Woman and Work: for women interested in Opus Dei

Shining new light on Opus Dei’s mission

2010-02-04T16:11:00.001-05:00

By Erica Noonan, The Boston Globe, November 19, 2009

Opus Dei means “work of God’’ in Latin. At the Montrose School in Medfield, it means educating girls to be leaders with “faith, character, and vision,’’ said the independent Catholic institution’s head, Karen E. Bohlin.

For Mary Brennan, a Franklin mother of six, it is a search for divinity in everyday life as she cares for her children and works part time. “It’s faith in practice,’’ said Brennan, who prays several times a day, using a rosary, Latin readings, and the New Testament. “As Catholics, it’s making a connection between work and faith.’’

Eighty years after being founded in Spain by St. Josemaria Escriva, Opus Dei remains an under-the-radar extension of Catholicism that is often misunderstood, adherents say. Yet it maintains a thriving presence in Greater Boston, with about 300 members, centers in Chestnut Hill, Boston’s Back Bay, Cambridge, and Pembroke, and the affiliated school in Medfield for girls in grades 6 through 12.

It took an image crisis - spurred by a 2003 novel by Dan Brown, “The Da Vinci Code,’’ featuring a monk-assassin with ties to Opus Dei - to put the prelature front and center in popular culture, and not in a positive light.

Finding many misrepresentations in Brown’s book, particularly about how Opus Dei treats women, who make up more than half of its membership, Boston College graduate Marie Oates started work on her own book, a pioneering collection of essays by two dozen women proclaiming the group’s egalitarian nature.

“We realized we had to tell the world about ourselves,’’ said Oates, who co-edited “Women of Opus Dei’’ with Dr. Jenny Driver, a physician at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. “Saint Josemaria loved women, and had great respect for them and everything they do in the world.’’

About 20 percent of the organization’s 87,000 members worldwide are “numeraries,’’ who live celibate lives, primarily work in service to the church, and live in Opus Dei residences.

Roughly 2 percent of its members are priests, according to Opus Dei, and the remainder are regular churchgoers with secular jobs and families, like Brennan, who attends Mass daily when possible. But her deepest relationship with God, Brennan says, is outside the sanctuary while doing her everyday work “with great love’’ - raising children, doing freelance design at night, and in her part-time job in the cafe at Dean College in Franklin.

Opus Dei’s mission was also the inspiration behind the three-decade-old Montrose School, though today 25 percent of the girls and faculty are not practicing Catholics; several are Muslim, Greek Orthodox, or unaffiliated. The school is financially independent from Opus Dei and the Archdiocese of Boston, though it maintains a warm institutional relationship with both.

“I guess you could say our secret weapon is prayer,’’ said Bohlin, a scholar at Boston University’s Center for the Advancement of Ethics and Character and an Opus Dei member. “We don’t have a corner on that market, but we do integrate it into all we do. And because we respect every person as a child of God, it’s easier to appreciate people, gain perspective under pressure, and laugh at ourselves.’’

The “Work,’’ as members call their faith, has historically been outside the direct purview of the Vatican, contributing to longstanding internal Church tensions between strict followers of papal hierarchy and Opus Dei, which some critics have called “a church within a church.’’

National Public Radio’s Vatican correspondent, John L. Allen Jr., described Opus Dei as an especially intense form of Catholicism, calling it “the Guinness Extra Stout of the Catholic Church.’’

“A strong brew, definitely an acquired taste, and clearly not for everyone,’’ Allen wrote in his 2005 book on the group, which he billed as “the most controversial force in the Catholic Church.’’

Opus Dei might have remained out of the limelight indefinitely if not for Brown’s novel, which in 2006 was made into a hit movie starring Tom Hanks. Suddenly tourists were appearing on the doorsteps of Opus Dei residences around the world, asking questions about medieval torture chambers and ancient corporal mortification practices like self-flagellation, as performed by a character in the novel.

“We didn’t think anyone could really think what was in the book could be true,’’ said Oates, a Duxbury native who lives in New York. “But so many people did.’’

The most devout men and women in Opus Dei do wear a cilice, a small metal chain, around their upper thigh under their clothing for a few hours per day, as a reminder of the pain endured by Jesus Christ during his crucifixion. Slightly uncomfortable, it does not draw blood or torture the wearer, Oates said.

Her book, put out this summer by Crossroad Publishing Co., features narratives of conversion and faith in practice from a variety of women - stay-at-home mothers, academics, business leaders - from around the country.

Both Oates and Driver said they were sure as young women that they wished to forgo traditional marriage and children and commit themselves to the church and Opus Dei. There are no regrets, they said.

“You feel loved. This is a family,’’ said Driver, who lives at Bayridge, the prelature’s Back Bay facility.

Being a numerary is not the same as being a nun, and they do not wear special garments or accept orders from the Archdiocese, they said.

“I guess you could say my heart dedicated itself to Jesus. He is my significant other,’’ said Oates, a public relations consultant who serves on Boston College’s Council for Women.

Because Opus Dei is a personal calling, without typical Vatican top-down hierarchy, its members have autonomy to teach, speak, lead small groups of discussion, and travel the world assisting the sick and needy as they see necessary, Oates and Driver said.

Free of traditional church structure, aside from the traditional morning Mass celebrated by a male priest, the umbrella of intellectual and spiritual opportunities offered by Opus Dei is especially empowering for women who may feel constrained by the church’s male-dominated bureaucracy, the co-editors said.

Their book has drawn praise from progressive religion writers and scholars, including Phyllis Tickle, author of “The Divine Hours’’ and “The Words of Jesus.’’

Tickle said longstanding suspicion toward Opus Dei’s emphasis on a personal relationship with God, especially within the Catholic Church in Europe, has hurt the group. “They have a bad rap not just among non-Catholics, but even among Catholics,’’ she said.

“There are many people out there asking how do you rein it in?’’ Tickle said in a telephone interview from her Tennessee home.

Yet Opus Dei has much to offer contemporary religious debate, said Tickle. Many faiths acknowledge the mundane and ordinary parts of life, but seeking the divinity within them, as experienced by women, is the “great strength’’ of Opus Dei, she said. “It takes life where it is, so that it may be lauded.’’

In Greater Boston, nearly 100 young women, mostly college students, live at Bayridge, a historic Commonwealth Avenue mansion designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Opus Dei also runs the Chestnut Hill Center on Hammond Street in Newton, and the Elmbrook Student Center in Cambridge, offering educational programming for young men in high school and college, as well as the Arnold Hall Conference Center in Pembroke, offering job training and retreats for adults.

The Montrose School was established 30 years ago in Brookline by Catholic parents and educators who were also Opus Dei members. This year it made Boston magazine’s list of the area’s best private schools, outranking Belmont Hill School, Concord Academy, the Rivers School, and Milton Academy.

Attendance at Montrose has been growing steadily, and three years ago the school moved from a rented building in Natick to the 14-acre campus, with an athletic field, in Medfield.

Religious education remains part of the school’s core curriculum. Students can choose between attending daily morning Mass or spending 45 minutes in quiet reading sessions, with a long list of approved books that include Plato, Jane Austen, and even Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink.’’

Montrose students travel to Rome to study Dante’s “Inferno,’’ are the only high-schoolers invited to present their writing and research on ethics and philosophy at a Notre Dame college competition, and are regularly accepted to Ivy League colleges.

“The most consistent feedback I get from visitors, community members, and parents is, ‘This is a happy place. Your students are genuinely happy,’ ’’ said Bohlin. “That’s refreshing.’’

