367. Twenty-third Sunday of Ordinary Time (A)

Meditations no. 603 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

With fraternal correction we help others to be saints.

THIS Sunday’s LITURGY takes us by the hand to meditate on a Custom of the Work that has the flavor of first Christianity: fraternal correction.

Already in the first reading we hear some words of the Lord to the prophet Ezekiel: “You, son of man, I have set you as a watchman over the house of Israel; you will listen to the word of my mouth and warn them from me.” This divine way of saying that we should be alert, to warn our brothers and sisters of any danger they may face, is the attitude of the watchman who keeps watch, without giving occasion to sleep, in order to signal in time the approach of the enemy. There are always dangers that can, as if by osmosis, penetrate our behavior and impregnate us with lifestyles that belie our condition as children of God; for this reason, we must also be very attentive to the human tone that we have to live, and help one another.

If your brother sins against you, go and correct him alone with him. If he listens to you, you will have won your brother. All Christians must strive to put into practice this indication of the Lord, that in the Work we live naturally and with our own characteristics. We are a small part of the Church and, as in the Church itself, the faults of some have repercussions on others, in the same way that the personal struggle to be close to God also helps the holiness of others. For this reason, our love for the Church and the Work leads us to help our brothers and sisters with fraternal correction, whenever necessary. Because, having been called by God to make Opus Dei on earth, each one being Opus Dei, we have the mission of watching over the holiness of all.

Making fraternal correction is a duty that can sometimes be difficult. When correcting, St. Josemaría writes, because it is necessary and one wants to fulfill one’s duty, one must reckon with the pain of others and one’s own pain.

But let that reality never serve as an excuse, to inhibit you.

We will be impelled not to neglect the practice of this Custom of the Work what St. Augustine writes: “If you neglect to do so, you are the worse. He committed a fault and with it he wounded himself with a grievous wound; do you despise your brother’s wound? You see him perishing or that he has perished, and do you neglect him? You are worse if you keep silent than he is when you fail.”

When there is love from God, affection for our brothers and sisters knows how to discover things that others do not see. With fraternal correction, we can provide them with self-knowledge and help them discover the root of their defects. Like that child who stumbled frequently and his father scolded him regularly, until his mother sensed that the solution could lie in a visit to the eye doctor, as it was. We must excuse, condescend, accept ourselves as we are, but guessing, through prayer, the concrete way to help our brothers and sisters.

The practice of fraternal correction - which has an evangelical heart - is a proof of supernatural affection and trust.

Thank it when you receive it, and don’t stop practicing it with those you live with.

The practice of fraternal correction is one of the commitments acquired in doing Fidelity.

MANY times we have meditated on this Custom of the Work, which helps us to preserve and improve our spirit. Today we do so following the considerations that Don Álvaro suggested to us on one occasion.

“No one in Opus Dei walks alone, unaware of the sanctification of others. Indeed, the Lord asks us to identify ourselves with Him, to seek holiness, and for this he offers us his divine example: we must strive, every day, at every moment, to serve others, taking care most happily to push them with our prayer and with our mortification, with our charity and with our dedication. How well it is understandable that one of the commitments, which involves incorporation into the Work, leads us to give the other faithful of the Prelature that most precious help of fraternal correction! That is why we learn at once that all of us, in Opus Dei, are sheep and shepherds. Shepherds who are not mercenaries, nor dogs who grind their teeth, because they spend their lives for the holiness of others.

“When our Father passed through a Centre, he used to ask some questions, which he repeated tirelessly with the force of the newness of true Love. In this way, from the first moment, he took the pulse of the work and glimpsed the spiritual life of the people attached to that Centre. You remember perfectly well that one of these questions was: Are you happy?, because joy is a manifestation of love for God: a person in love with the Lord does not allow himself to be carried away by sadness. Then he added: Do you comply with the Norms?, thus emphasizing the priority of the interior life above everything else, in order to arrive at unity of life. And before learning if there was someone sick, he asked us with great interest: do you live fraternal correction?, because the habitual practice of this Custom is the thermometer of authentic fraternal affection and the immediate consequence of true fraternity: supernatural and human affection, without sentimentality; sacrificial and generous, operative affection. If it were not taken care of, the love of God would not throb in people, nor the authentic affection of brothers and sisters. Those who behaved in this way would have begun to live as strangers. And, as our Father warned, the day we live as strangers or as indifferent, we have killed Opus Dei.

“This holy concern for others, which impels us - without petty things or fussiness - to desire that each of your brothers and sisters - you and your sisters - reach the summit of our relationship with God, will also help us to be loyal - more and more loyal every day - to our friends, to our relatives, to our colleagues, because we will also warn them, with charity and extreme delicacy, of what in the presence of God we see that it is necessary to suggest to them so that their lives may have the brightness of a coherent Christian. And it will also help us to receive with sincere gratitude all that they can suggest or correct to us. It moves me to think that our beloved Father exclaimed, full of gratitude, that for the goodness of Heaven he had never been able to complain like the cripple in the Probatic pool - hominem non habeo! (Jn 5:7) - because he had always had at his side, from the foreboding of the divine call, the one who would take care of his soul. Yes, my daughters and sons, we help others - that is what we want - and others help each one of us.

