596. October 7, The Canonization of St. Josemaría (II)

Meditations no. 633 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Gratitude for the canonization of our Father, who strongly recalled the universal call to holiness.

“Laudate Dominum omnes gentes (Ps 116 [117]1), praise the Lord, all you who are kind. The invitation of the Responsorial Psalm, which resounded a few moments ago, is a good summary of the sentiments that overflow from our hearts today: Deo omnis gloria! We want to adore the thrice-holy God and thank him for the gift with which he has enriched the Church and the world: the canonization of Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, priest and founder of Opus Dei.”

A new anniversary has passed since the Roman Pontiff canonized our Father in St. Peter’s Square. The next day, in the same place, accompanied by all his Vicars, the Father concelebrated the first Mass of thanksgiving, which would later be followed by many others, in Rome and throughout the world.

We thank God for this gift, which is a gift for the whole Church. The Father also expressed his gratitude-and we echo his words-“to the Holy Father, who has fulfilled this plan of the Trinity: as we prepare to raise our prayer to Heaven, we entrust to the Lord his august Person and his intentions. We know that this plea was very pleasing to St. Josemaría, who loved the Vicar of Christ on earth with all his soul, to the point of never separating that love for the Pope from that which he professed for Jesus Christ and his Blessed Mother. In fact, from the very moment that the Lord burst into his soul with the first glimpses of Opus Dei, which he did not yet know then, he began to pray and work to make the cry that welled up in his heart come true: Omnes cum Petro ad Iesum per Mariam!, all, with Peter, to Jesus through Mary.”

Along with gratitude to God and to Pope John Paul II, his instrument for the canonization of our Father, we cannot fail today to remember Don Álvaro, a most faithful son of our Founder, whose spiritual presence we felt very close to us at that time, as Father assured. Both John Paul II and Don Álvaro have already gone to enjoy God; from Heaven they look at us with affection and, in union with St. Josemaría, they obtain many graces for us so that we too may “walk with joy on the path of holiness.”

Although several decades have passed since the Second Vatican Council proclaimed the universal call to holiness and apostolate, “there is still a long way to go, before this truth will effectively illuminate and guide the steps of the men and women of the earth… .

“All of us in the Church,” said the Father in the homily of the first Mass of thanksgiving, “every pastor and every member of the faithful, are called to commit ourselves personally to the daily search for personal holiness and to participate-even personally-in the fulfillment of the mission that Christ has entrusted to us. If the twentieth century has witnessed the rediscovery of that universal call-which was contained in the Gospel from the beginning, and of which St. Josemaría Escrivá was constituted a herald by the personal divine vocation received (cf. Mass of St. Josemaría, Collect)-the century we are traveling through must be characterized by a more effective and extensive implementation of that teaching. This is one of the great challenges that the Spirit throws at the men and women of our time.

“St. Josemaría Escrivá sought to awaken this urgency of holiness in all men. The fact that his canonization took place at the dawn of the new century is particularly significant.”

The best way to give thanks is to renew our commitment to being saints.

THE PATH of holiness crosses the same places through which Our Lord’s earthly life flowed. There is no other way. This is how the Father recalled it at the Mass of thanksgiving, commenting on some of the teachings of St. Josemaría.

“At every moment - as the new Saint advised since the 1930s (cf. The Way, no. 382) - we must seek the Lord, encounter him and love him. Only if we strive day after day to go through these three stages will we come to full identification with Christ to be alter Christus, ipse Christus. Perhaps you understand, I repeat in his words, that you are as it were in the first stage. Seek him with hunger (…). If you work with this commitment, I dare to guarantee that you have already found him, and that you have begun to deal with him and to love him, and to have your conversation in heaven (Friends of God, no. 300).

“We find Jesus in prayer, in the Eucharist and in the other sacraments of the Church; but also in the faithful and loving fulfilment of the family, professional and social duties proper to each one”.

The best way to show our gratitude to the Lord for the canonization of our Father is to commit ourselves anew, with more effort, to make the teachings he has left us alive in our lives. It is a question of sanctifying ordinary work, of sanctifying oneself in this task and of sanctifying others by the exercise of one’s profession, each in his or her own state. This is how our Founder summed up “the core of the message that God had entrusted to him, to remind Christians of it. The commitment to holiness is inseparably linked to the sanctification of one’s professional work - carried out with human perfection and rectitude of intention, with a spirit of service - and to the sanctification of others. It is not possible to ignore one’s brothers and sisters, their material and spiritual needs, if one wants to walk in the pursuit of the Lord”.

