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I have always been impressed by Josemaría Escrivá's explanation of
the name "Opus Dei": an explanation which we might call
biographical and which gives us an idea of the founder's spiritual
profile. Escrivá knew he had to found something, but he was also
conscious that what he was founding was not his own work, that he
himself did not invent anything and that the Lord was merely making use
of him. So it was not his work, but Opus Dei (God's Work). He was only
the instrument for God's action.
In thinking about this, I remember the Lord's words in John's Gospel:
"My Father is working still" (5,17). These are words that
Jesus spoke in a discussion with a few experts in religion who did not
want to recognize that God can work even on the Sabbath. This is still
an ongoing debate, in a certain way, among the men and women—also
Christians—of our time. There are
those who think that after creation, God "withdrew" and took
no further interest in our daily affairs. To this way of thinking, God
can no longer enter the fabric of our daily lives. But we have a denial
of this in Jesus' words. A man open to God's presence realizes that God
is always working and is still working today: we must therefore let him
in and let him work. That is how things which give humanity a future and
renew it are born.
All this helps us understand why Josemaría Escrivá did not claim to
be the "founder" of anything, but only someone who wanted to
do God's will and second his action, his work, precisely, God's. In this
regard, Escrivá de Balaguer's theocentrism, consistent with Jesus'
words, means being confident that God did not withdraw from the world,
that God is working today, and that all we have to do is put ourselves
at his disposal, make ourselves available to him, and responsive to his
call, is an extremely important message. It is a message that
helps to overcome what can be considered the great temptation of our
time: the claim, that after the "big bang" God withdrew from
history, God's action did not stop with the "big bang" but
continues in time, both in the world of nature and in the human world.
Thus the founder of the Opus said: "I did not invent anything;
another is acting and I am merely ready to serve him as an
instrument". This is how the name and the whole reality that we
call Opus Dei is profoundly linked with the interior life of the founder
who, while remaining very discreet on this point, gives us to understand
that he was in a permanent dialogue, a real contact with the One who
created us and works for us and with us. The Book of Exodus says of
Moses (33,11) "thus the Lord used to speak to Moses as to a
friend". It seems to me that even if the veil of discretion may
hide many of the details from us, nonetheless from those small
references one realizes that the words "speaking as to a
friend" can very aptly be applied to Josemaría Escrivá, who opens
the doors of the world to let God come in, work and transform all
things.
In this light it is also easier to understand what "holiness"
and the "universal vocation to holiness" mean.
Knowing a little about the history of saints, knowing that in
canonization processes their "heroic" virtues are
investigated, we almost inevitably slip into an erroneous concept of
holiness: "It is not for me", we are inclined to think,
"because I do not feel able to achieve heroic virtues: it's too
exalted an ideal for me". Holiness then becomes something reserved
for the "important" [people], whose images we see above the
altars, worlds apart indeed from us normal sinners. However, this is an
erroneous concept of holiness, a wrong perception which has been
corrected—and this seems to me to
be the main point—by Josemaría
Escrivá.
Heroic virtue does not mean that the saint works out a
"gymnastics" of holiness that ordinary people could not
tackle. It means, instead, that God's presence is revealed in the life
of a person; it is revealed when the person could do nothing by himself
or for himself. Perhaps basically, it is a question of terminology
because the adjective "heroic" was badly explained. Heroic
virtue does not actually mean that someone has done great things by
himself, but that situations arise in his life independently of anything
he has done: he was simply transparent and available for God's work. Or,
in other words, being holy is nothing other than speaking with God as a
friend speaks to a friend. That is holiness.
Being holy does not mean being superior to others; indeed, a saint
can be very weak and make many blunders in his life. Holiness is
profound contact with God, being a friend of God; it is letting the
Other act, the One who really can guarantee that the world is good and
happy. If therefore St Josemaría speaks of the common vocation to
holiness, it seems to me that he is basically drawing on his own
personal experience, not of having done incredible things himself, but
of having let God work. Therefore a renewal, a force for good was born
in the world even if human weaknesses will always remain. Truly we are
all able, we are all called to open ourselves to this friendship with
God, not to let go of God's hands, not to give up, turning and returning
to the Lord, speaking to him as to a friend, knowing well that the Lord
really is the true friend of everyone, even of those who cannot do great
things on their own.
All this has enabled me to discern more clearly the profile of Opus
Dei, this surprising link between absolute fidelity to the great
tradition of the Church and to her faith, with a disarming simplicity
and unconditional openness to all the challenges of this world, in the
academic world, in the world of work, in the world of economics, etc.
Those who have this link with God, those who have this uninterrupted
conversation with him, can dare to respond to these challenges and are
no longer afraid because those who are in God's hands always fall into
God's hands. This is how fear disappears and, instead, the courage is
born to respond to the contemporary world.
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