St. Josemaria Escrivá
June 3, 2023
St. Philip and James, Baltimore
Introduction
Recently, I ran into a couple whom I had married several years earlier. I hadn’t seen them for a while and knew that they had two young children, so I asked them if they were enjoying married life. They sort of looked at each other, hesitated, but then began to speak freely. They told me they were overwhelmed by the demands of raising their children, coupled with their challenging jobs, not to mention an old house in need of repairs and their mounting bills. “It seems like we’re being pulled in a thousand ways,” the wife told me. “Our lives are fragmented and we’re in danger of splitting too!” My casual question received more of a response that I thought it would!
But you know, a lot of people’s lives these days are fragmented, sometimes because of the problems and pressures of life, and sometimes because of how we compartmentalize our lives. Deep down we know that we’ll only be happy when our lives make sense – when the demands and pressures of life fit into a larger, unifying picture, and when we are living our lives with such integrity that we need no “compartments” in which to hide one aspect of our life from another.
I think you’ll agree that St. Josemaria Escrivá is one of those great saints who points the way to holiness and wholeness, to integrity and joy. He does so, not with self-improvement techniques or pop psychology, but by leading us deep into the fundamentals of the Christian life – by helping us see how life in Christ enables us, not just to make sense of life, and not just to manage its competing demands – but how to grow and flourish, how to become the persons God has meant us to become from all eternity. Today’s Scripture readings shed a beautiful light on what St. Josemaria taught us, and how we might continue to apply his teachings to our daily lives.
Adopted Sons and Daughters
At the heart of St. Josemaría’s teaching is our status as the beloved, adopted sons and daughters of God, our heavenly Father. St. Paul proclaims this beautiful truth in today’s second reading from Romans: “Those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a Spirit of adoption, through which we cry ‘Abba’, Father!” In Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit, we are God’s beloved children. St. Josemaria often pointed out how in the Gospel Jesus loved children – and invited his follows to have the heart of a child – humble of heart, innocent of sin, and receptive to the mercy and divine life which he would win for us on the Cross and infuse in us through the Holy Spirit.
When we have the heart of a child, that is, when we’re docile and simple, we discover how deeply our heavenly Father loves us and we rejoice to be the brothers and sisters of Christ. This becomes our deepest identity and our deepest quest: that the Father might see and love in us what he sees and loves in Christ. When we open our hearts to the Incarnate Son of God, to Jesus, we discover afresh his loving trust in and obedience to his Father. Then it is that we begin to accept the challenges of our lives – not as so many problems coming at us from different directions, but as a way of becoming who we already are by virtue of Baptism – God’s beloved children who are precious in his sight. True freedom and true joy is crying out: “Abba! Father!”
Let us listen to St. Josemaría’s own words on divine filiation: “Divine filiation is the foundation of the Christian’s peace and joy. In it we find the security we need, a fatherly warmth and trust for the future. We live in the assurance that behind all the disappointments of life, there is a good reason ‘in everything God works for good for those who love him.’”
The Pursuit of Holiness
Flowing from our identity as the adopted sons and daughters of the heavenly Father is our call to holiness, a call embedded in Baptism, a call to participate in in the divine life of the Triune God – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is what God intended from the very beginning when he created the world and then “formed man out of the clay of the ground, [blowing] into his nostrils the breath of life…” We were created to share in God’s life and love, now and for all eternity.
If our deepest identity is to be the adopted children of God, the overarching goal of our lives must be the pursuit of holiness, to share in God’s life. When, in God’s grace, we pursue holiness, then our scattered lives have a direction. As we encounter Christ in prayer, we discover a new horizon of hope and joy. Long before the II Vatican Council emphasized the universal call to holiness, St. Josemaria clearly taught that everyone, regardless of occupation, or economic condition, or status in Church or society – everyone is called to become a child of God and therefore to share God’s life, in a word, to become holy and righteous in the sight of God.
As St. Josemaria also teaches us, holiness is not out of reach. It is attainable in the course of our ordinary daily lives, in the most ordinary situations. Yes, it is attainable in the messiness, busyness, distractedness of daily life. “Your ordinary contact with God,” he writes, “takes place where your fellow men, your work, and your affections are. There you have your daily encounter with Christ. It is in the midst of most material things of the earth that we must sanctity ourselves, serving God and all mankind.” By engaging in daily prayer and penance, and by worthy participation in Mass and Confession, our daily work becomes a means of sanctification. The gap between faith and daily life closes. So, no matter how elevated or how monotonous our work may be – by putting ourselves into the task at hand, by doing everything with love and integrity, by consistently maintaining a supernatural outlook – it is by doing just this that put ourselves on the road to holiness. When we engage in our daily work of heart and hand in this way, we find ourselves becoming like Christ, giving of ourselves to others, and thus the light of Christ will shine through us almost without our being aware of it!
The Apostolate
Flowing from our identity as God’s children and our pursuit of holiness is our participation in the apostolate, spreading the faith, or as St. Paul wrote to Timothy, “doing the work of an evangelist” (2 Tim 4:5). Long before it was common to speak of lay ministry or evangelization, St. Josemaria was encouraging members of the laity to share with others the joy of becoming God’s children and the peace and joy of holiness – He was urging them to evangelize the lukewarm and the unaffiliated in ways that are down-to-earth and practical.
Just as Jesus taught the disciples about the apostolate through the miraculous catch of fish, so too St. Josemaria teaches us how to win souls for Christ by our daily example of faith, integrity, virtue, and kindness – how to live differently so as to provoke questions from others: “Where does this kind of a life come from?” “Where can I find this kind of peace, joy, and goodness?” And when those questions are asked, we must be ready, as St. Peter teaches, “to give a reason for our hope” and to do so with great kindness.
The Way
So, dear friends, let us ask the intercession of St. Josemaria for ourselves, for our families, for our daily work, and for our Church. May we find in his teaching and example “the way”: the way that leads us to Christ, the way that deepens our divine filiation, the way to authentic holiness, the way to fruitfulness in the Apostolate. And may God bless us and keep us always in his love!