425. Twenty-ninth Tuesday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 377 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

We have come to the Work to serve.

By calling us to his Work, God himself sowed in our hearts the good spirit of Opus Dei, which is universal, which loves all souls without exception, which is not nationalistic, which leads to joy through generous dedication, which is a spirit of service not of triumph, which is a spirit of love! We’ve come to the Work to imitate Christ, who came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Our decision to serve, made out of love, has given shape to our whole life.

From the outset our Founder’s heart and mind were filled with a zeal to serve. If the Work doesn’t serve the Church, he declared, it serves no purpose at all. That’s what it was born for, that’s what God wanted it for! And he instilled in us the need to become other people’s servants out of love: In order to be useful, serve, I’ve so often repeated, since this phrase summarizes a great part of our spirit: service to God, I repeat, and to his holy Church and the Roman Pontiff; service to all souls, especially those God has placed at our side by giving them a vocation to Opus Dei; and also those others who don’t have a vocation to Opus Dei, but who benefit from our example and teaching, which is another apostolic service.

Following our Lord’s example, in the Work we have learned to serve. Our Founder wrote, for each of us: Forget about yourself. May your ambition be to live for your brothers alone, for souls, for the Church; in one word, for God. To serve, to make the way easier for others: here we have our life’s ambition. Our apostolic zeal leads us to serve those around us generously, joyfully, self-sacrificingly. It makes us see ourselves as other people’s servants. We understand that bearing witness alone is not enough: we need to fill the minds, hearts and behaviour of all mankind with the teaching and love of Christ our Lord.

By our loving service, we renounce strictly personal goals in order to conform to God’s will in all things. This self-renunciation has an unexpected liberating effect on us: the divine yoke we freely sought and accepted frees us from slavery to the devil and the allure of earthly things. We have become servants of God and souls in order to attain the higher freedom St Paul speaks of: the freedom of love by which Christ has set us free. And instead of the uncertainty and restlessness consuming many people’s lives, we are greatly blessed to know that if we obey, we are always doing what’s best.

This eagerness to serve is shown in obedience to the Directors.

Therefore we must pay the closer attention to what we have heard, St Paul wrote. Our zeal to serve requires the effective fulfilment of what God wants: deeds are love and not sweet words.

“What do I have to do to maintain my love for God and make it increase?” you asked me, fired with enthusiasm.

Leave the “old man” behind, my son, and cheerfully give up things good in themselves but that hinder your detachment from yourself. You have to repeat constantly with deeds, “Here I am, Lord, ready to do whatever you want.”

In the Gospel of today’s Mass, Jesus urges us: Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the marriage feast, so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks. We should be ever attentive to God’s will. When we first said yes to God’s call, we opened our soul totally and submitted our whole life to him. But our commitment of love has to be renewed over the course of our life, since as our Father wrote: Being chosen by God means, and demands, personal holiness.

Let us not haggle over what we generously offered God in our youth. St James exhorts us to put away all filthiness and rank growth of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls. But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.

Ours must be a prompt docility. There is one right path, one door leading to God’s Kingdom: loyalty to our own vocation and ready vigilance to respond to God’s continual invitations. St John Chrysostom said: Only one thing is worth all our effort: to seek to fulfil our promises and show obedience with our deeds. Then -yes, then - we will have achieved all things. We recognize God’s voice in the advice we receive in the chat and Confession. Therefore our Father insisted: Receive the advice you are given in spiritual guidance as though it came from Jesus Christ himself. And referring to a well-known verse from Exodus, he said: If you hearken attentively to his voice and do all that I say, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries. We need to listen and then act: deeds, not words. We need to act in God’s service, perhaps without any outward manifestation, but by our interior struggle. At other times, by doing apostolate.

Fulfilling God’s will is the one thing that matters.

It would be good if it could be said of you that the distinguishing feature of your life was “loving God’s Will”.

God has a special love for those who lovingly fulfil his will: I have found in David the son of Jesse a man after my heart, who will do all my will. Fulfilling God’s will is the one thing that matters in life.

There are three very important things you need to do to draw people to God, our Founder wrote. Forget yourself, and think only of the glory of your Father God. Subject your will filially to the Will of heaven, as Jesus Christ taught you. Follow with docility the lights of the Holy Spirit.

Fulfilling God’s will has to be what gives meaning to our life. We should bring this frequently to our prayer. As our Father says, I love the Will of my God and that is why, abandoning myself completely into his hands, I pray that he may lead me however and wherever he likes. All our apostolic activity would be in vain if we weren’t subject to God’s will in everything. If our obedience were not prompt, exact and effective, all our efforts would be wasted. You run well, but off course, St Augustine exclaimed. And what good is it to run if one fails to reach the goal? Obedience… a sure way. -Blind obedience to your superior… a way to holiness. -Obedience in your apostolate… the only way: for, in a work of God, the spirit has to be to obey or get out.

Our Founder often spoke to us about the need for obedience. On occasion he would use the metaphor of a person trying to win a war by himself: “I was a guerrilla fighter,” he wrote, “and I moved around the hills, shooting whenever I wanted. But I thought I had better become a soldier, because I realized that wars are won more easily by organized armies and well-disciplined armies. A poor guerrilla fighter on his own cannot take whole cities, or conquer the world. I hung up my old musket - it was obsolete - and now I am better armed. At the same time, I know that I can no longer lie down in the hills, under the shade of a tree, and dream about winning the war all on my own.”

The Blessed Virgin Mary was ancilla Domini, the handmaid of the Lord at every moment. Through her intercession, we approach God using a prayer the Church places in this week’s Liturgy: All-powerful and ever-living God, give us strength and joy in serving you.