelated to that company. “We will draw the immediate conclusion that the most important thing in our home is the Master of the House, Jesus Christ, whom, by grace, with the Father and the Holy Spirit we carry in our souls; the Master is He, who awaits us in the Tabernacle - in the oratory of the headquarters of the Center, or in the habitual church - where He is truly present, with His Body, with His Blood, with His Soul and with His Divinity.”

This is the great means to carry out the task entrusted to us; therein lies our strength and our hope: Jesus Christ in the Mass, in Communion, in the Tabernacle. I will tell you that for me the Tabernacle has always been Bethany, the quiet and peaceful place where Christ is, where we can tell him our worries, our sufferings, our hopes and our joys, with the same simplicity and naturalness with which those friends of his, Martha, Mary and Lazarus, spoke to him.

This is how the Blessed Virgin lived, “a Eucharistic woman with her whole life”, as John Paul II called her, because she was always attentive to offer her Son Jesus all her love and all her care.