537. May 14, St Matthias, Apostle
Meditations no. 470 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
Our vocation is a free gift from God.
In the days after our Lordâs Ascension, the Apostles gathered together in Jerusalem to await the coming of the Holy Spirit. After the betrayal of Judas, a place in the Apostolic College had fallen vacant. So, to fulfil what the prophet had foretold - Let another take over his office - Peter stood in the midst of the disciples and said: There are men who have walked in our company all through the time when the Lord Jesus came and went among us, from the time when John used to baptise to the day when he, Jesus, was taken from us. One of these ought to be added to our number as a witness of his resurrection.
So they named two of them, Joseph called Barsabas, who had been given the fresh name of Justus, and Matthias. And they offered this prayer, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, shew us which of these who thou has chosen to take his place in this work of apostleship⌠They gave them lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he took rank with the eleven apostles.
It is Godâs will that all men should be saved and to all of them he gives the graces they need to be saints and he entrusts to them a specific mission. But in our case, like Matthias, the Lord has looked upon us with predilection out of pure benevolence. We were not the best, nor the most gifted. Beside us, perhaps, were others - relatives, friends, work mates - with greater abilities, with greater desires to serve God. But none the less, the vocation to the Work fell to us.
Never waver! our Father exclaimed. I will tell you right now - and I do not know your personal problems, but souls are very much alike albeit very different - that you have a divine vocation, that Christ Jesus has called you from all eternity. Not only has he pointed you out with his finger, but he has kissed you on the forehead. That is why, for me, your head shines like a star.
This star also has a long story⌠They are the great stars which twinkle in the night, there above, in the heights, in the dark blue of the sky, like great crystal-clear diamonds. That is how clear our vocation is: yours and mine. I am very wretched and have offended our Lord greatly; I have not known how to correspond and I have been a coward. But I must thank God for never having doubted that I had a vocation or that it was a divine vocation You should not doubt it either.
Matthias gave himself fully to his vocation from the very first moment, without sparing himself effort or sacrifice, to the point of shedding his blood for Jesus Christ. And this is how each of us ought to behave: God has called us. We have not come to give something; we have come to give everything, without haggling, and not just because we felt like it, but because He has called us.
We show our gratitude for the vocation especially by doing apostolate.
There are, and there always will be, stupendous souls, generous, splendid people, whom God does not call to Opus Dei.
Let us thank our Lord because he has called us, what we are notwithstanding. Maybe they are great diamonds and we are just a tiny thing, the sparkle of a diamond. But he has set us where we will shine as much as the largest jewel, if we are faithful.
God has been like the wisest of teachers for us. In most cases, we were born in the heart of a Christian family and he gave us the faith as infants. And then, throughout the course of our life, he protected us as a father protects his favourite child; he guided us with a sure hand and ensured that we met Opus Dei.
Perhaps we met the Work by very different paths, but in an equally marvellous way. In any case, after granting us a vocation in Opus Dei, the Lord continued to watch over us, sending us grace upon grace making us faithful and thereby assuring us eternal life. So it is only just that we often give great thanks for this marvellous call which we have received from God, with a real and deep sense of gratitude, closely united to humility, which must be, in the soul of each one of us, the first consequence of that light from the infinite mercy of the Lord: quid autem habes quod non accepisti? (1 Cor4: 7), what do you have that you have not received from God?
Like St Matthias, gratitude to God will lead us to spread the faith of Jesus Christ, to do apostolate. No one can stand aside from the work of souls, because each one of us must bear the joyful burden of bringing the Work forward. There are no excuses: not age, not the most absorbing jobs, not sickness, not physical isolation⌠Let us listen to this advice from our founder: What you must never do is allow apostolic work to lapse. Nor should the older people. We are all in the same boat. All my children can and must carry forward all the works of the Work. If they didnât, little by little they would become rusty, and they would end up as useless tools to be thrown into a comer. They would lose their vocation very easily.
My older children must always have a specific apostolic task. I used to say in a very vivid way, that from each finger of our hands should hang a good number of people, and from each one of them, many more people. A son of mine ought to be - I donât like this comparison very much, but I canât think of another - like an engine full of supernatural energy which makes all of it vibrate, in many places. Most of the time we will never know the marvellous effectiveness of that vibration of God in our souls, which is passed on to others through apostolate. But I can assure you that nothing is ever lost.
We must be faithful to the vocation.
A call from God demands a response of fidelity. Committed! How I like that word! We freely take on the obligation of living fully dedicated to our Lord, wanting him to dominate our being in a complete and sovereign fashion. This âcommitmentâ can be laborious, but even then fidelity is a joyful obligation. We must not evade it even though it demands giving up our life, even though it implies sacrifice and effort. God needs our faithfulness.
From the moment in which we correspond to the call, God himself works to lead us to the end of the way: he who has inspired this generosity in you will bring it to perfection, ready for the day when Jesus Christ comes. Our duty - an obligation which we have joyfully taken upon ourselves, whose fulfilment makes us happy here on earth and which will win heaven for us - is to keep that initial decision firm, intact, cheerful and untouchable. To be faithful, our founder assured us, you have the grace of God and the sovereign help of the call, of the vocation. What would your reaction be if someone told you: I am at your disposal? You would feel obliged to him. Well that is just what we have done for the Lord: placed ourselves at his service. My children, God will not let us outdo him in generosity, so he is sure to grant the grace of fidelity to those who have given themselves to him.
The grace of fidelity is assured if we, for our part, use all the means which make it possible: the loving fulfilment of the Norms, sincerity in Confession and in the fraternal chat, a dedicated life of love and sacrifice. Once we have said âYesâ to the divine call, with the grace of God and because we freely wanted to do so, we cannot allow reviews and reassessments. Our Father insisted: Do not toy with your happiness. I donât have children who are flighty and fickle. I want you to have an unbreakable fidelity. Wavering is for people who lack good sense. Even humanly speaking, a lack of fidelity is incomprehensible. The best gift that you can give me is your fidelity and your affection.
I have told you a hundred times that you must be faithful and I will continue to repeat it. Because I have it nailed in my heart. We must ask our Lord to send us death rather than fail to persevere.
Our vocation is not the result of our personal worth. God chose us because he wanted to. Like St Matthias, we drew the lot of a call to the Work. It is something objective, external to ourselves, which does not depend upon our strength, nor upon our state of mind, nor upon our defects, for God counted on them when he called us. It depends only on our Lord, and it is not for God to gainsay himself, as men do, to alter, like the things of earth; must he not make good his word, fulfil his promise? No, the word of the Lord stands for ever.
But to be faithful, my children, does not mean that things do not cost us, our Father warned us. They cost me, and yet I still am clearly aware that God has set his gaze upon me and has chosen me; and this argument, even humanly, is a spur for me to answer with a âYesâ, even when one is torn by the wayside thorns. It is painful, but it is the pain of Love!âŚ
But donât assume that the road is hard. I believe that it is easier than any other, as long as we keep our pledge for Loveâs sake and seek to be bound by Love. Even in the midst of suffering, faithfulness always brings happiness. God does not abandon us, even though it may cost us to find him from time to time.
Today let us renew our resolution to live our dedication to God in the Work with an ever up-to-date willingness, with a will which is sure, complete, fully aware and free, with a firm conviction of our divine vocation. And we entrust this resolution to our Lady, who said her fiat in Nazareth and kept her word without wavering her whole life long.