Prayer
The prayercard of the St Josemaria in English and in other languages.

The Wives, Mothers and Daughters Who Live the Charism

2010-02-04T16:05:00.002-05:00

The Women of Opus Dei

By Miriam Díez i Bosch

NEW YORK, OCT. 19, 2009 (Zenit.org).- We tracked down Marie Oates in Opus Dei headquarters in New York. Her desire to show how women live the Opus Dei charism resulted in her book “Women of Opus Dei: In Their Own Words."

Coedited with Linda Ruf and Jenny Driver (Crossroad Publishing, 2009), the book's profiles range from a Harvard doctor, to stay-at-home moms, to an MIT graduate; it aims to introduce "the women in Catholicism's most intriguing organization."

ZENIT: Finally someone is talking about women in the Opus Dei. Women make up half -- some believe more than half -- of the total number of members of Opus Dei in the United States and worldwide, but most people do not know you. Why this lack of protagonism?

Oates: As part of the Catholic Church, Opus Dei exists to help lay men and women find and love God through their work -- whatever that may be -- and the everyday events that fill a normal life. But having a vocation to Opus Dei does not change the fact that members are still simply lay faithful, the same as other lay faithful in the Catholic Church.

People in Opus Dei do not wear their vocation to Opus Dei on their sleeves. In general, they try to focus on being an "ordinary guy or gal" with their colleagues, family and friends, all the while trying to be more like Christ in their work and with everyone with whom they come in contact. In this way, each one strives to personally give glory to God and to give Christian witness through the way they do their work and through their personal relationships.

Readers will find that there is plenty of "protagonism" -- as well as human imperfections and defects too -- among the women featured in the book.

Each one is the protagonist of her unique and personal effort to live out her calling to holiness as a lay person.

ZENIT: Is there a prototype of a woman of Opus Dei?

Oates: No. As readers will see, the women featured in "Women of Opus Dei: In Their Own Words" are all unique.

The women in the book, just like all the women -- and men -- in Opus Dei, come from all walks of life. Four of the 15 women featured in the book are converts to Catholicism. Three of the women featured are of African American heritage; several come from Asian and Hispanic backgrounds. Several are stay-at-home mothers -- an important professional work esteemed as such by St. Josemaría Escrivá. Several are mothers who raise their families and have other professions they carry out.

There’s a scientist, a couple of medical doctors -- including one of the founders of the Hospice Movement in the United States, hospitality services professionals, a childcare professional, several educators, the president of a women’s college, the executive director of a non-profit organization, etc.

The majority of the women are married, some are single. What they share in common is their vocation -- which is the same calling regardless of their different circumstances.

Though they each have their own personal shortcomings and struggles like everyone, they all love their Catholic faith deeply and find that their vocation to Opus Dei helps them cherish, live and pass on that faith more readily.

Women (and men) in Opus Dei are normal Catholics who want to respond daily to God’s deep love and goodness.

ZENIT: Is there anything distinctive Opus Dei offers to women in terms of formation, ways of behaving?

Oates: The formation offered by Opus Dei, a personal prelature of the Catholic Church, simply echoes the Christian formation recommended by the Church for all the faithful -- men and women. The Christian programs are the same for men and women -- though they are carried out independently of
each other.

The independence of the women’s formation programs from the men’s primarily was part of the foundational charism St. Josemaría received from God. It works effectively for Opus Dei’s formational activities, but it might not for other Catholic organizations.

I guess one of the distinctive features of the formation is that it is offered by lay people and priests. It strives to be practical and to help people live the Christian virtues in their place of work, in their normal daily activities.

ZENIT: In your book it is impossible to find the political affiliation of the women featured. Was that done on purpose or is it simply not an issue?

Oates: That was done on purpose because it is not an issue. Let me explain. Members of Opus Dei, as free human beings, are encouraged to be responsible citizens, to vote, to take an interest in the public policies that affect them and others within their various countries and communities.

That said, members of Opus Dei are completely free in the realm of voting, public policies, political party affiliation, etc. Opus Dei is totally non-political. Its ends are completely spiritual. People in Opus Dei tend to be all over the map in their politics -- some are liberal, some are conservative, some are moderate, etc. As devout Catholics, they often share similar points of view on moral “hot button” issues like abortion, euthanasia, sexual ethics, social justice, bioethics, etc. -- all of which have political repercussions.

Still, they are encouraged to approach and decide on those and other issues of public policy in accord with their conscience. There’s no one approach that people in Opus Dei adopt when considering those and other public policy matters. As Christians, they pray about and ponder the matters, and then come up with their own political decisions based on the options available to them.

ZENIT: Do you think the Opus Dei these women represent is the Opus Dei the founder, St. Josemaría Escrivá, envisaged?

Oates: I like to think so. These women are all normal -- they are not perfect, but they are committed to struggle each day to keep Jesus front and center in their lives. We are all “works in progress” until we die.

Our existence on earth is a pilgrimage as we walk in time toward our definitive destiny: eternal life with God. God gives us time here on earth to cultivate the talents we have been given and to make the best of them in his service and the service of souls around us.

I think St. Josemaría would be happy with the dedication, focus and diversity of these women -- and the thousands not included in this book.

Probably, if he had them in a room all together, he would not congratulate them for being in Opus Dei, rather he would challenge them to be more valiant women. He would encourage them to try to be more generous in their love of God and spirit of service. He would urge them to dream apostolically with a world vision, to continue struggling to be better, to convert daily.

He often said that about himself, i.e., that he personally played the role of the prodigal son each day in his own life, and that most of us need to have little and big conversions each day, turning back toward God.

--- --- ---

On the Net:

"Women of Opus Dei: In Their Own Words": www.amazon.com/Women-Opus-Dei-Their-Words/dp/082452425X

Young Women Participate in Service in the City - Boston 2009

2009-08-29T11:07:00.001-04:00

The Joy of Giving to Those Who Cannot Give Back

August, 27, 2009

In Social Initiatives of the Opus Dei website

While summer is synonymous with TV reruns and midnight burritos for many high school students, fourteen girls from around the US gathered in Boston this summer to spend part of their vacation in service. Service in the City is a program for high school women that engages them in community service opportunities around the city, and teaches that true citizenship starts in everyday life among family and friends.

This year the girls spent many hours every day volunteering at different charitable organizations: playing with children at the Salvation Army day care; performing a talent show at the Vernon Hall nursing home in Cambridge; compiling clothing packages at Cradles to Crayons, an organization in North Quincy dedicated to providing children with the necessary items they need to flourish. After a full day around Boston, the high school girls returned to the residence in Back Bay for workshops on topics like human dignity, moral personality, identity and freedom.

When asked for the themes they thought inspired Service in the City, the participants volunteered: Love. Friendship. Perseverance. Service. Dignity. Respect. As one explained, “Service is not only work, but also the way you interact with the people you are working for.”

Service in the City is sponsored by Bayridge Residence, a student residence for young women in Boston’s Back Bay and a corporate apostolate of Opus Dei. Bayridge residents Emily Austin, a doctoral student at Boston University, and Helen Keefe, an undergraduate at Harvard, organized and led this year’s program.

“The goal is that these girls go back home with a greater sense of love and responsibility for those around them, manifested in little deeds of service,” said Emily, director of Service in the City. “I know we’re succeeding when one girl tells me that after her experience washing dishes at Rosie’s Place, a resource center for homeless women in Roxbury, she wants to work on not complaining at home when it’s her turn to do the dishes.”

