351. Twenty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time (C)

Meditations no. 319 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The need for spiritual direction.

God calls all men and women to share in his own life: now, by the theological virtues, and in heaven, by the beatific vision. But the path leading to our goal is not devoid of difficulties. Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. We can get discouraged, go astray, be deceived by the devil’s wiles; and without a guide our initial desire to reach safe harbour can founder. They that have no guidance fall like leaves, the Book of Proverbs says: but in much counsel there is safety.

One of the Church Fathers comments: The wise Solomon says in the Proverbs, “They that have no guidance fall like leaves: but in counsel there is safety.” Do you see what the Holy Scriptures teach us? They warn us not to rely on ourselves, not to regard ourselves as knowing all, not to believe that we can control ourselves, for we need help, we are in need of those who would counsel us according to God. No one is more unfortunate or nearer perdition than the one who has no teacher on the way of God. For what does it mean that where there is no guidance, the people fall like leaves? A leaf is at first green, flourishing, beautiful; then it gradually withers, falls and is finally trampled underfoot?

Without a special grace from God, people cannot ordinarily be a guide for themselves, as they would lack objectivity and be blinded by their own passions. No one can advance alone in the struggle to reach holiness: Woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up. On the other hand, St John Climacus says: Just as a ship under a good helmsman reaches safe harbour with God’s help, so also do souls with a good shepherd reach heaven safely, though they may have made many mistakes in the past.

In the Work we have all the necessary means to reach our goal without going astray. Our Father wrote: We need to be familiar with these means and use them perseveringly. All of us, by the fact of belonging to the Work, have the right and duty to receive the spiritual guidance which the Work gives us, and in the way it gives it to us, so as to acquire and practise our own spirit better and pass it on to others effectively.

In Opus Dei we have all the help we need to reach holiness. So we can take St Paul’s words to the faithful at Corinth as addressed to each of us individually: I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him with all speech and all knowledge - even as the testimony to Christ was confirmed among you - so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ; who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We should cooperate in our own formation.

The direction we receive in the Work entails a whole programme of care and attention to help us to be holy. It is a positive task, which fosters our capabilities and helps us become more aware of what we can achieve. The care and attention we receive are a means of formation and transformation, and will lead us - if we respond decidedly - to transform ourselves, and also to transform, to divinize, our actions: to make ourselves Opus Dei and to turn all our work and endeavours into Opus Dei, into God’s work, pleasing and acceptable to our Lord. The Directors put great care and attention into forming the people of the Work: one by one, like precious gems worked by a jeweller.

But they do so with much greater care, since something more valuable than gems is at stake, for the object of this formation is to prepare good instruments for God’s service.

We need to play an active role in this process, striving with all our strength to acquire the polished form God hopes to see in us. In the first place, we must contribute to our own formation, by recognizing our need for this help: through the chat, the Brief Circle, and all the means of formation. We have to make a real effort to be well-disposed, to obey cheerfully and promptly. General good will is not enough; we need to respond with docility. Our Father wrote: “The stuff of saints.” -You hear this said of some people: that they have the stuff of saints. -Apart from the fact that the saints were not made of “stuff”, having the raw material is not enough.

One needs to be very obedient to the Director and very docile to grace. -Because, if we don’t allow God’s grace and the Director to do their work, there will never appear the finished sculpture, the image of Jesus, into which the saintly man is fashioned.

And the “stuff of saints” we were speaking of will be no more than a rough, unshaped log fit for the fire… for a good fire if it was good stuff.

Specific ways of cooperating.

God has arranged things so that, ordinarily, the orientation we need in the course of our daily life comes through the channels of spiritual direction offered by the Work. It is our job to respond in such a way that this guidance bears good fruit. Therefore, our Father stressed, we have to let those with the mission to form us know all our personal circumstances; we can’t be afraid to be known as we are. Just the contrary: we should be very happy to make our soul transparent. The specific way in which we collaborate will depend on the particular means of formation: the Confidence, imbued with sincerity and simplicity; fraternal correction, made or received with humility and supernatural outlook; the get-togethers, Study Circles and conferences, retreats… When we go to our annual courses, and our classes of religious and doctrinal formation, the talks on the spirit of the Work, or the Brief Circles, we should do so with the same enthusiasm as when we went for the very first time. If you learn well what you are taught, if you strive to make good use of time during the annual courses and the other means of formation which the Work provides for you, our Father wrote, you will end up with the learning of a theologian. And there is a serious obligation to make use of the means to acquire this doctrine. To do that, we should renew in our prayer our human and supernatural commitment, and rekindle our desires to serve God better. In a note to one of our Father’s Instructions we read: Our Founder says quite graphically that we can never be like those trains that lie idle, with the wagons disconnected from the locomotive. In the Work we all have to go ahead, drawn along by faithfulness to divine grace, and not be a burden for the Director, who is not there to tow us along.

Let us love the spiritual direction the Work gives us - for us it is a right and a duty - and not put obstacles in its way. Only then will our life be truly Opus Dei, a work of God, and each of us will be able to say: I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth, for we shall rejoice in Him for ever in the company of our Blessed Lady and the saints.