513. Fifth Sunday of St Joseph

Meditations no. 444 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Sanctifying oneself in ordinary life.

After returning from Egypt, the Holy Family lived their life in an ordinary way, monotonous in appearance. Their life unfolded with all the tranquillity of a little town in Galilee. Those years of the hidden life of Christ bear within them a profound lesson, one which Joseph had learned well and which we want to imitate.

With his hidden life, our Lord tells us that everything is valuable - those actions which from a human point of view we regard as extraordinary, and those which seem unimportant. Nothing is wasted. No man is worthless to God. All of us are called to share the kingdom of heaven - each with his own vocation: in his home, his work, his civic duties and the exercise of his rights.

St Joseph’s life is a good example of this: it was simple, ordinary and normal, made up of years of the same work, of days - just one day after another - which were monotonous from a human point of view. I have often thought about this, meditating on St Joseph’s life; it is one of the reasons for having a special devotion to him.

Our vocation, much like that of Joseph, is a call from God to holiness and to apostolate in the midst of our daily occupations. Each day… should witness our eagerness to fulfil the divine mission which God, through his mercy, has entrusted to us. Our Lord’s heart is a heart of mercy that feels compassionate towards men and draws near to them. Our dedication to the service of souls is a manifestation of our Lord’s mercy, not only towards us, but towards the whole of humanity. For he has called us to sanctify ourselves in ordinary, daily life, and to teach others providentes, non coacte, sed spontane secundum Deum - prudently, without coercion; spontaneously, according to the will of God (1 Pet 5: 2) the way to sanctify themselves within their own state, in the midst of the world.

Our vocation leads us to live as Christians who are fully consistent, with all the consequences; to be men and women who have received from God the great mission to be, in the middle of the world, what the soul is in the body.

I have told you since the very first day, our Father writes, that God does not expect anything extraordinary or exceptional from us; and that he wants us to carry this blessed divine calling all over the world, to invite many others to follow it. But we must carry out our proselytism with simplicity, with the example of our life, making it clear that many people, if not all, can, with the grace of God, transform their ordinary daily life into a divine pathway, just as you have known how to make your own life divine, even though it, too, is common and ordinary.

Sanctifying the world from within, like leaven.

God has called us not only to witness to him in the midst of our earthly occupations, but to contribute positively in each and every work and business of the earth and in the ordinary circumstances of social and family life… , to the sanctification of the world, as from within like leaven.

This truth, which our Father preached constantly from 1928 on, does not lead us to distance ourselves in any way from our fellow citizens, because the members of Opus Dei are the same as they are. With them and like them, we live in the midst of the concerns of the world.

In order to carry out the mission that God has entrusted to us, we must spread the spirit of Opus Dei to many people, in the way that is most opportune in each case. Make the Work known, our Father encouraged us. Talk about the Work without… something I despise, that I don’t like: discretion.

I had to exercise discretion when the Work was about to be born, although when a child is about to be born the secret that the mother harbours can hardly be hidden. Everyone sees it. This happened with the Work, but now it is no longer needed. In those first years, which have now passed, our Lord allowed us to receive heavy blows. But that is in the past, I repeat, and you should help it to end altogether as soon as possible, if some vestige of those slanderous contradictions should still remain. Speak about the Work often and to everyone. Be concerned to make the Work known just as she is.

It is proper to our spirit to work unspectacularly, without trying to draw attention, passing unnoticed. Just like a good father who is giving a Christian upbringing to his children passes unnoticed, or a good friend who gives some advice full of Christian inspiration to a friend of his, or a manager or businessman who sees to it that his workers are well looked after both spiritually and materially… We do this even though there may be people who do not understand us and who, as a result of their misunderstanding, would like the members of Opus Dei, because of their marvellous dedication to the service of God, to carry a sign on their back saying, more or less: Let it be known that I am a good person…

This collective humility - which is heroic, and which many will fail to understand -makes those who belong to the Work pass unnoticed among their equals, without getting any applause for the good seed they are sowing. People will hardly notice or account for that bonus odor Christi (2 Cor 2: 15), which should inevitably flow from the lives of my children…

Our way is to be dissolved in the mass, like leaven. We cannot distinguish ourselves externally from others, because we are not different from them. If we are not dissolved, there will be no bread to offer, no nourishment to give. It is a good moment to think about this marvellous task: if I unite myself with Christ, if I disappear in him, many souls will have the means to satisfy their hunger, their loneliness, their helplessness. Without being proud and yet, at the same time, with holy pride, we can and we must teach the way of love to those who do not know it. We must be convinced that each and every moment is the moment to love Christ and, for the sake of Christ, his creatures, without needing to do anything out of the ordinary, without any need for strange ways. If you want, if you do not put obstacles in the way of divine grace, the heroic naturalness of our life will be enough for God to make you efficacious when you talk and for you to do much good for souls.

Naturalness in our behaviour.

The life of St Joseph was so natural, so ordinary, that he did not attract the attention of the others who lived in Nazareth. His neighbours were aware of the affability with which he dealt with them, his work well done, the joy that reigned in his home. But there was nothing strange about it, nor did it make Joseph stand out. He was an ordinary man, one more worker in the village.

The behaviour of Joseph, like that of Jesus during his first thirty years, is something we ought to imitate. The members of Opus Dei have to act naturally because they are ordinary Christians, souls who seek God in their everyday work and affairs; anything which would be strange in other Christians would also be strange in the faithful of Opus Dei.

Our vocation invites us to live with a naturalness which is authentic, which leads us to behave as what we truly are: men and women who, like the immense majority of people, spend their lives, day by day, in an ordinary occupation. On showing ourselves as what we are, ordinary citizens - each one looking after his personal responsibilities: his family, professional, social, political responsibilities - we are not feigning anything, because this way of acting is not the result of some tactic. On the contrary, it is naturalness, sincerity. It is to manifest the truth of our life and of our vocation. We are ordinary citizens.

For the same reason, there is no secrecy either in the fact that the members of Opus Dei do not broadcast the fact that they belong to the Work. This way of acting cannot be called secrecy, because it is not to seek to hide what we are. On the contrary, it is simply naturalness: we do not want to pretend to be what we are not, because we are ordinary Christians, the same as our fellow citizens.

Not to live with this naturalness - out of superficiality, or out of a desire to give oneself importance, out of presumption - could even be an obstacle for our apostolate, and it could cause difficulties in our family and social environment or in the exercise of our profession.

Therefore, the Numeraries, the Associates and the Supernumeraries have no reason to boast about their belonging to the Work, or to make known without reason the names of their brothers or sisters. This norm, which obliges in a special way the young vocations, is nothing other than to live with naturalness and simplicity. Because no normal person goes around talking to strangers about the intimate affairs of his own family, and there is nothing more intimate than the affairs of one’s soul.

This is the way Jesus behaved during his life in Nazareth. It is the way the Blessed Virgin and St Joseph behaved. And no matter how we look at it, we are filled with admiration, which will always be little, at those thirty years of obscurity, which are the years we ourselves seem to live. Do you see? We do not have any secret to keep, but neither do we manifest outwardly our dedication to the service of God. We live as Jesus Christ did in his years in Nazareth. Ours is the common life, the ordinary life of our companions: like that of Jesus, who was fabri filius (Matt 13: 55), the son of the carpenter.

As we finish our prayer let us go to our Lady so that, like her, we may know how to live with naturalness, without doing anything strange, and always for Love.