350. Twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time (B)

Meditations no. 600 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Fidelity to God, who has chosen us.

THE FIRST reading of the Mass reminds us of the moment when Joshua, after having brought the people of Israel into the Promised Land, proposed to renew the Covenant that God himself had established on Mount Sinai. Reverence the Lord, serve him with purity and truth, separate yourselves from the gods whom your fathers served on the other side of the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. If it seems wrong to you to serve the Lord, choose today whom you are going to serve: the gods your fathers served when they were on the other side of the river or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. I and my house will serve the Lord.

The people answered, saying, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! For it is the Lord our God who has brought us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, and who has done these great signs before our eyes; it is he who has kept us in all the ways we have gone and in all the peoples through which we have passed.

The chosen people violated the Covenant many times, rejecting God’s commandments and worshipping the false gods of the neighboring peoples. The Lord then punished them, according to what He had warned them from the mouth of Joshua: He will not override your trespasses and sins. If you abandon the Lord and serve foreign gods, He will return, mistreat you, and consume you after He has favored you. However, God was not unfaithful to His covenant with these men: when they repented and returned to Him, He welcomed them with His customary mercy. He expected absolute loyalty from them, as He was faithful and loyal to those who followed Him.

The Lord, who has made us in his image and likeness, free and responsible for our actions, expects from his children an absolute, irrevocable fidelity, above all the vicissitudes of life. The passage of time does not annul or diminish the ability to freely commit oneself to the future. This is the case in many areas of human activity and, even more so, in the response to a supernatural vocation that is not the fruit of one’s own ingenuity or of one’s own will, but the effect of divine predilection.

“The Church affirms that beneath the surface of change there are many permanent things, which have their ultimate foundation in Christ, who exists yesterday, today and forever (cf. Heb 13:8)”. That is why fidelity to God and to the Church is possible, just as fidelity in marriage and apostolic celibacy is also possible. We are not slaves to our passions or our whims. Whatever happens around us or in ourselves, the Christian vocation has in itself a permanent value, a stability that places it above any human fluctuation. Moreover, with faith in the Providence of our Father God, who directs everything towards our good, these circumstances, when they arise, must be understood as a stimulus to a more demanding commitment and a fuller fidelity.

We all want to be faithful, even in the last detail of our lives; I am sure of the sincerity of this desire in each of my daughters and sons, because no one can forget that the Lord has said to him, personally: ego redemi te, et vocavi te nomine tuo, meus es tuo! (Isa 43:1). But are we like that of God?

That is why it seems to me necessary to always continue to insist on fidelity, when so many boast of their misconduct, their lack of faith, their selfishness and their comfort.

Jesus asks for unconditional discipleship.

In this Sunday’s Gospel we read that Jesus also presented his disciples with a definitive alternative, on the occasion of the proclamation of the Eucharist. Faced with the affirmation that it was necessary to eat his flesh and drink his blood in order to attain eternal life, many of those who followed him turned back: this teaching is hard, who can listen to it? The Lord experienced with sorrow the abandonment of many disciples. They failed in love, because if they had loved him with all their being-like the Apostles-they would not have withdrawn. From that moment on, St. John notes sadly, many disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. Then Jesus said to the twelve: “Do you also want to go away?” Simon Peter’s answer, in the name of Christians of all times, will always be timely: Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; we have acidized and known that you are the Holy One of God.

God grants us his grace to serve him with full fidelity, above the difficulties, ups and downs and moments of darkness that may appear in life. He is always faithful and, if we do not abandon him, he will not abandon us. There may be moments when we notice superficial feelings or illusions, not very supernatural at heart; but if the firm desire to please the Lord in everything remains in the soul, the moments of darkness or trial are overcome: fidelity is the fruit of divine grace and of human correspondence, of the daily struggle against that which seeks to separate us from God.

Does it not give you joy to see that fidelity depends to a large extent on us? I am enthusiastic about thinking that God loves me, and that he wanted his Work to depend on my correspondence as well. And it gives me joy to be able to say to him, freely: Lord, I love you too; count on my littleness.

