611. November 28, Opus Dei, a Personal Prelature (III)

Meditations no. 538 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

The prayer of our Father and that of many other souls for the special intention.

The history of our juridical path, which came to an end on November 28th 1982 with the erection of the Prelature of Opus Dei by Pope John Paul II, is the history of our beloved founder’s prayer, sacrifice, work and fidelity to what God had entrusted to him on October 2nd 1928. The Work is going forward, he wrote in 1940, on the basis of prayer: of my prayer, and my wretchedness, which in God’s eyes is what brings about the fulfilment of his Will; and of the prayer of so many souls, priests and laity, young and old, healthy and sick, whom I’ve gone to for help, certain that God would listen to them, asking them to pray for a particular intention which, in the beginning, only I knew about.

Our founder prayed intensely over the course of many years for what he called his “special intention.” And his daughters and sons fervently united their prayers to his, as did many other people all over the world, offering their entire lives for this intention: their joys and sorrows, the satisfaction of a job well done and the difficulties of ordinary work, family life and apostolic tasks, their suffering, sickness, and even death. Our founder’s prayer was like the stone thrown into the water described in The Way, which produces ever-widening ripples and reaches faraway places with surprising force.

Today, as we celebrate a new anniversary of the Prelature’s establishment, consider in first place the effectiveness of so many thousands of days and nights of intense and continuous prayer. Yes, my daughters and sons, Don Álvaro wrote to us in 1982, we should not forget that our Father prayed day and night for this intention. He mobilized the entire Work, pleading for prayers and mortifications: be united to the intention of my Mass: be united to my intention, was his constant refrain. He begged people all over the world for this, getting countless numbers to join in his prayer. God led us - and with us, hundreds of thousands of other souls - along paths of persevering and tenacious prayer. Omnes erant perseverantes unanimiter in oratione (Acts 1: 14): God has brought it about, with our Father’s “complicity” … that in the Work this verse be fulfilled to the letter.

Gratias tibi, Deus, gratias tibi! This clamour of unanimous prayer has set its seal on the Work for all time, from the very moment of its foundation. God has shown us through his action in our Father’s life that everything in the Work has to be based on prayer and mortification that is trusting, filial and persevering. Everything must be preceded, accompanied and followed by these means. For without prayer there is no Opus Dei.

Our Father’s prayer was made more acceptable by sacrifice.

In order to carry out the Work, our Father also had heroic recourse to mortification, the prayer of the senses, as he liked to say. What can a creature do if he has to carry out a mission and has no means, neither experience, nor knowledge, nor virtues, nor anything? He goes to his mother and his father, he turns to those who can do something, he asks for help from his friends… This is what I did in the spiritual life. And of course to the accompaniment of the strokes of the discipline.

God did not spare our Father any type of physical or moral suffering, including attacks against his honor and his family. Our Father embraced the Cross with love, with the joy of knowing himself to be a co-redeemer with Christ and God’s instrument for the carrying out of a supernatural undertaking. And he passed on this love for the Cross to those alongside him. His daughters and sons, as well as many sick persons whom he attended to spiritually, bore their sufferings with a Christian spirit. As our Father told us on one occasion: I went to seek strength in the poorest neighbourhoods of Madrid I spent hours and hours, every day, walking from one place to the other all over Madrid, visiting shamefully poor, miserably poor people who had absolutely nothing; dirty children whose noses were running into their mouths. But they were children, and therefore souls pleasing to God. … And in the hospitals, and in the homes of sick people, if those shacks could be called homes.

Such are the ambitions of Opus Dei, the human means we employed: the terminally ill, the abandoned poor, children bereft of family and learning, homes deprived of heat, human warmth and love. And I had to form the first ones who came, speaking to them with complete confidence of all we were going to do, as though it were already a reality.

With God’s grace and our own correspondence, we will never lose this spirit in the Work. We all want to be faithful in following the footsteps of our Father, who happily spent his life here on earth working to transmit with great fidelity the message, intended for all men and women, which God had communicated to him. But, above all, he incorporated that message into his own life. Here is found the root of the spiritual fruitfulness of each moment of his existence.

In his constant struggle to conquer and overcome himself our Father never said “no” to God. He was completely faithful to the graces he had received. He not only accepted the pain and suffering that his Father God sent him: he loved it, convinced that it was a sign of affection and a guarantee of abundant fruit. In this way, since he was intimately united to the holy Cross, the sufferings of our Father have become life-giving waters nourishing and filling with flowers and fruit the tree of Opus Dei.

The Work has travelled the lengthy path leading to the special intention closely united to our Lord and the Blessed Virgin.

Recalling our founder’s many years of prayer for the special intention, Don Álvaro in 1982 presented us with some considerations that will always be relevant, because the Work can only go forward through prayer and mortification.

Clama, ne cesses! our Lord asked. And our Father echoed that call himself and repeated it to all and sundry, spending his days in a constant vigil of prayer and doctrinal and spiritual instruction. The whole Work was inspired and moved by this clamor, which has engraved two fundamental truths upon us: that we must be contemplatives in the midst of the world, and that the Work is a great catechesis, an intravenous injection into the circulatory system of society.

God’s action in our Father’s soul was very demanding. By his heroic correspondence to that divine action, our Father communicated a burning desire for sanctity to each one of us, his daughters and sons. Quite a few children of our Father’s faithfulness are already in heaven; many more are pilgrims here on earth, savouring this divine burden, which has a strength incomparably greater than that of our personal shortcomings.

In a word, God has led us along paths that were of benefit to us, urging us on to be saints. Following in our Father’s footsteps, it is our turn to be God’s good little donkeys, keeping well marked out the furrow opened up by God’s grace and our Father’s correspondence. God has arranged everything in the best way possible for us to become saints, for this is what he expects from us, as does all mankind.

Si Deus nobiscum, quis contra nos? This constituted yet another of God’s actions in the soul of our Father. When we accept the hammer blows as coming from the hand of the divine sculptor who wants to make a crucifix, a Christ figure, out of the block of stone of which each one of us consists, then the help of divine fortitude to sustain and support us is never wanting. It is I, do not be afraid (Mk 7: 50), he seems to whisper in our soul. The conviction that he was fulfilling the will of God bestowed on our founder a great calm even while undertaking such demanding tasks. Like a river of peace, his deep-seated serenity-which came from on high-overflowed onto the entire Work, doing immense good. It enabled us to be sowers of peace and joy, even in the midst of the dust storms raised by the strong winds of our times or by our personal weaknesses.

God was not only behind us but among us, working incessantly. Gratias tibi, Deus!, because you have never abandoned us, because you have done battle for us and with us. None of the devil’s deceits has ever succeeded nor can ever succeed against this evident and merciful desire of our Lord’s. Gratias tibi!

The Blessed Virgin can never be separated from her Son. Along with our Lord, she took care of the Work with great love, leading us along the path to holiness and supporting us with her hand along the way. Holy Mary helped our Father understand that she was the thronum gloriae to whom we should have recourse with complete filial trust-adeamus cum fiducial-in order to obtain mercy from the Blessed Trinity-ut misericordiam consequamur. In this way, our shortcomings are not an obstacle to our leading a holy life, following the path that God has marked out for us.

Let us ask God on this anniversary that he bestow his blessings upon us, so that we may convert ourselves and our surroundings into Opus Dei, faithfully following in the footsteps of our holy founder.