557. June 30, Commemoration of First Roman Martyrs

Meditations no. 487 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Our vocation is similar to that of the first Christians.

Try to get to know and imitate the life of Jesus’ disciples, of those who knew Peter and Paul and John, and who were near witnesses of the Master’s Death and Resurrection. Our Father’s advice takes on special relief today, as the Church celebrates the memory of the Roman protomartyrs. They were chosen by God among the Christians of the first hour in order to give the supreme witness of martyrdom.

Those who paid with blood for their faith in Christ were ordinary persons and citizens of the capital of the Roman empire. They were living faithfully to our Lord in the midst of earthly affairs. Each community of the faithful gathered persons of all the social strata and of all backgrounds. They were people converted to the faith of Christ, which kept them together. All the professions were represented in these communities: there were doctors such as Luke; lawyers such as Zela; financiers such as Erastus; academics such as Apollo; craftsmen such as Alexander; businessmen small and great, jailers and their families; soldiers and officials; a proconsul -Sergius Paulus, etc. They were poor and rich; slaves and freemen; civilians and military men, like Sebastian.

A great diversity of personal circumstances enriched the Christian communities from the first moment. Upon contemplating this reality, our Father wrote: For those who knew how to read the Gospel, how clear was that general calling to sanctity, within one’s profession, without leaving one’s own milieu! Nevertheless, for centuries the majority of Christians did not understand this: the ascetical phenomenon of many people seeking sanctity without changing their professional situation; rather, sanctifying their profession and sanctifying themselves by means of their profession. And very soon the doctrine was forgotten, on account of not being lived.

With the ascetical, pastoral and mystical phenomenon which is Opus Dei, God has chosen to enlighten the consciences of all men with this reality once again. Our founder wrote: By raising up his Work in these times, the Lord has willed that the truth about everyone having the duty to reach holiness would never again be unknown or forgotten… and that the majority of Christians should sanctify themselves in the world, through ordinary work… This phenomenon will always take place: that people of every profession and trade seek holiness in their state, in their own profession or trade, being contemplative souls in the middle of the world.

The expansion of the Work has brought about a repetition of the phenomenon in which the first Christians were protagonists. Small Christian communities are being founded all over the world. They are dedicated to the Lord’s service in the midst of the world: groups of Numeraries, Associates, Supernumeraries and even whole families - parents and children, with their household employees - dedicated to God. They imbue society with their Christian spirit.

Like them, we seek sanctity in the middle of the world.

As I have always written, our spirit is both old as the Gospel and like the Gospel, new. The very nature of our vocation, our way of seeking sanctity and of working for the Kingdom of God, prompts us to speak of divine things in the very language of men, to uphold the same wholesome social customs as everyone else, and to share the same honest mentality. That is, we see God from the same secular and lay viewpoint from which others see the more transcendent questions of their lives. God can never be a cold or distant model, to be admired but not loved.

We come, then, to recover the Gospel’s treasure in a fresh, youthful way, in order to make it reach every comer on earth. But we do not come to revolutionise anything. We drink the good vintage wine of authentic Catholic doctrine, respecting and loving everything the Lord has wrought throughout the centuries, in the service of his Holy Church.

The vocation to the Work has made us understand the full sense of Jesus’ words at the Last Supper: I do not ask you to take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one… And thus our Father affirmed that we are vintage wine… , since our spirit is the doctrine of the Gospel, and our mode of behaviour is the way the first Christians acted. And those first brothers of ours in the Faith -including those ascetics and virgins who personally dedicated their lives to the service of the Church - were not enclosed in convents. They remained in the midst of their equals in society. This is our situation too, since we ought not differentiate ourselves in any way from our companions and fellow citizens.

Thanks to God, it is becoming ever clearer in new environs that, in order to follow the footsteps of Christ, the modern apostle does not come to reform anything nor much less to separate himself from the historical reality surrounding him… It is enough for him to act as the first Christians did, enlivening their own milieu.

While meditating on the life of the first Christians, we can examine our personal behaviour to see if it reflects their example. Can we apply to ourselves the words written about them: ‘What the soul is to the body, the Christians are to the world’? Our mission, like the soul which maintains life and gives form to the body, is to impregnate society with Christ’s spirit. It is to make our contemporaries discover that, only our Lord can give their existence meaning.

We must be Christ’s leaven in the ‘bread’ of society.

We are ordinary Christians, co-equal citizens who, with an individual, silent and almost invisible apostolate, bear witness to a life like that of the first Christian faithful to all sectors of society, public and private. Like them, our apostolate emerges from the workplace, among our friends and colleagues, at the very heart of society. If we are faithful to the spirit of the Work, our life will emit the good fragrance of Christ which attract souls, whatever their circumstances. Daniel was a youth; Joseph, a slave; Aquila was a manual worker; the purple-seller was running a workshop; another was a prison warden; someone else, like Cornelius, was a centurion; others were sick, such as Timothy; there was Onesimus, the runaway slave… nevertheless, none of these circumstances was an obstacle to them, and all were prominent for their virtue… men and women, young and old, slaves and freemen, soldiers and country people.

And so their story is what God has wished to re-enact through our apostolate. Our Father wrote: This novelty of the Work is not the novelty of a mere human phenomenon. It is the novelty of the things of God, who like a good father provides his family with things new and old (cf. Matt13: 52). My children, here is a novelty which does not grow old, inasmuch as it is a participation in the one and only good news. As a social phenomenon of the Christian faithful this involves the marvellous return of the spirit with which the first faithful lived the message of salvation.

The Lord has wanted to raise up his Work at a time, when in most countries, elites and entire populations seem to be fleeing from the source of all grace; when even longstanding Christian countries people were using the sacraments less frequently; when whole sectors of the lay world seemed to be asleep, as though their operative faith had disappeared.

Quiet and modest, but vibrant with divine impetus, the Work became our Lord’s instrument. God wished to awaken sleeping men using human voices. And these ordinary men in the street would say to the rest - to their working companions, brothers or children, to their students or teachers - hora est iam nos de somno surgere (Rom 13: 11). Now is the time to awaken; in novitate vitae ambulemus (Rom 6: 4), let us walk in the newness of life.

Let us go to the Blessed Virgin like the disciples who persevered in prayer close to her. It can also be said of the children of God in his Opus Dei what we read about the first Christians in the Acts of the Apostles: they all persevered together in prayer (Acts 1: 14). Be always united in prayer: this is the only secret of the Work. This is the origin of our happiness, of our peace, of our serenity, and therefore of our supernatural effectiveness.