More on the Movie on St. Josemaria

2009-08-29T10:40:00.001-04:00

Filming starts on biography of Opus Dei founder

By Mark Pattison - Catholic News Service
Friday, 28 August 2009
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Filming has begun in Argentina on a biography of St. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei. The movie, "There Be Dragons," is expected to be released in the summer or fall of 2010. Directing the film is Roland Joffe, whose past films include "The Mission" and "The Killing Fields." Joffe, who also wrote the screenplay, said he was not told what to write or how to present either the saint or the group, a personal prelature within the church, after earlier rejecting an offer to film a script provided by Opus Dei. The film is set at the time of the Spanish Civil War, which tore apart the European nation during the second half of the 1930s. And, likening it to his own creative freedom, Joffe said St. Josemaria "made no attempt to influence the people he worked with in terms of their politics." The director spoke at an Aug. 23 press conference in Argentina that was conducted in English, Spanish and Portuguese; U.S. reporters were allowed to listen in. "At that time, that's pretty heroic. That's a time when almost all human beings were faced with making extraordinary choices," he said. Charlie Cox, whose past film credits include "Stardust" and "Casanova," plays the priest. Wes Bentley, who had parts in "Ghost Rider" and "American Beauty," plays Manolo, a friend of Josemaria's who goes in and out of his life. Ukrainian actress Olga Kurylenko, who has acted in "Quantum of Solace," "Hitman" and "Max Payne," plays Ildiko, a Hungarian woman who casts her lot with the Republican movement, which falls to the Francisco Franco-led rightist rebels. Other actors in "There Be Dragons" include Dougray Scott, Geraldine Chaplin, Derek Jacobi and Charles Dance. "We found ourselves making a film about love -- human love and divine love. About hate -- which I guess is human -- about betrayal and mistakes," Joffe said. Further, "I don't know if there's anybody who wants to live his life without meaning. So it's also a story about people trying to find meaning about their lives, and that's a powerful kind of story." Responding to a question about source material for the script, Joffe said, "I researched as much as any writer can. History is not available to us; attempts at history are available to us. As an artist, one takes a difficult step that fiction is a way of understanding the truth. "There were certain liberties I could take if those liberties could take us to the personal issues that people felt," Joffe continued, saying he was taken with St. Josemaria's idea that "a way to God is found through everyday life. And that life is also found through the Spanish Civil War. That is still felt by Spaniards very much today." "I've been to many Opus Dei centers, and met many Opus Dei members (in doing research for the movie). And I've yet to encounter anything odd-seeming," said Cox. "I've been brought up a Catholic. I'm not a great practicing Christian. I've been to church infrequently, but I've never stopped going." Cox added there is "an inner journey I've been going on during this film. I don't know where it will lead. My relationship with the Catholic Church and with God has certainly been profoundly affected for the better throughout this process," he added. Asked whether he thought St. Josemaria was really a saint, Cox answered, "It's an impossible question to answer. ... I have to leave that up to the Catholic Church and not to myself." Joffe recalled that when he made "The Mission," which dealt with Jesuit missionary activity in South America at the time of the slave trade, he used two Jesuits as advisers: a "very, very right-wing Jesuit -- those things do exist -- and a left-wing Jesuit, Father Daniel Berrigan." He said he asked Father John Wauck, an Opus Dei priest who is a professor of literature and communication of the faith at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, "whether he'd serve the same purpose as Daniel Berrigan -- explain to Charlie (Cox) what he knew about Josemaria ... in as open and honest way as he could, what it means to be a priest. That's what he gave up his rather precious time to do, and I'm grateful for it." When one questioner asked whether he thought "There Be Dragons" was some kind of response to the movie "The Da Vinci Code," which characterized Opus Dei as a bizarre cult, Joffe replied, "Well, it'd be a very expensive response." The price tag of "There Be Dragons" is estimated at $30 million. "'The Da Vinci Code' stands on its own legs, whatever they may be," he added. "I think they took a rather cliched view and created a character and said he came from Opus Dei, and that is a bit much. But it's a fine movie."

Opus Dei to be in a movie again

2009-08-22T11:43:00.001-04:00

August 22, 2009

Bringing a Saint’s Life to the Screen

By LAURIE GOODSTEIN

The film director Roland Joffé, who has yet to regain the acclaim he won a generation ago for “The Killing Fields” and “The Mission,” is shooting a movie in Argentina focused on the founder of Opus Dei, an elite and powerful organization within the Roman Catholic Church.

The film, “There Be Dragons,” set during the Spanish Civil War, weaves fictional characters created by Mr. Joffé with the story of St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer, the Spaniard who founded Opus Dei and was canonized by the church.

The project was initiated by a member of Opus Dei, is partly produced and financed by the group’s members and has enlisted an Opus Dei priest to consult on the set. News of the project has set off criticism among some former Opus Dei members that the movie will be little more than propaganda for the organization. But Mr. Joffé, in the first interview he has given about the film, said that he had been given complete creative control and that Opus Dei never had any influence on the project.

He ditched the script he was originally given, he said, because he did not want to make what he called a “biopic” about Escrivá’s life. But, he added, he was intrigued by Escrivá’s ideas about the power of forgiveness and the capacity of every human being for sainthood. Opus Dei — the name is Latin for work of God — teaches that ordinary work can be a path to sanctity if the believer maintains a demanding regimen of religious practices intended to achieve holiness.

“I was very interested in the idea of embarking on a piece of work that took religion seriously on its own terms and didn’t play a game where one approached religion denying its validity,” Mr. Joffé said.

When pressed, he called himself a “wobbly agnostic” but added, “I do believe that rigid atheism is a rather intellectually short-sighted position.”

The Opus Dei members behind the project were delighted to enlist Mr. Joffé, whose reputation was that of a political leftist who made films that asked profound ethical questions.

In the 1980s Mr. Joffé was nominated for Academy Awards as best director for “The Killing Fields,” about the genocidal war in Cambodia, and “The Mission,” about Jesuit missionaries who try to defend a South American tribe from Portuguese slave traders. But his career has sputtered since, with movies like “The Scarlet Letter” and “Captivity,” a horror movie, earning him nominations for the Golden Raspberry Awards, which honor the worst of the film industry.

Mr. Joffé’s portrayal of Escrivá’s actions during the 1930s is likely to be provocative, especially in Europe. Some historians have accused Escrivá of collaborating with Franco. Mr. Joffé said he concluded after doing extensive research that Escrivá had been eager to avoid doing anything that would jeopardize the church’s position in Spain.

“Josemaría himself left Spain, and basically stayed out, and my sense is that he didn’t agree with and didn’t want to get involved in politics at the time,” he said.

Opus Dei has received tremendous publicity in recent years, most of it negative, from “The Da Vinci Code,” the 2003 novel by Dan Brown, and the 2006 movie based on the book. In both, Opus Dei, which claims more than 80,000 priest and lay members worldwide, is portrayed as a murderous cult whose members flog themselves with whips and wear barbed chains around their thighs.

Some members do practice what they call a mild form of “corporal mortification.” But what has made the group even more an object of suspicion is that some of its members do not readily identify themselves as such, and occupy influential positions in business, politics and other professions.

Heriberto Schoeffer, an independent film producer in Los Angeles and a member of Opus Dei, said he first conceived of a film dramatizing the life of Escrivá after reading a book about his escape over the Pyrenees during the Spanish Civil War. “All I wanted is for people to see a good side of him, because so many bad things are said about him and Opus Dei,” Mr. Schoeffer said.

