50 years later: San Josemaría Escrivá, the Opus Dei and the universal call to holiness

Comment: Pope San Juan Paul II called “the saint of ordinary life”, but we could also name the apostle of the laity.

June 26 is the 50th anniversary of death and birth to the eternal life of St. Josemaría Escrivá (1902-1975), founder of Opus Dei.

Pope San Juan Paul II called him “the saint of ordinary life”, but we could also call it rightly the apostle of the laity and the herald of the universal call to holiness.

St. Josemaría brought a revolution to the church that we should never take for granted.

Sixty years after the conclusion of the Second Vatican Council, his most important teaching about the “universal call to holiness” is now so well known and preached that many presume that this has been clear to Christians from the beginning. After all, the invitation to holiness is as old as our creation in the image and likeness of our God three times holy.

In addition, God explicitly called us “to be saints, because I, the Lord His God, I am holy” (Leviticus 20.7) and Jesus, the embodied holiness, invited us to “be perfect as his heavenly Father is perfect” (Mateo 5,48) loving others as he has loved us first (Juan 15,12).

However, this clear standard for all Christian life was diluted over the centuries. Many came to think that to be holy it was necessary to live in a “state of perfection” as a nun of closing, monk, hermit, priest or religious. These were the few privileged who were expected to obtain an A+ in the gift of life.

The rest of the baptized were second -class Christians in an approved or disapproved route, limited to a simplified version of the Gospel and try to help the clergy and the religious in their ecclesial work.

There were, of course, voices crying out in the desert over the centuries by calling the laity to holiness, such as San Francisco de Sales in their Introduction to devout lifebut their messages really never had a wide impact on the mentality and practice of the Church.

Then San Josemaría arrived, who, being a young Spanish priest in 1928, discovered that God called him to help the vast majority of church members – theic and, later, diocesan priests – to seek holiness in the midst of his ordinary life. He called what he believed that God asked him to do, “Opus day“, Oriented to help people turn their daily duties into a” work of God. “

El Opus Day, He once said in an interviewwas created to “favor the search for holiness and the exercise of the apostolate by the Christians who live in the middle of the world, whatever their state or condition. The work has been born to contribute to those Christians, inserted in the fabric of civil society – with their family, their friendships, their professional work, their noble aspirations -, they understand that their life, as it is, can be the occasion of a encounter. Road of Holiness and Apostolate ”.

“And as most Christians receive from God the mission of sanctifying the world from within, remaining in the midst of temporal structures, Opus dei is dedicated to discovering that divine mission, showing them that the human vocation – the professional, family and social vocation – does not oppose the supernatural vocation: before the opposite, it is an integral part of it.”

Many found the message and work of St. Josemaría controversial, and even some considered them heretic. While few in the Church object, and most appreciate, when a layman is genuinely holy, it is something different that a priest begins to preach that God calls the laity not only to be good, but to be holy, and even more, that the laity can become holy just in the middle of the world, in the midst of seemingly mundane tasks.

That message was considered above all dangerous and harmful to the promotion of vocations to the priesthood and religious life: if young people who feel a call to Christian greatness recognize that they can, with the grace of God, reach it without going to the seminar or the convent, many would do so, and in fact, they did.

Then, many considered harmful to “press” people to live at a standard of living that few could achieve, aware that, recognizing that most have no chance of greatness, they could simply abandon the good struggle, leave the career and abandon faith.

Despite the opposition and misunderstanding, the dangers and deprivations of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), as well as the difficulties and crosses inherent to virtually any founder of an ecclesiastical work, St. Josemar would persevere faithfully, seeking holiness in the midst of its ordinary duties while trying to be an instrument for the sanctification of others and the Church.

San Juan Pablo II He said about San Josemaría The day after canonizing him in 2002: “St. Josemaría was chosen by the Lord to announce the universal call to holiness and to indicate that the life of every day, common activities, are a path of sanctification. It could be said that he was the saint of the ordinary. Indeed, he was convinced that, for those who live in a perspective of faith, everything offers the occasion of a encounter with God Given seen, it reveals unsuspected greatness.

Saint John Paul II dedicated his pontificate to try to put into practice the message that God entrusted to St. Josemaría and that the Second Vatican Council proclaimed. Canonized 482 men and women from all areas of life and beatified others 1,338.

And in his pastoral plan for the third Christian millennium, New Millennium at the beginningpublished the year before the Canonization of St. Josemaría, Juan Pablo redoubled the expectations that flow from baptism and how everything the Church does is destined to lead to the fulfillment of the graces and baptismal promises.

“If baptism,” John Paul II wrote, “it is a true entry into the holiness of God through insertion into Christ and the inhabitation of his spirit, it would be a contradiction to content himself with a mediocre life, lived according to a minimalist ethic and a superficial religios Mountain sermon: “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect” (Mt 5,48). “

He continued: “This ideal of perfection should not be misunderstood, as if it implies a kind of extraordinary life, practicable only by some” geniuses “of holiness … it is time to propose to all with conviction this” high degree “of ordinary Christian life. The entire life of the ecclesial community and Christian families must go in this direction. But it is also evident that the paths of holiness are personal True and own holiness, which is able to adapt to the rhythms of each person.

Opus Dei is one of those forms of assistance and support, now with 94,000 members, composed of 60% of women and 74% married, and just over 2,100 secular priests.

He specializes in the “training in holiness” for those who are in the middle of the world, doing the call to holiness through what St. Josemaría called a “life plan”, a series of daily practices to maintain the presence of God throughout the day. Form the members on how to sanctify the ordinary work that constitutes most of their life – whether intellectual or physical work, in the office or at home – learning to do, as San Josemaría joked, “endecasyllables of the prose of each day.”

On a practical level, that means learning to offer one’s job as Abel’s pleasant sacrifice, doing so for love to God and for those who will benefit from him. Through that work, one can at the same time grow in holiness through the virtues acquired in well -done work, as well as serve as a sanctification instrument – sal, light and yeast – for those who work with one, through friendship and good example.

I met Opus Dei for the first time as a first -year student at the University. The now famous idea of ​​St. Josemaría, “these world crises are saints crisis,” captivated me and helped me to turn my human ambitions into holy ambitions.

Once I understood that my fundamental vocation in life was to become holy, it was easier for me to definitely discern and follow my vocation not only to be a priest, but to strive to be a holy priest. I began to live according to a life plan and eventually write a book about it.

While it is something simple for a priest to sanctify his preaching and the celebration of the sacraments, the spirituality of the sanctification of ordinary work taught by Opus Dei has really helped me to integrate all the other tasks of the ordinary work of a diocesan priest – paperwork montones, fix broken toilets, supervise the staff, treat patiently with feligresas occasionally demanding Holiness

St. Josemaría taught me that, whatever the crisis or the problem he faced, great or small, the most important remedy was and is God, and that our fundamental task is, as the saints, cooperate with him.

The celebration of the 50th anniversary of the culmination of the search for holiness of the whole life of St. Josemaría is an opportunity for everyone in the Church to thank God for the graces he granted him. These have helped the Church, through the Second Vatican Council, to understand much better the meaning of Christian life, as well as the mission of the Church as a vocational technical school, forming people for holiness and heaven.

Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in the National Catholic Register.