Jesus Christ does not admit of a half-hearted follow-up, depending on the absence of obstacles, state of mind or other circumstances. If we do not follow him unconditionally, if we abandon him, we would not be his faithful disciples.

We must serve God without conditions, if we want to be faithful to him with joy. Tell me, what joy would be achieved by one who gave reluctantly, as one who does an extraordinary favor? Think that when we do not set conditions for God, the mountains fall: the greatest obstacles vanish. What seemed to be a difficulty that exceeded our strength, is resolved in a mirage. You cannot remain, my son, with reserves within your heart: plans, aspirations, desires or a fund of distrust, which would leave you gloomy and cold.

Let us meditate again and again on these words of St. Josemaría, determined not to put limits on the gift that the Lord has asked of us. Will you learn, my son, not to point out limitations to those who loved you so much that they gave their lives for you? This path of generosity and promptness, for contrition, marks the path of joy. You and I cannot put conditions on the Creator: He on us, yes, because he is God and he is the owner of our hearts, of our whole life. But since God identifies himself with Love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8) and the obligations that Love demands elevate and liberate the whole of conduct, it follows that to allow oneself to be conditioned by our God is to enter into the marvelous journey of those who participate in his Love. Hence, with the freedom of those who serve as children, let us repeat, knowing very well what we are saying: gaudete in Domino semper (Phil 4:4), always rejoice in the Lord. Our joy is in serving You: with the barriers You want, my Lord.

Trust in God’s love for us.

YOU HAVE the words of eternal life, Peter said to Jesus at a particularly delicate moment. When we do not understand what the Lord is asking of us, or it seems difficult and complicated, it is time for faith and humility, which translates into generous trust. God does not allow himself to be outdone in generosity, and - be sure of it! - he grants fidelity to those who surrender to him. And our Father also warned us: if you do not leave him, he will not leave you.

To abandon the following of Jesus when it is difficult to give oneself would be to enter an abyss in which the light and strength that come from the Creator and Redeemer are lacking, leaving one’s own “I” as the only reference, with all its limitations.

“In difficult moments,” Don Álvaro wrote in one of his letters, “we cannot forget the choice, nor can we ignore that our dedication to God has been sealed by the commitment that we freely acquire when we join Opus Dei. A commitment of love, because it was born as a consequence of the vocation, which is a sign of Love, a kiss from God; and also because, in responding to that call, we have done so out of love.

“Many times you will have meditated on point 999 of The Way: What is the secret of perseverance? Love. -Fall in love, and you will not leave him (The Way, no. 999). And perhaps you have noticed that the last sentence also acquires meaning if we read it backwards: do not leave him, and you will fall in love; be loyal and you will end up crazy with love for God. Here, my daughters and sons, is the center of the noblest sense of loyalty, a virtue that leads us to maintain our commitment to the Work above obstacles, above setbacks, above circumstances of illness or health (Instruction, May 1935, September 14, 1950, note 110).”

You, my son, ask each of us our Father, how do you watch now, in the face of this great commitment of love? How is your daily fidelity to the plan of life, in the midst of the hustle and bustle and responsibilities of your work? How do you pray, how do you take care to make use of all your relationships with your neighbour to make them an occasion for the apostolate? You cannot be formed by a colourless occupation, it takes time to reach the depths of a soul until you open divine horizons to it.

God needs us with a shameless apostolic fall, so that we may speak of Him to the people. To grow, in the Work, is to go deeper into this unity of life, which leads us to link the apostolate in the incidents of professional work, in the ordinary task of each day, without concealment or false discretion - years ago I buried that word, discretion, so that there would be no room for misunderstandings, trying to make known the doctrine and life of Jesus Christ.

We must vibrate, my children, we must vibrate because we will give an account of the time uselessly spent. For us, time is the glory of God, time - at every moment - is an unrepeatable opportunity to sow good doctrine. There is never any reason to neglect the apostolate. The farther away from the truth of Christ the place in which you move, the more you must enter into God, with our inner vibration and with apostolic fervour. In this way we will be light, a shining lantern, lit at the crossroads of this earth.

Holy Mary, Virgo fidelis, filios tuos adiuva!