With financing from a friend who is also an Opus Dei member, Mr. Schoeffer contracted a screenwriter, Barbara Nicolosi, a former nun and conservative Catholic who started a training program for Christians in Hollywood. She said in an interview that it took her two years, and three research trips to Spain, to write the script, an “Indiana Jones adventure story about a guy who was motivated by Jesus.”

Mr. Schoeffer said that he showed the script to Hugh Hudson, the director of “Chariots of Fire,” who thought the screenplay “smelled pro-Franco, so he didn’t want to do it,” and then brought it to Alejandro González Iñárritu, the Mexican director whose films include “Babel” and “21 Grams,” who found it too complicated.

Mr. Joffé also turned it down initially, but he said he reconsidered after he saw video of Escrivá answering a question from a Jewish girl who wanted to convert to Catholicism. Escrivá told her that she should not convert, because it would be disrespectful to her parents. “I thought this was so open-minded,” Mr. Joffé said.

In writing the new script, Mr. Joffé came up with a convoluted plot in which a young journalist discovers that his estranged father has a long-buried connection to Escrivá.

To perform research, Mr. Joffé traveled to South America, Spain and Italy. Mr. Schoeffer, who has since left the project, said they met in Rome with two prominent members of Opus Dei: Joaquín Navarro-Valls, who was the Vatican spokesman under Pope John Paul II, and the Rev. John Wauck, a priest who is a professor of literature and communication of the faith at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, in Rome. (Father Wauck is now the on-set adviser).

The British actor Charlie Cox (“Stardust”) plays Escrivá, and Wes Bentley (“American Beauty”) plays the journalist’s father. The ensemble cast also includesDerek Jacobi and Geraldine Chaplin.

The financing of about $30 million came from about 100 investors, and raising it was a struggle, said Ignacio G. Sancha, the lead producer, a Spanish financier and lawyer who is also a member of Opus Dei.

The film’s backers are not avoiding controversy, and may even be anticipating it. They have hired Paul Lauer, the publicist for Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” another religious epic with a no-name cast and a big-name director, which cashed in on all the attention it generated.

Inside Opus Dei's world headquarters

2009-07-01T09:51:00.001-04:00

El Padre

Inside Opus Dei's world headquarters

By Dr. Robert Moynihan, reporting from Rome

In 2006, when The Da Vinci Code was released as a film, some high Church officials strongly objected to it because it was based on the idea that Jesus married and fathered children and because it depicted Opus Dei, a recognized Prelature within the Catholic Church, as a murderous cult.

Angels & Demons, which came out this spring and also features the Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (played by actor Tom Hanks, photo) and is about Langdon's attempt to help the Holy See thwart a plot by the Illuminati, an ancient secret brotherhood, to kill four cardinals and bomb the Vatican as a new Pope is being elected.

This spring, the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said in a review that Angels & Demons was historically inaccurate and filled with stereotypes, but the paper concluded it was "harmless" entertainment and not a danger to the Church. (The newspaper also praised director Ron Howard's "dynamic direction" and the "magnificent" reconstruction of locations like St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel. Much of the film was shot on sets that painstakingly recreated Church landmarks....). To read, click here.

Mel Gibson, Marriage, Divorce and Christ

2009-04-30T16:01:00.002-04:00

Torn Asunder: Divorced from His message, National Review (Online), April 24, 2009

Mel and Robyn Gibson's recently announced divorce proceedings set the gossip and entertainment pages abuzz. Many wondered how Mel Gibson, the producer of The Passion of the Christ and a professed Catholic (although the church he reportedly attends near Los Angeles is not recognized by the Catholic Church), would reconcile his divorce with his beliefs, which hold that divorce is wrong.Divorce among Catholics is not new, and divorce among movie stars is de rigueur.

What makes the Gibsons' story striking is that they had been able to buck the divorce epidemic for the past 28 years and raise seven children together. Their large family, the length of their marriage, and their apparent determination to live by the teachings of the Catholic Church in the Hollywood stratosphere make them an anomaly. Indeed, even as people try to paint Mel as a hypocrite, many describe the Gibson marriage as extraordinary for its endurance; some even describe it as a success. But if Mel and Robyn truly have been trying to live by the teachings of the Catholic faith, a divorce cannot and never will mean success.

Catholic teachings on marriage are rooted in several things Jesus said, including:

"From the beginning of creation, 'God made man male and female.' For this reason a man may leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and two shall become one. So they are no longer two but one. What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder." Mark 10:6-9

'"Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery." Luke 16:18

These unequivocal pronouncements stunned Jesus' disciples. "The disciples said to Him, 'If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.' " Matthew 19:10.

The early Church's emphasis on Christian marriage echoed what Jesus taught and played a key role in the spread of Christianity, according to renowned religion sociologist (and agnostic) Rodney Stark. In his best-selling book, The Rise of Christianity, Stark argues that Christianity's rapid expansion in the first few centuries A.D. had a lot to do with the countercultural mores of the early Christians regarding marriage, sexual ethics, and the value of human life. Drawing on a variety of historical resources, Stark describes the Mediterranean world at the time of Christ as a society in which promiscuity, prostitution, bisexuality, homosexuality, birth control, infanticide, and abortion were widely practiced and sanctioned. Moreover, a preference for sons at that time led to female infanticide. Marital infidelity was common - when men would acquiesce to marry at all.

According to Stark, the early Church especially attracted female converts precisely because its teachings emphasized the importance of marriage, family, marital fidelity, and chastity, and forbade divorce, artificial birth control (already practiced then), abortion, and infanticide - all practices that objectified the women of those times, making them second-class citizens. Stark argues that early Christian women enjoyed tremendous status, respect, and an improved quality of life compared with their contemporaries. Not surprisingly, Christian families soon began to outpace their counterparts in terms of progeny, and thus proceeded to expand their presence (and values) demographically.

On a practical level, if the Gibsons do divorce, Robyn, as a single mother of the Gibson children, will have few financial concerns other than the difficulties of managing a few hundred million dollars. But their situation is not the norm. Many women and children - and sometimes men - are much more vulnerable to harsh economic consequences and a lower quality of life after divorce. Also, research has shown that children of divorce frequently encounter emotional and educational setbacks.

The Catholic Church teaches that spouses can - and sometimes should - separate in cases of physical and emotional abuse, but, in the eyes of God, the marriage itself remains indissoluble. Its meaning is rooted in God's fidelity to his covenant, especially Christ's permanent union with His Church. Only God can judge the hearts of those facing difficult marital situations, but if we take Him at His word, quitting is not really an option.

- Marie T. Oates is a communications consultant and the lead editor of the book Women of Opus Dei: In Their Own Words (Crossroad Publishing, April 2009)

Holy Week and Easter 2009

2009-04-11T16:10:00.005-04:00

Pope Benedict XVI has taken advantage of these Holy days to speak to us about our shared Christian identity as Catholics. In a world that increasingly tilts toward secularism away from God, we need these words of the Holy Father to help keep Jesus Christ at the center of our lives, informing our choices big and small each day.

Everyone should try to read and absorb the inspiring and insightful words of the Holy Father. Here are links to some of his Holy Week homilies:

Palm Sunday 2009

Holy Thursday - Crism Mass

Holy Thursday - The Lord's Last Supper

Good Friday's Way of the Cross at the Colosseum

Easter Vigil

Easter Sunday

The Problems We Face Stem From a Lack of Personal Responsibility

2009-03-24T16:11:00.003-04:00

As popular sentiment continues to crest in opposition to the AIG bonuses, big financial firms and related players in general, some (like Alan Greenspan) have described our current market meltdown as a cyclical phenomenon. In other words, this large, across-the-board economic crash should be expected to occur every 100 years or so...thus making this crash the equivalent to a person needing to get new fillings every 20 to 30 years -- they just fall apart after a period of time.

