526. April 22, Grandmother's Death

Meditations no. 458 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

In the Grandmother’s home, our Father was rendered fit for carrying out God’s will.

Today we commemorate a new anniversary of the Grandmother’s death, which took place in Madrid, on the 22nd of April 1941. We renew our gratitude to God for having wanted our Father to be born in a Christian home where he might learn to relate to him trustingly, thereby preparing him to carry out the mission for which he had been marked out.

The Grandparents educated our Father in a deeply Christian way. They respected his freedom and taught him its proper use. They never imposed their wills upon me, he would comment now and then. They had me short on money, very short, but free.

It was particularly from the Grandmother that our Father learned the morning and night prayers he was to recite until the end of his days. In 1972, for example, he observed: I remember my mother. Even today, at my seven years - for, as you know, I have made the zero move on - I recite the morning and night prayers that my mother taught me. And so, at this stage, I owe her the piety of my whole life. She helped him prepare for his first Confession, taking him to the church on the appointed day. My mother took me to her confessor, when I was six or seven, our Father joyfully recalled, and I came out quite content.

The Grandmother was a woman endowed with a great deal of common sense, which brought together fortitude and a most exquisite femininity. She admirably combined the human and supernatural virtues, all of which she managed to inculcate into her children. We all carry in our blood the physiological, psychic and spiritual treasure passed on to us by our parents, observed our Father. I, for example, often realise that I come out with the same mannerisms as my father. At other times, it is children of mine who knew my mother who say to me: That comes from the Grandmother!…

The Grandmother’s teachings on the Christian life have reached, and will continue to reach, millions of people, through the example and words of our founder. Just as when he writes: When I was little, there were two things that bothered me a lot: kissing my mother’s lady friends, when they came on visits, and putting on new suits. I used to get under the bed. I came out then because of the walking stick, and for no other reason. She then affectionately told me: Josemaría, the only thing to be ashamed of is sin. Many years later I realised what a depth of meaning these words contained.

In large measure, we are indebted to the Grandmother for the family atmosphere of our Centres.

The family atmosphere characteristic to our Centres, willed by God and laid down by our Father, owes a lot to the Grandmother and Aunt Carmen. It is easy to glimpse her presence behind so many domestic details which are customs of the Work. The family tone is in great part a consequence of the human and supernatural virtues lived out in our founder’s home. The Grandmother’s house in Madrid was the first place in which we began to feel ourselves a family. It was the birthplace for traditions of order, of self-control, of cleanliness and of elegance, proper to our Centres.

The Grandmother, who was concerned at all times for the welfare of her children, watched over our Father’s steps closely. My mother asked me: Why don’t you enter the competition to become a professor? And a bishop in my family, who was subsequently to be a martyr, said to her: Lola, why doesn’t your son come to see me? I have a canonship for him… I answered that I was not interested, but she insisted: Time is moving on for you. She did advert to something though, being as she was of a very keen intelligence. Besides, she would see me always surrounded by boys eighteen to twenty years of age. And when our Father asked her, she spared no efforts to help him to bring to fruition that something wanted by God. The results of her collaboration are patent: I see my mother and my sister Carmen’s helping the Work to have a family atmosphere as a Providence of God. Our Lord wanted it to be that way. We in Villa Tevere, for example, are three hundred persons, and each corner of this house is a family home, with bonds stronger than blood-ties, with a union of hearts, of wills, of desires… The hundred for one is so patently clear to us!

My mother and my sister’s willingness to take on the Administration of our first Centres was a great boon to us… our Father was to observe on a particular occasion. Had it not been for that, we would not have had a true home. The outcome for us would have been a kind of barracks. As it is, however, there is a wonderful family life in the Work. My children, thank our Lord for this.

On this anniversary, our gratitude to the Grandmother also wells up spontaneously for so much that we owe her. So great was her cooperation in what her son asked of her that our Father was able to state: Without her help, the development of the Work would have been difficult. In addition to which, we find many exemplary aspects in her life. I don’t remember ever having seen her unoccupied, our founder recalled. She was always busy with something. She used to work at stitching, she used to sew and re-sew articles of clothing, she would read… I have no recollection of ever having seen my mother idle. And she wasn’t an odd person. She was an ordinary, likeable person. She did not have our vocation, but she was a good family mother, to a family that was Christian, and she knew all about making good use of time.

The Grandmother gave her life for the service of the Work.

The Grandmother was generous in giving the Work not only material goods, but something much more valuable: her affection, her work and her effort. And she did so when nothing human could have made her suspect the realities that were to come. The Grandmother showed enormous faith in the mission that the Lord had entrusted to our Father. It was a divine gift which she for her part proved well able to appreciate.

Our gratitude is greatly heightened when we consider how, without having received a vocation to Opus Dei, the Grandmother gave herself over completely to serving the Work. She cooperated efficaciously in the divine plan, of which our founder was an instrument. She gave strong support to the mission of her son, subordinating personal and family plans to the projects of our Lord. And she did all of this in a quiet and unobtrusive way.

She offered even her death itself for the Work, as our Father writes in one of his Letters: In 1941, I left my mother very sick in Madrid, in order to go to Lerida to give a retreat to diocesan priests. I did not know how serious it was, because the doctors did not think that my mother’s death was imminent, or that she might not be cured. Offer your aches and pains for this work I am going to do, I asked my mother as I said good-bye. She agreed, although she could not avoid saying in a whisper: This son!…

On arrival at the seminary of Lerida, where the priests were doing their retreat, I went to the Tabernacle: Lord, look after my mother, for I am looking after your priests. Halfway through the Retreat, at midday, I gave them a talk: I spoke about the supernatural work, the incomparable role, proper to the mother by the side of her son, the priest. I finished, and wanted to stay for a little while recollected in the chapel. Almost immediately, the bishop who was Apostolic Administrator, and also on retreat there, came up, his face quite visibly altered, and said to me: Don Álvaro is on the telephone for you. I heard Álvaro say: Father, the Grandmother has died.

I returned to the chapel, without a tear. At once I understood that the Lord my God had done what was most fitting. And I cried, as a child cries, praying aloud - I was alone with him - that long aspiration I so often recommend to you: Fiat, adimpleatur, laudetur… iustissima atque amabilissima voluntas Dei super omnia. Amen. Amen. Since then, I have always thought that the Lord asked me for this sacrifice as an external sign of my love for diocesan priests, and that my mother continues to intercede for that work in a special way.

As soon as he returned to Madrid, our Father wept before the Grandmother’s corpse, over which his children were keeping watch in the oratory of Diego de Leon. Whereupon he asked Don Álvaro to help him pray a Te Deum.

From heaven, in the company of the Blessed Virgin and our founder, the Grandmother continues watching over us, an immense family by now, spread out over the whole earth. She especially keeps watch - as we like to imagine her - over that most important aspect of our spirit, to the emergence of which she contributed: the homely atmosphere of a Christian family, where charity has always to be affection.