516. March 18, Eve of St Joseph's Feast
Meditations no. 448 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
The Custom of the List of St Joseph.
We are already on the eve of the feast of St Joseph, Patron of the Work and of all its apostolates, to whom we entrust in a special way the work of winning vocations. Following an old family tradition, we will place under his protection those persons who give greater hopes of having a vocation to the Work.
The Custom of the List of St Joseph began before the Spanish war of 1936. It was born in a very natural way, like all our Norms and Customs: with the naturalness with which water flows from a well. We needed vocations, and nothing could be more logical than to have recourse to the intercession of our Father and Lord, St Joseph. He was the head of the family in the home of Nazareth. For this reason it is only natural that we ask him to augment our own family, that there be many of us, more each day, in Opus Dei: that we be a large family.
At the beginning I too was putting names, like everyone else. But I stopped doing it when it was no longer opportune. Now I unite myself with the lists that are made in all the Centres of all the Regions.
From now on we prepare ourselves to entrust especially to St Joseph the vocation of these friends, examining whether we are responding with deeds to some questions which our Father asked many years ago: Are you eager, very eager, to pass on that divine madness? Are you praying especially for three or four names? No more. Offer mortifications, pray, fulfil your duties, conquering in little things.
When we put the names of those persons on the List of St Joseph, we are expressing our firm desire to pray for their vocation, to encourage them with our example and with our word, to strive to put them in the divine net which God has entrusted to us. The ones we will entrust to St Joseph in a special way during this year will be the best ones - as regards their heart, their mind, their human virtues - from among the persons with whom we are dealing: souls who are generous, capable of receiving the call to the Work and of corresponding to it.
When we draw up the List of St Joseph we will ask this grace from Jesus Christ through the intercession of the Holy Patriarch and of the Blessed Virgin. We will call upon the Holy Archangels and the Apostles, our Patrons, and the Guardian Angels to intercede and protect those future vocations. And until the feast of St Joseph next year we will raise our hearts in the tasks of each day in order to entrust to God the persons whose names we write down today. And the fruits will be abundant, because many vocations will come to the Work, of men and women who will struggle for Christ and for his Church, in a quiet way, with a spirit of service.
I ask of you, my children, our founder recommended, that tomorrow, in your prayer, you make a very intimate examination, which refers only to seeing what you have done until now to bring souls to Opus Dei. How many vocations have come through your work?
We cannot be at ease. We should bring to the Work people who have more talent, more prestige than we do, who are more efficacious.
The vocation to the Work is a grace which God wants to give to many.
Doesnât it make you sad to contemplate those young people who bustle in the middle of the world, searching in vain for an ideal? - Shout at them: fools! Leave those little things that only shrink the heart⌠and often degrade it⌠Leave that and come with us in search of Love!
The grace of the vocation to Opus Dei is not reserved to a privileged few. On the contrary, our Father wrote in one of his letters, I am certain that the call - the specific call of which I have been speaking in this letter - is for many⌠and, therefore, all sorts of instruments are needed. God is ready to give such graces to souls that there will be many who, deep down in their hearts, will feel the compelle intrare: - because God desires ut impleatur domus sua, that Opus Dei be filled with sons and daughters of his.
Our hearts are kindled with zeal for souls when we consider that divine desire. And, with the urgency of bringing many vocations to serve the Church more and better, we go to St Joseph - ite ad Ioseph! - and entrust to him some specific names. We make known to him the needs of this supernatural family which is under his protection, and we put great generosity in our work of proselytism, helped by the assurance which his powerful intercession gives.
We cannot weaken the power of God, who wants to call many souls to the Work. And we would lessen it if our proselytism did not have ambitious goals, if we diminished the zeal which should fill our hearts. Many vocations should come. And if they donât, it will be our fault for not doing what has been established, for not doing things in a cheerful, organic, constant, holy way⌠Here are the means we must always use: a life of prayer, a life of sacrifice, the fulfilment of our duties in our professional and social activity!
It can sometimes happen, above all in the beginnings of the apostolate, that some time passes before vocations come. In those moments, it seems as if God has not heard our cries, as if he is turning a deaf ear to our calls. At times it seems that our apostolic work is in vain. Donât worry. Continue working with the same eagerness, with the same vibration, with the same zeal. When what is sowed is sanctity, nothing is lost. God, who has greater perspective than we do, wants us to continue praying for these souls, to place all our trust in him. Be assured that thus an abundant harvest awaits us.
The abundance of the fruits depends in great measure on our personal fidelity, on our prayer and on the sacrifice we offer to God: on our constancy. The good gold is in the depths of the earth, not in the palm of our hand. And it is in this apparent darkness that the great gold mine of holy vocations can be prepared. The work of proselytism depends on that fervour, on that cheerfulness, on that work of yours which is obscure and commonplace, ordinary.
We have a duty to do proselytism.
O Jesus Christ, our Lord, who said to your Apostles: the harvest is great, but the labourers are few; allow us, inflamed by your love and moved by zeal for your divine glory, to obtain humbly from the Lord of the harvest that he send workers to his harvest.
The text of the prayer with which we entrust to God the persons on the list of St Joseph is an urgent call to redouble our spirit of proselytism. The day a son of mine tells me that he is not doing proselytism, that he is not concerned, that he does not pray, that he is not vibrating, that he does not act, our founder exclaimed, I will tell him what we read in the Holy Gospel, when Jesus went to raise Lazarus, and the friends of Lazarus said: iam foetet (John 11: 39), he stinks. This son of mine who did not want to do proselytism would be dead and rotten. And I donât want dead people. Is that clear? Then let us multiply by ten, by a hundred, by a thousand. There are many places where they are waiting for us.
This divine blaze which is the Work must be spread all over the world; and even though we come from fifty-three countries, our Father said in 1962, they are calling us from the four points of the globe. We have to send people who are mature, well formed, and it takes years to form someone. Do you understand, then, why we need vocations? Can you conceive of a red hot coal that does not burn whatever is around it? This is the way it is with us: if someone does not burn, his fire has gone out.
God is ready to grant his grace in abundance, with the desire of taking possession of the hearts of those who pass by our side on the journey of life. He only expects us to be adequate instruments, that we put all the talents he has given us at his service. The members of the Prelature prepare themselves personally for the work of proselytism, as we read in the Catechism of the Work, with the conviction that it is God who calls souls. This conviction moves them to place all their apostolate under the protection of the Divine Master, our Lady Queen of Apostles, St Joseph, the Guardian Angels and the Patrons of the various apostolic works.
With these supernatural dispositions we will boldly seek, among our friends and professional colleagues, those souls who have the necessary conditions to receive the call. And, filled with confidence in God, we will not allow our vibration to be dampened by the circumstances of the environment, by difficulties or by human respects. We must open out like a fan⌠, our Father insisted. To open out like a hand, with a group of souls, of the easy sort and of the difficult sort, dangling from each finger⌠and to pull them along! May each person not be one but ten. And not all huddled together in a corner, like rabbits.
We have an obligation to do proselytism; we have the right and the duty to provoke the vocational crisis - with the permission of the Directors - in all those souls who give hopes of a possible call to Opus Dei. My children, you must feel a great concern to bring many new brothers or sisters. Christian families want God to send children, because a young family without children is a family without light, a family destined to be extinguished. And we are a young family.
We finish our prayer going once again to St Joseph and Holy Mary, considering some words of our Father that we have engraved on our hearts: Whoever does proselytism gets vocations; whoever does little proselytism gets few vocations; whoever does a lot of proselytism gets a lot of vocations. If there are no vocations, there is a lack of love for God.