Perhaps it's true that such trends can be tracked over time, but why not just call a spade a spade: a number of financial professionals (including government regulators) lacked personal responsibility with respect to practicing appropriate ethics when managing other peoples' money. This lack of personal responsibility translates into negligence at the least and criminality in many, if not most cases. More importantly, it translates into huge financial and job losses for tens of millions of people all over the country, indeed the world.

Given the different accounts emerging (A must see is this segment on PBS's News Hour - Author Traces Demise of Bear Stearns in 'House of Cards'), about our economic melt down and the ensuing mayhem and finger-pointing, it's easy to see that peoples' greed blinded them over time. But at core, these people lacked courage and virtue when it came time to do the right thing. They let themselves get carried along and led many innocent people over the cliff with them. That's why until there is a concerted effort to reinstate ethics and virtue into our financial and business sector, we will not cure what ails our economy, and we certainly will not reinstate peoples' confidence in such a flawed system.

To read some points St. Josemaria wrote about responsibility, click here.

2009-02-21T16:24:00.005-05:00

Having vs. Being

People are reeling from the current economic crisis gripping our nation, indeed the world. They (we) are looking for answers to give us a sense of peace amidst the turmoil. Some of the questions we want to ask include: How do we make things right again? What was the era of prosperity we just experienced? If it was so prosperous, why do we find ourselves so beset by fear, insecurity and confusion now, so shortly after its collapse, its "fall"? How can I find or create opportunity when everyone and everything seems to be closing down, hunkering down? What are the key elements to maintaining a prosperous society? Can our leaders get us back on track?

A number of factors have contributed to our current situation. Some people who should have known better acted irresponsibly out of greed (For more on this, watch CNBC's David Faber's fascinating and informative documentary House of Cards.). And yet, while top financial players (in business and government) may be responsible for the widespread sale of shoddy investment instruments, we cannot ignore that large segments of our population routinely increased their consumption by increasing their debt -- not a healthy habit.

Since our economic system is in collapse, and each one of us plays a role of some sort within our nation's economic and cultural system, we should think about what makes for a healthy economy and how our outlook and behavior can contribute to improving the current situation. I recently came across these words of John Paul II which might provide some new insights around what consumption should mean to a Christian:

"A given culture reveals its overall understanding of life through the choices it makes in production and consumption. It is here that the phenomenon of consumerism arises. In singling out new needs and new means to meet them, one must be guided by a comprehensive picture of the person which respects all the dimensions of his being and which subordinates his material and instinctive dimensions to his interior and spiritual ones. If, on the contrary, a direct appeal is made to human instincts--while ignoring in various ways the reality of the person as intelligent and free--then consumer attitudes and lifestyles can be created which are objectively improper and often damaging to the person's physical and spiritual health. Of itself, an economic system does not possess criteria for correctly distinguishing new and higher forms of satisfying human needs from artificial new needs which hinder the formation of a mature personality. Thus a great deal of educational and cultural work is urgently needed, including the education of consumers in the responsible use of their power of choice, the formation of a strong sense of responsibility among producers and among people in the mass media in particular, as well as the necessary intervention by public authorities...It is not wrong to want to live better; what is wrong is a style of life which is presumed to be better when it is directed towards "having" rather than "being," and which wants to have more, not in order to be more but in order to spend life in enjoyment as an end in itself.[75] It is therefore necessary to create lifestyles in which the quest for truth, beauty, goodness and communion with others for the sake of common growth are the factors which determine consumer choices, savings and investments. In this regard, it is not a matter of the duty of charity alone, that is, the duty to give from one's "abundance," and sometimes even out of one's needs, in order to provide what is essential for the life of a poor person. I am referring to the fact that even the decision to invest in one place rather than another, in one productive sector rather than another, is always a moral and cultural choice. Given the utter necessity of certain economic conditions and of political stability, the decision to invest, that is, to offer people an opportunity to make good use of their own labor, is also determined by an attitude of human sympathy and trust in Providence, which reveal the human quality of the person making such decisions." CENTESIMUS ANNUS (On the Hundredth Anniversary of Rerum Novarum), #36 Pope John Paul II (May 1991)

First Review of Soon-to-be Released Book - Women of Opus Dei: In Their Own Words

2009-02-19T17:18:00.001-05:00

From Publishers Weekly - February 2, 2009

Women of Opus Dei: In Their Own Words Edited by M.T. Oates, Linda Ruf and Jenny Driver. Crossroad, $24.95 paper (224p) ISBN 978-0-8245-2425-8

The Catholic group Opus Dei (Latin for “work of God”) emerges in this compact collection of essays and interviews as an entity that gives its female members a deep sense of purpose amid ordinary and extraordinary circumstances. Whether they are stay-at-home mothers or professionals in academia and business, these women tell of lives changed by their faith and what they commonly refer to as “the Work.” Opus Dei members, according to founder St. Josemaría Escrivá, aspire to be “contemplative souls in the midst of the world who try to convert their work into prayer.” They do this through offering their work to Christ and following a spiritual regimen of daily prayer and regular theological development programs. Excerpts from Escrivá's writings and an explanation of the group's structure help fill out the selected narratives. Readers looking for the kind of intrigue found in The Da Vinci Code's treatment of this group won't find it here, but they will get an honest appraisal from women who know Opus Dei from the inside out. (Apr.)

Abusing my religion - An op-ed appeared in New York's Daily News on May 21, 2006

2006-05-21T21:11:00.000-04:00

You probably wouldn't have known me in the first place if you saw me walking down a New York City street. But now, because of "Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown and the movie's director Ron Howard, I have been rendered even more obscure.

You see, I am a female member of Opus Dei. Not only does the book describe me as "brainwashed," it further makes me invisible within my organization and subservient to men.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It's hard to know what motivated Brown to pick on us, but it's time to set the record straight about some of his many gaffes.

To start, the book and movie depict a Catholic organization run by a cadre of powerful monks and bishops. The truth about Opus Dei: Only a small minority of our members are clergy, and there are no monks. Lay men and women are vital and active members of our institution.

In the "Da Vinci Code," women's emancipation seems to mean nothing but serving as the child-bearer, either to a nondivine Jesus Christ or to some other man. We are the weaker sex and seem not to care. Reality: Opus Dei was the first institution within the Catholic Church in which both lay men and lay women have the same vocation, the same rights and duties and receive the same in-depth theological and philosophical training.

Though women (and men) in Opus Dei strive to be thoroughly dedicated to God, we wear no habits nor take any vows. We try as much as possible to blend in, to be a quiet Christian presence wherever we work and live.

Women participate in the collegial governing of Opus Dei at every level - international, national and local.

Of course, the most serious lies and blasphemy in this book and movie aren't about ordinary men or women. They're about Jesus Christ Himself.

History and the Catholic Church confirm for me that Jesus Christ has both a human and divine nature, and that He suffered, died and was resurrected from the dead on behalf of all of us, who were and are in need of redemption. In respected historical and theological circles, no one doubts the Crucifixion.

But according to Brown, Jesus' death on the cross never happened. It was a lie.

This cartoon story vilifies my religion and effectively casts me, a female adherent to it, as a stooge. It will sell millions of dollars in tickets and popcorn.

But the truth is stronger than slander. Catholicism is a faith of love. And women in Opus Dei work as lawyers, judges, teachers, doctors, professors, chefs, homemakers, artists, engineers, clerks, hairdressers, college presidents, writers, etc. For us, it's about doing one's work - whatever it may be - well and with love.

