618. December 5, Novena of the Immaculate Conception (VI)

Meditations no. 545 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Visits to our Lady’s poor are an essential part of the St Raphael work.

Among the traditional means that can never be lacking in the St Raphael work, our Father includes catechism classes and visits to our Lady’s poor. These means, along with many others that respond to the needs of each time and place, enable a large number of young people to approach our apostolate. Never forget that we are interested in all souls. We must spread out like a fan, in order to bring the light of good doctrine everywhere.

Referring to the origin of the visits to our Lady’s poor, our Father told us that this expression of refined charity began very early, when the Work was taking its first steps. He also stressed that Opus Dei was born among the poor of Madrid, in the hospitals and the most destitute neighbourhoods of the city. And we continue to care for the poor, for children and for the sick.

In the Work’s early moments there were no material resources to rely upon. These visits began in the year 1931 in Madrid. At that time we did not even have a single residence. The Father gathered the fellows together at the grandmother’s house on Martinez Campos Street. Sometimes he would bring them to the “Sotanillo,”a quiet cafe on Alcala Street near Plaza de la Independencia.

Our Father has told us how those early visits were made. We put a lot of human and supernatural affection into them, and we began to call the people we were going to visit “our Lady’s poor.” A fellow who lacked apostolic concern would be put off by the thought of going and wouldn’t go. In that way we were already carrying out a selection. The addresses of people were provided by parish priests in the poorer neighbourhoods. We never visited the same person more than once. We would take them a small amount of money, something amusing to read and some sweets of the sort that only the rich could afford. We always left a package containing something they may never have seen in their lives. Our goal wasn’t to carry out an ongoing work with these people, but rather to do so with the fellows making the visits.

Visits to our Lady’s poor have a deep human and Christian meaning. We seek to bring a bit of joy and affection to people who, often enough, have never even heard a kind word or received the Christian help of a gesture of fraternal concern. Certain deficient forms of benevolence have been so misrepresented and satirized that some of the deeds proper to the spirit of Christianity have been made to appear archaic. Therefore I want you to understand very well, and help others understand, the deep supernatural and human value of these means that we have lived right from the start.

Through these visits we try to foster appreciation for Christian charity.

We should be very aware that by these brief visits we are not going to solve any social problem, since that is not their purpose. Our Father writes, Explain this to the fellows. It is a matter of bringing a small gift of a sort that they would not normally receive and that will console the poor, sick or lonely person. It is a matter of helping them enjoy themselves for a while and perhaps even doing some small favour for them, but nothing more than that. The fellows will understand this right away if they have interior life, and if they also know that we are doing this to honour our Lady.

It is not a matter of trying to solve any social problems by these visits. However each of us has to do what he can to help resolve these problems, working alone or with others and responsibly using our personal freedom in accord with a correctly formed Christian conscience. Nor are we trying to awaken a superficial social awareness by these visits. It is a case, as I have said, of bringing the young people closer to their neighbour in need. Our St Raphael fellows see Jesus Christ, in a very real way, in the poor, in the sick, in the helpless, in the lonely, in the suffering, in children. This custom is a work of mercy blessed by Jesus Christ. It contributes to the fellows’ formation, while bringing them to recall the life of the early Christians.

During the Church’s early centuries, caring for widows and orphans, comforting the afflicted and alleviating the needs of the poor were signs of having received the Gospel message in its entirety. It is not right to allow expressions of true Christian spirit to be set aside because some people have turned them into an ostentatious and empty gesture or into a sedative for their conscience.

We carry out this work of mercy to honour our Lady, and our friends will learn to love her more deeply. She is a mother, the Mother of God and our Mother, and she knows what young hearts mean by those small acts of love shown toward those in need. Moreover the visits to the poor make it easy to carry out an initial selection, which is indispensable if the fellows are to draw close to the warmth of the Work. Those who lack a true concern for others lack the necessary prerequisites for forming part of St Raphael work, and all the more so for receiving a vocation to Opus Dei. This contact with misery and human weakness is an occasion that God makes use of to enkindle in souls the generous desire for divine adventures. At the same time it helps awaken in the younger fellows a lasting concern for justice and charity.

It is a tradition that will never be discontinued in the Work.

Visiting our Lady’s poor is a tradition that will never cease to be lived in the Work. Remember that in any circumstances that might prevail in a country, we will always be able to practise this affectionate charity. For the poor are always with you (Jn12: 8). There will always be poor people. There will always be some who are needy, even though the majority of people have acquired a minimum of material well-being. And they will joyfully accept a small gift, some item that they cannot normally afford and that will convey to them our refined and fraternal companionship.

Even in the most highly-developed societies there will always be people in need. I would venture to say that when social circumstances seem to have eliminated misery, poverty and pain, it will be even more urgent than ever to practise this refined Christian charity, which can detect the need for consolation in the midst of an apparently generalized well-being.

It is certainly true that, in the modern world, governments have benevolent institutions that are concerned with alleviating the most pressing social needs. However, though the spread of social remedies for combating suffering and indigence makes it possible to achieve humanitarian results today unheard of in former times, this can never supplant the human and supernatural affection shown by direct, personal contact with our neighbour, which is on an entirely different plane. We come to see our neighbour in the poor person who lives close by, in the sick person who keeps his suffering to himself in a huge hospital, or even in someone who may be rich but who needs a few moments of affectionate conversation and Christian friendship in order to ease his loneliness and resolve his doubts and scepticism. For at times, in the St Raphael work, visits to the poor are not made to those in abject poverty, since it is not always easy to find them. Rather we go to the poor who lack the affection and warmth of true human friendship.

Over the years our experience has shown how this tradition has not only continued without interruption, but has, thank God, been enriched by new facets and new ways of living the same charity. For example, we visit those who are not poor from the material point of view but who are isolated and lonely, in order to offer them spiritual assistance. We bring them a bit of friendship and human warmth so that they do not feel the bitterness of indifference, as our Father put it.

Our Lady, in the Magnificat, rejoiced to see God’s great mercy towards human misery: esurientes implevit bonis, he has filled the needy with good things. Our love for holy Mary leads us to want to live this custom very well in her honour.