454. Thirty-second Thursday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 400 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Our soul is like a vessel which the Holy Spirit wants to fill with his grace.

This week’s liturgical texts from the Hook of Wisdom invite us to meditate on some words addressed by our Founder to all his daughters and sons many years ago.

I like to compare our soul to a vessel God our Lord has made to store the liqueur of Wisdom, a gift… which the Holy Spirit pours generously into our hearts along with his grace. This gift is so wonderful that there is no one God loves so much as the one who lives with wisdom.

I will remind you of what Sacred Scripture tells us: all good things come with wisdom. … Similarly, we can say that all good things come to a soul along with the spirit of Opus Dei, because it is true wisdom to live as we do, facing God without hiding away, not concerning ourselves about how we are seen or understood by others, but always trying to act conscientiously and with a pure intention.

My daughters and sons, if we are loyal to our vocation, this spirit of wisdom will rest upon us all, for the Lord distributes it abundantly to those who seek him with an upright heart. As I have often told you, it is not necessary to be very learned in order to be truly wise. If you are, then fine; but if not, you are just as well off, as long as you are faithful; because you will always receive the help of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, if you attend the means of formation which the Work offers you and make good use of the annual courses and days of recollection, you will acquire a theological formation as complete as any good priest.

But it is not necessary to know a lot. There is a knowledge which is only attained with holiness. One encounters hidden souls, forgotten people, who are deeply humble, self-sacrificing and holy, and who have a marvellous supernatural outlook: I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to little ones… .

The important thing is personal holiness, my daughters and sons. It is the one thing necessary. Wisdom consists in knowing God and loving him. And so that you may never be caught by surprise, I will remind you with St Paul: Habémus autem thesáurum istum in vasis fictílibus: we carry this treasure in vessels of clay, fragile and easily broken, ut sublímitas sit virtútis Dei, et non ex nobis, so that it is obvious that all the beauty and all the power we contain come from God and not from us. Holy Scripture also says that the heart of a fool is like a broken vessel which lets wisdom escape. With these words the Holy Spirit teaches us not to be childish or foolish. As children of God we must be strong. We carry out our work and our professional tasks constantly in God’s presence, and that enables us to aim for perfection in little things. We must keep our vessel intact so that the divine liqueur is not lost.

Avoid whatever may cause this vessel to break.

If we direct everything to God, including our passions, then the vessel will not break. In themselves one’s passions are neither good nor bad. It’s up to the individual to control them. Then they are good, even if only for this negative reason: quia virtus in infirmitáte perfícitur (power is made perfect in weakness). For when we suffer from this moral illness, if we struggle and regain our health, then we acquire a deeper relationship with God and more holiness…

Pray about the words I am addressing to you. Look closely into the depths of your heart with the light the Holy Spirit gives you to get rid of everything that can crack the vessel or steal the unity of your life. I always remind you that you must never be surprised at the beast your bear within.

I have been through so much, and I feel I’m dreaming when I contemplate the magnificent reality of our Opus Dei and experience my children’s loyalty to God, to the Church and to the Work. It is not surprising that from time to time somebody falls by the way. We give everyone the right nourishment, but there is no guarantee that even a well-balanced diet will be perfectly digested. This doesn’t mean that they are bad people. Later those unfortunate souls come along crying tears as big as fists, but by then it’s too late.

This misfortune could befall any of us, my daughters and sons; it could also happen to me. As long as I am on earth I too am capable of doing something terribly stupid. With God’s grace and your prayers, and a little effort on my part, it will never happen to me.

No one is safe from this danger. But everything will be all right if we speak out. When something happens that you wouldn’t want anyone to know about, don’t fail to speak out right away; better still, beforehand, and if not, afterwards; but speak out.

Don’t forget that the greatest sin is pride, and it blinds us terribly. There is an old ascetical proverb that says: “Lust that we hide shows forth our pride”.

I will never tire of stressing the importance of humility, because pride is always the enemy of love. It is the worst passion. It is that “reasoning spirit of unreason” churning in the depths of the soul, telling us that we are right and everybody else is wrong -something that is only rarely true.

Be humble, my children, but not with an “ostentatious” humility, like those people who used to walk along looking at the ground. A person can be very humble and still walk as erect as a soldier. In this way you will have a healthy will, without cracks in it; a complete character, not a weak one. It will be sculpted, not merely traced out. And the vessel will not break.

Be faithful, be loyal! You will have many opportunities in life to be unfaithful and disloyal, because we are not hothouse plants. We are exposed to cold and heat, to snow and storms. We are like trees exposed to the four winds: at times they get covered with dust, but they become clean and beautiful when washed with the rain of God’s grace. Don’t be surprised by anything. I repeat, if you are not proud, you will always persevere!

Docility to the action of the Holy Spirit.

And what will you do to respond to the love of this beautiful Mother of ours, the Work? What must you do to be loyal? The answer is simple, very simple. In the first place you must let yourself be guided, without protest, because you don’t know yourselves. I am more than seventy years old, and I still don’t know myself well, so how far will your self-knowledge get you?…

Then, set to work. I have told you countless times that no one loses his personality when he comes to the Work. Diversity, a healthy pluralism, is a sign of good spirit. So act on your own; no one will stop you from doing so. Opus Dei fully respects the personality of each of her children. Without losing our freedom we relinquish it, because we want to. This is the most supernatural of reasons: because we want to, because of love.

Be noble, upright people by reason of your struggle, your endeavour to reconcile the two brothers we all carry within: our intellect, guided by God’s grace, and our sensuality. These two brothers are with us from birth and accompany us throughout life. We must get them to live together even though they tug in different directions.

We must endeavour to have the superior one, the intellect, guide the lesser one, the senses. Our soul, following the dictates of faith and reason aided by God’s grace, aspires to the greatest of gifts: paradise, eternal happiness. And we must also direct there our little brother, sensuality, so that he may enjoy God in heaven.

May this unity of life be the result of God’s goodness towards each of us and towards the Work and also the result of our personal struggle. There is no better time than now to recall that peace is a consequence of war: of this marvellous war against ourselves, against our evil inclinations. This war is a war of peace, because it seeks peace.

We lose our serenity when it is not our intellect, with divine grace, that directs our life but rather our evil inclinations.

Don’t be surprised to find you are like monsters, capable of committing the greatest atrocities! With God’s help we will reach the end safely, with the peace that is - I repeat - a consequence of victory. The victory is not ours, though, because God is the one who wins out in us if we don’t create difficulties and if we make the effort to stretch out our hand and grasp the hand that is offered us from heaven.

My children, seek unity of life. Struggle. Don’t let the vessel I talked about ever break. Let your heart be whole, and let it be for God. Let us not get tripped up by the miseries of personal pride. Let us really give ourselves.

Let us keep going, like someone walking towards a city, making certain to keep taking one step after another until we reach the end. We will never lack the help of our Father God.

Before finishing our prayer today, let us approach our Blessed Lady, Spouse of the Paraclete, that she may obtain for us as our Father asked a great devotion to the Holy Spirit, a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord. And with this devotion, the conviction that, if we are docile, we will be his instruments. Like that, our heart will never be a broken vessel, and the divine liqueur of Wisdom will forever inebriate us in our life, for night indeed supplants the light, but wickedness prevails not over wisdom.