Mary Elise Eckman is the President of the Rosemoor Foundation and also heads up Opus Dei's U.S. programs for women.

The Teachings of St. Josemaria Escriva in an African Context by Margaret Ogola, M.D. of Kenya

2005-04-24T21:14:00.000-04:00

An article by noted Kenyan author Margaret Ogola on the relevance of St. Josemaria´s teachings to Africa.

Published originally on www.stjosemariaescriva.info

Love is perennial and youthful. So is this continent, 60% of whose population are under the age of twenty-five. The momentum of the youthfulness of the peoples of Africa will necessarily carry this continent beyond it's current woes and upheavals to the realization of a truly African dream where people will take responsibility for their homeland and cease to expect help from where none is forthcoming.

There are many things which move me deeply in the teachings of Saint Josemaría Escrivá, but perhaps the one that has had the greatest impact on my life, my outlook, my hopes, is the concept that every baptized person is expected to take full responsibility for the attainment of full Christian and social maturity. There are no second-class citizens in the world-view of the founder of Opus Dei. All are called to struggle for sanctity right where they are — sanctity being walking in friendship with God in the highways and alleyways of this world wherever his children are to be found — working, suffering, living.

“Heroism, sanctity, daring, require a constant spiritual preparation. You can only give to others what you already have. And in order to give God to them, you yourself need to get to know him, to live his Life, to serve him.” (The Forge, no. 78). This ringing call is not for a few specially gifted or set apart people, but amazingly enough it is for all. I truly found it amazing that anyone could take the lay faithful so seriously. This attitude does cut dependency at the knees. One has no choice but to stand up and be counted.

Africans too, and in particular, are not second-class citizens of the world doomed to be dependent on others for all manner of handouts. Help yes, as one brother gives to another who happens to have fallen into difficulties — culpable or otherwise — looking him straight in the eye, as a brother who stands on an equal but firmer footing, should. In this regard, I have great doubts regarding the form of aid now being doled out to Africa by the monetary institutions and governments of the west and in particular through the state. There is something disturbingly pernicious about a type of aid that leaves an entire continent not only inescapably indebted, but also totally dependent. But help yes — as one brother gives to another.

One tends to forget, perhaps because of the rapid adaptability of Africans, that only barely one hundred years ago, this continent was in the early iron-age. Within this short period of time we have had to adopt systems of thought and governance that others have had hundreds or even thousands of years to experiment with. What's more, we have had to do it in their languages. Thereby we have gained and lost at the same time. In having no choice but to learn and be facile in other languages we have had the great benefit of looking into the minds of others and into the minds of their great thinkers and have greatly benefited. But often these others have felt no great need to learn our languages and thus be in a position to look into our souls to truly understand why we laugh when we laugh and why we weep when we weep. This is diminishing, for in every language is coded generation upon generation of human aspiration and endeavour. No wonder some great attempts to assist have foundered.

In any case the African loves to learn and this longing finds powerful echo in the words of Bl. Josemaría. “Study. Study in earnest. If you are to be salt and light, you need knowledge and capability. Or do you imagine that an idle and lazy life will entitle you to receive infused knowledge?” (The Way, no. 340). Indeed Josemaría Escrivá urges all his children to strive to have the doctrine of theologians and the piety of little children. In short, he does not encourage the kind of easy formulae for rapid salvation that some look for — a formalistic or pietistic religion where attendance without commitment or emotions without thought is the order of the day. Rather he urges a deep interior transformation with a sportsmanlike approach to the interior life — never remaining down after a fall. “Another fall... and what a fall! Despair? No! Humble yourself and through Mary, your Mother, have recourse to the merciful love of Jesus. A miserere — "have mercy on me" — and lift up your heart! And now, begin again.” (The Way, no. 711). Also “Tackling serious matters with a sporting spirit gives very good results. Perhaps I have lost several games? Very well, but — if I persevere — in the end I shall win. ”( Furrow, no. 169). And Africans are nothing if not sportsmen and women.

The family is central to the being of the peoples of Africa. It is not only a social safety net for almost everyone, it is also a source of deep identity — a revelation of who one really is. The loss of family values harms every group of people, but it has been catastrophic for Africans. Indeed it is this loss that has opened doors to the Aids pandemic, which in Africa seems to acquire an increase in virulence and ferocity not seen elsewhere. Josemaría Escrivá stands out because of his single-minded defense of the family, of the sanctity of marriage and of the dignity of fruitful love. “Do you laugh because I tell you that you have a "vocation to marriage"? Well, you have just that — a vocation. Commend yourself to St. Raphael that he may keep you pure, as he did Tobias, until the end of the way.” (The Way, no. 27). Also: “In national life there are two things which are really essential: the laws concerning marriage and the laws to do with education. In these areas God's sons have to stand firm and fight with toughness and fairness, for the sake of all mankind.” (The Forge, no. 104).

Finally, the African woman carries heavy burdens both figuratively and actually, but her dependability is phenomenal. In the midst the swirling chaos of day-to-day living she holds the family together with nothing more substantial than the strength of her love. And to her the new saint has this to say: “Woman is stronger than man and more faithful in the hour of trial: Mary Magdalene and Mary Cleophas and Salome. With a group of valiant women like these, closely united to our sorrowful Mother, what work for souls could be done in the world!” (The Way, no. 982).

The teachings of Josemaría Escrivá resonate with the perennial youthfulness of love, to which Africa, amidst the crises and problems besetting her, responds. “These world crises -the founder of Opus Dei states quite calmly- are crises of saints.” (The Way, no. 301)

Margaret Ogola, M.D. is Medical Director of the Family Life Association of Kenya and for the Cottolenga Hospice for HIV-positive orphans. She and her husband, George, have four children. She is also an award winning author of The River and the Source (a novel) and Education in Human Love.

Video Profiles/Interviews of Different Women in Opus Dei

2005-03-20T21:19:00.000-05:00

Special On-line Video Testimonials of Women who speak about their personal experience with Opus Dei

Elizabeth Heil, Columbia University Graduate Student

Virginia Hughes, New Jersey Lawyer, Wife and Mother

Pat Anderson, Opus Dei US HR Director

Andrea Feehery, Hospitality industry professional, staff member of Shellbourne Conference Center, Valparaiso, IN discusses her vocation as a numerary assistant

Angela Fortunato, Public Health Administrator in Pittsburgh, PA discusses her vocation as a numerary member of Opus Dei

Love, Marriage, and the Teachings of St. Josemaria Escriva by Mary Brennan

2005-02-20T21:22:00.000-05:00

No one would deny that the environment in which young people today fall in love and feel called to commit themselves to each other in marriage is a very difficult one indeed. Young people today have grown up in the wake of the sexual revolution that has wreaked havoc on individuals and families — on each of them as individuals and on their own families. Many of them have experienced the divorce of their parents. The great majority of them have been “sexually active” from a very young age, encouraged by a culture that worships free sexual expression, and doctors and schools that casually distribute contraceptives to keep them “safe.” For many this has meant that their heart has been broken numerous times as these immature, uncommitted relationships have ultimately come to an end. Many have chosen to live together before marriage, believing that they are unready for the commitment of marriage, and unsure about their ability to live up to the responsibilities that marriage entails. Many fear that their future marriage will end in misery and divorce, as they have seen so many other marriages end.

