394. Twenty-sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time (A)

Meditations no. 354 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Loving the unity of the Work.

St Paul beseeches the Philippians: So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any incentive of love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. As St John Chrysostom comments: Nothing is dearer to God than mutual union and concord among men.

Love for unity is one of our ruling passions, since we love the Work with all our heart and wish her the greatest good possible. We want St Paul’s appeal to all Christians to be true of Opus Dei for ever: Be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call.

This reality is shown in the Prelature’s moral, spiritual and juridical unity. It is God’s will that all of us are under the same head, and form a single body. Our Father stressed: I want you to have a sense of being members of a single body. Unum corpus multi sum us (we who are many are one body): all of us are but one thing.

In the first place, unity between both Sections. In the Work the two Sections are like two little donkeys pulling the same cart, in the same direction. They’re not two opposing forces. They are two parallel forces, with identical spirit and vocation, with the same origin and same purpose, under the Father’s direction.

Unity between priests and laity too, since we all have a truly priestly soul and a fully lay outlook … In the Work we all form a single class: the priests don’t tolerate that their brothers who are laymen should render them unnecessary services … The lay people and the priests, I want to stress, constitute a single class and receive the same formation. We can truly consider this fact as one of the marvels that God, by his grace and providence, has wrought in our Work, crystallizing it in our Particular Law.

The mission of the priests, through the direct service which they give to the whole Work, is to be instruments of unity, who ensure the parallel growth of the two Sections.

Unity, finally, of all the members with one another, since by God’s will every one of us without exception is called to foster the unity of each with the others and of all with Christ.

Preserving the Work’s unity as God wanted cost our Father great suffering. I wanted to secure our juridical unity out of love for Jesus, love for my Mother the Roman Church, love for my beautiful Mother the Work, love for my salvation, and love for my children in Opus Dei. There in the Cortile Vecchio I have left you a written reminder on a piece of marble that your brothers will read for centuries… But Opus Dei, firm, compact and secure, grew in strength and spread. Firm! Compact! Secure!

Obedience to the Directors is essential for unity.

Be convinced, my son, that for us disunity is death. Unity is the secret of our effectiveness and one of the greatest blessings God has bestowed on his Work. Our unity gives us the internal vitality needed to serve all souls without exception. Therefore fostering unity is a duty of justice to the Father and our brothers and sisters, and a duty of charity to all souls.

We each promote unity when we recognize that we form part of this body, working in the place where the Directors want us, where God wants us, like those great diamonds that remain wherever they are set, in whatever place they are put, without protesting and without pride. We must never be a piece or link that is out of place. To promote unity, which is the guarantee of our effectiveness, we need to ensure first of all that there is order. Each in our own place, not meddling in the affairs of others, and each responsible for our own behaviour. It’s all the same to us to be hand or foot, tongue or heart, since we are all in every part of the body, because we are one single thing through the charity of Christ that unites us.

On coming to the Work we set no conditions. We gave ourselves completely. Since then, our will, our mind, and our whole life have had a single purpose: to carry out Opus Dei on earth, being yourself Opus Dei. This unity of aims and sacrifice which is the strength of our life, is reflected in our obedience. We are like the branch our Lord speaks of in the Gospel. A branch not united to the vine, instead of being a living thing, is a dry stick good only for the fire, or for herding animals, in the best of cases, and to be trodden underfoot by everyone. My children, our Father said, be very united to the vine!, close to our vine, which is Christ Jesus, through prompt obedience to the Directors.

Love for unity has many other practical expressions. Each of us should be ready to forgo even legitimate personal things whenever these are an impediment to the unity God wants. And we do so gladly, happy to be contributing to the good of all. As our Father wrote to his sons who are priests, and to all his children: Ask God our Lord… to teach you to treat your brothers or sisters in such a way that you come last and they first; that you are the light consumed, the salt used up; that you gladly go out of your way to make them happy. This is the great secret of our life and our apostolic effectiveness, and the sure guarantee of our unity.

Faithfulness to our Statutes.

An essential means to maintain our unity is complete faithfulness to our Statutes. We should all strive to ensure they are fulfilled and constantly direct our life. All of us have a responsibility to prevent any custom or habit being introduced that might supplant anything in the Statutes or spirit of Opus Dei. We thus show our love for our beautiful Mother, the Work. The Directors in particular are obliged to foster the fulfilment of the spirit and law of the Work and prudently and effectively to ensure its implementation, in such a way that no contrary custom may ever arise or any of its precepts be left unfulfilled.

Our Founder asked everyone, especially the Directors, to have a juridical outlook regarding the Work. It’s not a question of opposing the spirit to the letter of the law, but of lovingly discovering the spirit of Opus Dei made flesh in norms which are so to speak its body, and should therefore be loved and followed. Thus we will avoid both the anarchy of a spirit without rules, and the rigidity of rules without life. Both extremes are opposed to the juridical unity of the Work, which is a guarantee of our effectiveness.

Our spirit’s vitality allows for a great variety of expression, without changing anything God himself etched out. All of us receive the general principles, the key ideas, along with the concrete applications deemed opportune at each given time, and which we have to pass on. Thus no member of this great body that is the Work will ever be far from the head.

Just as a person’s identity stays the same throughout the different stages of growth - childhood, adolescence, maturity - so too in our development there is evolution. Otherwise we would be something dead. The kernel, the essence, the spirit, remains unchangeable, but expressions and ways of doing things evolve, ever old and new, ever holy.

Ask our Lord along with me, my beloved daughters and sons, by the merits of his Mother who is also our Mother, to make all of us good and faithful instruments. Ask God for the grace to love the unity of the Work just as he wanted it from the outset; so that all our hearts may form a single heart, as in the past and now and for ever. So that those words from Scripture may become a reality among us: Multitudinis autem credentium erat cor unum et anima una; the company of the faithful were of one heart and soul.