“Examine, then, whether you make an effort to live with care this obligation, which is the source of so much good for our supernatural family; if you ask the Lord for enlightenment, to help others more and better - the faithful of the Work, with a special obligation of justice; and also other people, out of just charity - in their interior struggle and in their apostolic work; if you reject the facile excuses - laziness, fear of grieving, false humility … - that the devil presents to us to divert us from the responsible fulfillment of this duty. Do not give in to reluctance or abandonment, even if it is a matter - as will happen in most cases - of correcting in small details. Learn from the strength of our beloved Father, who never ceased to give the appropriate warnings to his children, whenever they needed him, because he loved us - he loved those he treated like the Apostle: in Christ and for Christ. I can assure you that many people, outside the Work, have told me that they understood the holiness of our Father because of the affection and strength with which he warned them of everything he considered necessary. And I ask myself: are we, each of his daughters and sons, loyal women or men, who do not compromise with evil, because we live the authentic fraternity, the authentic charity of Christ, who spent his time doing good? (cf. Acts 10:38)”.

Goods that come from fraternal correction.

Habitually practicing this Custom of the Work can be laborious. Do not neglect the practice of fraternal correction, a clear example of the supernatural virtue of charity, our Father wrote. It is difficult; it is more comfortable to inhibit oneself; more comfortable!, but it is not supernatural.

“And of these omissions you will give an account to God.”

“On the contrary, by living it assiduously - making it or receiving it with a supernatural sense - fraternity is refined, it gradually loses the bargain that is easily mixed with the purest gold of healthy Christian coexistence, until it becomes - with divine grace - a very strong cement of union, which nothing and no one is capable of breaking apart.”

On the other hand, my daughters and sons, remember forcefully what our Founder always taught us: that in the Work no one has the business of mortifying others (Meditation, 15-1-1959). For this reason, we do not correct the slight and isolated faults of others, as long as they do not constitute a habit that hinders their interior life or their apostolic work. Consequently, this Custom does not lead, in any way, to being distrustful or impertinent people, but to positively help, to excuse and to understand: to manifest - I repeat once again - true affection. I ask my daughters and my sons directors, without slackening in the demands of this teaching that deepens its roots in the Gospel, to tirelessly take care of those details of supernatural sense, prudence and delicacy, which our beloved Father established. See how he sums them up in The Forge: when you have to correct, do it with charity, at the right time, without humiliating … , and with the intention of learning and improving yourself in what you correct (The Forge, no. 455).

“Children of my soul, make daily and careful efforts in this most enchanting manifestation of brotherly love. Also help your directors in the established way, who need this means of formation like others. And if on any given occasion it is very difficult for someone to do it because the person to whom he is to warn is constituted in authority, or else he thinks much better than he is, of a higher spiritual or human category, or he fancies some other motive, think, my son, that God makes use of you, a small and clumsy instrument, so that those who are above may feel loved nobly, urged to holiness by those who depend on them or learn. It may also be useful for you to consider that, in the bosom of the Holy Family, the distance between the creature and God was infinite - or at least enormous, like that between the Mother of God and any other creature, even if it is a person as exalted as St. Joseph. However, the Holy Patriarch fulfills his duty: he leads the Family that God has entrusted to him, he teaches Jesus his profession. And Jesus and Mary obey.”

Fraternal correction, when you have to do it, must be full of delicacy - of charity! in form and in substance, because at that moment you are God’s instrument. Sometimes it will be opportune to wait, if the directors advise it to do so; at other times it will be necessary to exercise patience, because it is not enough to know the defects and fight against them in order to eradicate them: it is necessary to let grace work, to give a prudent time. To correct one of our brothers and sisters, even if it is with immense affection and opportunity, but in a different way from how it is established, means to deprive him of the grace that derives from obeying what is established by our Father. Effectiveness is not in what we say, nor in how we say it - which is also important - but above all in knowing that we are God’s instruments in making fraternal correction.

One of our dominant passions is the love of unity, and fraternal correction cooperates in a great way in the marvellous unity of the Work. If before we spoke of the sentinel who watches to defend the rest of his fellow citizens, now we see how this passion is realized through fraternal correction: frater qui adiuvatur a fratre, quasi civitas firma, the brother helped by his brother is like a walled city. The unity of the Work, the purity of its spirit, is thus guaranteed, because it strictly avoids everything that could introduce discord between brothers.

Let us ask Mary to help us to live this great manifestation of charity with the people whom God has placed close to us.