It is precisely this landscape that silently cries out for some good news. Young people today yearn to learn the truth about themselves, those they love, and even God. They are open to learning about commitment, faithfulness, sacrifice, and purity. They long for the hope that their love for each other can last a lifetime. My husband and I have been privileged to serve these couples as they come to the Church for marriage preparation. It is a blessing for us to share with them that their love for each other is holy — that God loves their love for one another. We are honored to be able to share with them that their bodies also are holy, and that they are deserving of the very best, no matter what their background or their past.

Married for twenty years now, my husband David and I have been involved in marriage preparation programs since we were newlyweds. (The priest who witnessed our marriage wisely saw that if we were active in the Church, we would be more likely to continue to grow in our faith, and would have a stronger marriage.) All couples who come to the Catholic Church for marriage are required to take a marriage preparation course, an approach that acknowledges the difficulties that couples face, and seeks to help them discern if the decision to marry this person is a good one, and give them the skills and knowledge that will help them navigate the inevitable daily tensions, stresses, and even crises.

About five years ago now, David and I volunteered to direct the marriage preparation program at our parish, St. Mary’s in Franklin, Massachusetts. We have had the pleasure of designing a program and getting others involved in it, great married couples and priests who have been incredibly generous and hard working. Our program consists of three sessions, and we offer it twice a year. Over the past five years, we have had the joy of spending time with about 150 engaged couples, couples who typically exude love and expectation. We have put time into this work because we believe that it makes a difference for the engaged couples, but it has immeasurably enriched our own relationship as well, as twice a year we immerse ourselves in how best to cultivate and strengthen married love.

The program we have designed is based on the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love. “There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love.” ( St. Paul ) An important part of the program is spent teaching the couples, as most have not been practicing their faith, what the Church teaches on marriage, the sacraments, and the purpose and meaning of human sexuality. We have talks on making good use of the engagement period, human virtues, communication, finances, intimacy, children, extended family, and natural family planning. Though the engaged couples come to us nervous and anxious as to what to expect, the overwhelming majority tell us that the experience has been rewarding and worthwhile.

The engaged couples are interested in learning about their faith, something most of them have not thought about for a while. They enjoy hearing from the married couples who share their experiences, and appreciate learning healthy ways to communicate. We emphasize practicing human virtues, because as my husband says, “Before marriage it’s all about choosing the right person. After marriage, it’s all about being the right person.” The session on human sexuality seeks to challenge them in a nonjudgmental way, and the vast majority are open to hearing what the Church has to say about living purity before and during marriage, the true meaning of the sexual act, and the gift of children, as well as premarital sex, living together before marriage, and contraception and sterilization. They are open because, as Pope John Paul II says in his book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope: “After all, young people are always searching for the beauty in love. They want their love to be beautiful. If they give in to weakness…in the depth of their hearts they still desire a beautiful and pure love.”

To be truthful, there have been moments when facing a group of blank faces when we might have been afraid — afraid of negative reactions, afraid of opposing the status quo — but we have been strengthened, enriched, and even spurred on, by the beautiful teachings of St. Josemaria Escriva, the founder of Opus Dei. My husband and I were introduced to the writings of this saint, and the spirit of Opus Dei, when we met a woman who is now a good friend of ours. At the time we had been married not quite ten years, and had the usual difficulties, mostly arising out of our fears. Fears regarding finances, our stubborn faults, and fears of what troubles the future might bring. What this new friend and her lively family — who are devoted to St. Josemaria and live his spirit — what they introduced us to was family life lived with joy, not fear. A family where each new child is welcomed and cherished, not feared and avoided. A cheerful, warm, and bright home. A husband and wife unreservedly devoted to each other and to their children. Witnessing their happiness had a profound effect on us.

As we learned more about Opus Dei, we saw how the spirit of Opus Dei had shaped their lives. St. Josemaria always encouraged spouses to be cheerful and affectionate with one another. He spoke about how we can keep our love young by doing the small things of everyday life with hearts full of love for each other. St. Josemaria taught that we should not be afraid to sacrifice for the good of the other, that children are a gift from God, and that to be generous in accepting children is always a blessing. He talked about making our homes bright, cheerful, happy places, and to be cheerful for others, even when we don’t feel so cheerful inside. St. Josemaria encouraged all people to have what he called a “sporting spirit,” to face difficulties with energy and enthusiasm. He emphasized that we all need to “begin again” whenever we find that we have fallen into old bad habits — to just pick ourselves up and begin again, as a little child would do, without looking back. He taught that we are all called to be saints, and that by struggling against our faults and uniting ourselves to God we can sanctify ourselves, our families, and the world around us.

This spirit, which has brought so much joy and peace to our family, animates our work with young couples. About helping others to integrate their faith more deeply into their everyday lives, St. Josemaria said: “be assured that it is a matter of making people happy, very happy.” My husband and I are convinced that the truths about man and woman and God, about their holy love for one another, and the beautiful spirit of Opus Dei, can help couples to be happy — very, very, happy. It is my hope that everyone will see the need to share the good news of Christ’s transforming love with all young people today, because they are deserving of the very best that we have to offer. As St. Josemaria wrote in his book The Way: “Don’t let your life by sterile. Be useful. Blaze a trail. Shine forth with the light of your faith and of your love.” The blessings that we each have received should beckon us to give generously of ourselves in the service of fair, beautiful, and lasting love.

Mary and her husband David live in Franklin , Massachusetts with their six children. They are members of the Archdiocesan Office of Marriage Ministries Advisory Board.

My Summer at Rosedale By Elizabeth Cheffers

2004-09-15T21:28:00.000-04:00

I am of an idealistic turn of mind; perhaps I might even rightly be classified as a helpless romantic. I won’t try and deny it. My friends and family don’t even mention the words “fairy tale” around me because they know I will go off on one of my speeches about how important good children’s literature is. My life’s ambition is to be an English teacher, and so when I heard about a program run by Opus Dei called Rosedale I signed up without a moment’s hesitation.

Rosedale is the name of an all girls educational program in the South Bronx which has as its main focus a summer academic achievement program for girls in fifth through eighth grade. For five weeks in the summer they accept eighty girls into the program and give them classes in reading, writing, math, drama, cultural geography and character. I was asked to teach the writing class, and was naturally thrilled. And although they explained exactly what our responsibilities were going to be before we arrived, I’ll admit I had no idea of what that actually meant.

I think it hit me when we were decorating our classrooms before the first day of classes. I was hanging up posters of the various parts of speech and humming to myself when I saw the teacher’s desk out of the corner of my eye all alone in front of the blackboard. “Wait a minute”, I thought. “That’s my desk!” I’m eighteen years old and have ten younger siblings, so I thought I understood what responsibility was before I signed up for Rosedale, but when I saw that desk I suddenly realized what a huge responsibility it was to teach these girls. Each of the teachers teaches six classes a day, takes the girls to daily mass, and is assigned seven girls to mentor weekly. That first day in the classroom and in the days that followed I realized that I was being asked for more than I could give.

Once I realized this, however, teaching became much simpler. I had been receiving formation through Opus Dei since I was in high school and I knew, at least in my mind, that God asks all of us to give more than we have so that we can realize that without Him we can do nothing. Saint Josemaria’s words in The Way “Don’t forget, silly child, that love has made you almighty” helped me to be able to look at Him and laugh when I stumbled in class and said the wrong thing or when I lost my temper with a particularly difficult girl. I lived those five weeks relying completely on the grace of God to keep me from giving up on myself. I came to understand in a very real way the meaning of Saint Josemaria’s well known phrase, “ the glorious freedom of the children of God”. To be a contemplative, I understood a little better, to be completely free in the midst of a hostile world, is as simple as being aware of yourself as a child in her father’s presence.