In this way we will be good children of our Father, who, as the Roman Pontiff pointed out, “was chosen by the Lord to proclaim the universal call to holiness and to indicate that the common activities that make up everyday life are the way to sanctification. It could be said that he was the saint of the ordinary. In fact, he was convinced that, for those who live in a perspective of faith, everything is an opportunity to encounter God, everything is a stimulus to prayer. Seen in this way, daily life reveals an unsuspected greatness. Holiness truly appears within everyone’s reach”.

At the last Mass of thanksgiving, Father Alvaro echoed some words of Don Alvaro, after the beatification: “a new stage in the life of Opus Dei has begun … in the life of each of its members. A stage of a deeper love for God, of a more constant apostolic commitment, of a more generous service to the Church and to all humanity. A stage, in short, of fuller fidelity to the spirit of sanctification in the midst of the world that our Founder has left us as an inheritance.”

We have to spread the desire for holiness by doing a lot of apostolate.

“THE PURPOSE of loving God more, of identifying ourselves fully with Jesus Christ, of responding to the action of the Holy Spirit, must be translated into a more constant apostolic commitment, as the liturgy suggests to us when it invites us to ask that, in union with the Blessed Virgin Mary, we serve with ardent love the work of the Redemption (Collect).”

At the end of the days of the canonization, the Father addressed those who had come to the Leg City for this reason. We can all apply this recommendation to ourselves, each in his or her own personal circumstances. Be determined, he said, “to be the instruments that the Lord wishes to use to spread his word and his grace on earth. Take a look around you, at the professional, social or family circle in which you move, and you will discover so many people, daughters and sons of God, who do not sufficiently value the sublime dignity to which Baptism raised them, nor the great vocation with which the Lord calls them to participate in his own Life. Perhaps no one has spoken to them about God, or has not communicated to them in a convincing way the news that they are destined for Happiness with a capital H, for that eternal happiness to which all human creatures aspire, and which the things of this world below cannot give.

“We must awaken them from their slumber, open their eyes with the eloquence of our lives and the enthusiasm of our words, and thus lead them to Jesus. We can count on the powerful help of Our Lady and St. Joseph, of the Guardian Angels, of St. Josemaría, and of all the Saints of God. We are not better than them, but the Lord, in his infinite Love, has sought us out and invites us to travel all the roads and crossroads of the world to meet our brothers and sisters, the men and women who surround us.

“The miracle that is recounted in today’s Gospel page will be repeated once again, when the Apostles, faithful to Christ’s command, caught a great number of fish: so many that the nets broke (Lk 5:6). In the words of the Founder of Opus Dei, we too, remembering the misery of which we are made, considering so many failures because of our pride; before the majesty of that God, of Christ the fisherman, we must confess the same as Saint Peter: Lord, I am a poor sinner (Lk 5:8). And then, now to you and to me, as before to Simon Peter, Jesus Christ will repeat to us what he told us so long ago: from now on you will be fishers of men (ibid., 10), by divine command, with divine mission, with divine efficacy (Notes on a meditation, November 3, 1955).”

These are ideas that John Paul II. had already expressed in a similar way during the canonization of our Father. “From the moment on August 7, 1931, during the celebration of Holy Mass, the words of Jesus resounded in his soul: ‘When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself’ (Jn 12:32). Josemaría Escrivá understood more clearly that the mission of the baptized consists in raising the Cross of Christ above every human reality, and he felt the exciting call to evangelize all areas arise from within him. He then accepted without hesitation the invitation made by Jesus to the Apostle Peter and which has resounded in this Square a long time ago: Duc in altum! He transmitted it to his entire spiritual family, so that it might offer the Church a valid contribution of communion and apostolic likeness. This invitation is extended to all of us today.”Put out into the deep,” says the divine Master, “and let down your nets for the catch” (Lk 5:4).

“But to carry out such a demanding mission,” the Pope concluded, “it is necessary, however, an incessant interior growth nourished by prayer. St. Josemaría was a master in the practice of prayer, which he considered an extraordinary”weapon” to redeem the world. He always advised: First, prayer; then, expiation; thirdly, very ‘thirdly’, action (The Way, no. 82)! It is not a paradox, but a perennial truth: the fruitfulness of the apostolate is, above all, in prayer and in an intense and constant sacramental life. This is, in the end, the secret of holiness and of the true success of the saints.

“May the Lord help you, dear brothers and sisters, to accept this demanding ascetic and evangelizing heritage! May Mary, whom the Holy Founder invoked as Spes nostra, Sedes Sapientiae, Ancilla Domini, sustain you!”