Of course I must admit that although I had moments when I came to understand better the grace of God I also had moments when I turned it down and fell apart. By the sixth class of the day all I wanted to do was collapse somewhere and throw the Easy Grammar book out the window. I felt discouraged and depressed when I came to know the girls better and some of the horrible circumstances they were living in. I felt that as an adult I had a responsibility to change something, to try to make it better, but I couldn’t. One of the girls I ate lunch with lived in the projects and one day mentioned that the night before she and her mother had stood outside their building for hours while the police tried to take away a sniper who was hiding inside, going from apartment to apartment. She took a bite of her sandwich and confided in me that it made her upset to see the needles and vomit in the elevator and lobby, but there wasn’t anywhere else to go. I almost thought I was going to be sick when I thought of all I take for granted.

Of course there were the good moments too. One day one of my younger girls shyly handed me a love poem she had written to me while I was correcting her paper. We took the girls on excursions every Friday, and I’ll never forget the smiles on some of their faces when they went swimming at a beach for the first time. The best advice that the veterans of the program gave to the teachers when we came was not to get too worried about educational philosophies and our curriculum, but to look at each girl individually and think and pray about what they needed from us. The best moments were when I would try to make a special effort to be gentle with a particularly shy or sad girl and she would give me a timid smile that would break your heart with the trust written there.

With such an intense workday all of the teachers needed to be able to go somewhere afterward and relax. We were all living in a center of Opus Dei in New Rochelle that was a true home to all of us. The women living there welcomed us into their home, fed us, cleaned up after us, made sure a snack was waiting for us when we got home and offered up their work for ours. This sense of family and belonging helped all of us to be happy even though we were all far away from home. They offered us the opportunity to receive the sacraments daily, to take classes to improve our teaching skills and most importantly they offered us the opportunity to live with Jesus, present in the chapel.

Perhaps the most memorable part of Rosedale was, at least for me, the friends I made there. The teachers all rely on each other for help, consolation and enthusiasm. We would give ourselves a pep talk in the van riding to school cheering, “Who’s in charge? We are! We are! Who knows more? We do! We do!” At night or on weekends we would go into New York City and see the sites ( the free ones). Playing tag in the pouring rain, drinking way too much iced coffee and sometimes just putting my head in my friends’ laps and wailing at the end of a long day are my most treasured memories.

In all, Rosedale was not just a traditional service project, “a good experience”. It taught me how much I have to learn and how much I have to give. It made me want to teach for the rest of my life. More than that though, the spirit of Opus Dei that sustains it inspired me to want to be a saint, no matter what I do. My favorite quote of Saint Josemaria’s sums it up exactly, “ Dream, and your dreams will fall short.”

Trainee Tells of her Time at ShellbourneTraining Program by Helen Keefe

2004-08-24T21:24:00.000-04:00

I came to the Training Program at Shellbourne expecting something similar to boot camp. Everyone I talked to seemed to emphasize the workload without mentioning anything fun related. So on the plane ride from Boston , I prepared myself for the worst, praying that I would make it through. Little did I know of the life changing experience I was about to encounter.

On arriving at the airport in Chicago , I met the five other girls who were doing the program with me: one from California , one from Spain , and three from Wisconsin . They all exceeded my age but I quickly got to know them. A regular day for us consisted of early Mass, set times for cleaning and working in the departments, a talk on a virtue or a special topic (i.e. time management, napkin folding, etc.), some free time in the afternoon, the rosary, and finally the get-together at night. There were four departments- the laundry, the pantry, and the two sides of the kitchen: the hot side and the cold side. On certain days we would go on excursions to different places – e.g., Chicago, the dunes of Lake Michigan - in which we got to see a little of the splendor of the Midwest. We girls in the program were considered part of the Administration of Shellbourne for our brief three week stay.

After spending three weeks in the center, I came to know a lot about the spirit of Opus Dei as lived by the women in the Administration. I realized that those women are the mothers of the Work. They make Shellbourne a home with such motherly care, allowing the people who come to focus better on their study for their course or pray more effectively without distractions while on retreat. The Administration treats everyone who comes to Shellbourne the same way because every human being has dignity as a child of God. A mother’s work in the home is dignified because she is called by God to do it well -- the Administration has the same underlying spirit. They do their work as professionals -- each meal is consistently excellent, the laundry always ironed and folded neatly, and the rooms are constantly well kept. It is by no means easy -- there is a lot of manual labor to do. However, because the work is physical, and not necessarily mind engaging, it is possible to do the work and carry on a conversation with God at the same time. I realized how much prayer the women on the Administration do, because they can and because all the members of the Work need it in order to carry out their apostolate. I also learned how big the field of hospitality service really is -- how much there is to learn. One basic thing I picked up is that a lot of little things make a big difference. As St. Josemarma said, “A little act, done for love, is worth so much!”(The Way 814)

What did I love best about Shellbourne? I liked so many things, it is hard to say. But one major thing that sticks out in my memory was the atmosphere at Shellbourne -- it is very much like a family. When we worked together, we were a team, but during free time and get-togethers, I felt very much at home with everyone. I wasn’t homesick for a minute, though it was the longest time I had ever spent away from home. Another thing I enjoyed was getting to know the other girls on the program. We laughed so much together that even now when something reminds me of something we found funny, I still laugh about it! I also loved the actual work itself. I found that I love doing household work and how much I can improve in it -- it is really an art in a lot of aspects.

I would love to spend another summer at Shellbourne or at another conference center. I encourage all high school girls to think about doing the program. You learn something about everything; I use the techniques I learned at Shellbourne probably everyday. Plus, the people that I worked with at Shellbourne are incredible. It was summer experience that I will never forget!

Life at Bayridge - Q and A with Allison Marie Elliott

2003-03-24T21:30:00.000-05:00

A 24 year-old graduate student who shares her experience with her university education and life at Bayridge (Bayridge has served women undergraduate and graduate students in Boston for over 40 years. It has received a number of grants from Rosemoor over the years)

Where are you from originally?

I was born in Rochester, New York but grew up in Toronto, Canada and The Woodlands, Texas

What graduate program are you in? Why? How would you like to harness your graduate studies in the professional world?

I completed a Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing at Emerson. I chose the program at Emerson because it combined writing and literature courses with courses in the publishing field. The MFA is a terminal degree for those wishing to teach writing at the college level, but you also need to be published. Hopefully I can work in some aspect of the publishing industry while I continue writing on my own. I may eventually go back to school for a PhD in English literature.

Where did you do your undergraduate studies? What was your major?

I was an English/Creative Writing major at Emory University in Atlanta.

Has college and graduate school been what you thought they would be when you were in high school? What did you think your university experience would be like when you were a high school student? Do you have any regrets about the way you pursued your universities studies, i.e. wish you had selected different schools to attend, different majors, different professors, etc?

I can't say I enjoyed high school very much. I placed a great deal of hope in my college experience and I was disappointed . Looking back, I think my idea of college was probably much too idealistic. I assumed it would be very different from high-school, that everyone would be interested in discussing the Big Ideas and the Great Books, etc. etc. If I had to do it over again I think I would have chosen a smaller liberal arts school, something like St. John's. At the time I was applying to colleges

I didn't know much about those schools. I thought a private university with a good reputation was what I was looking for, but it seemed like the students there saw it as a step towards something else--law school or medical school--or else as a break before entering the real world. Ideally, I think college should be a kind of break from the real world, in order to pursue knowledge. The curriculum requirements at Emory were a little random, though. They didn't make up a cohesive whole. I don't completely regret my college choice because I made some good friends and there were a few teachers and a few classes that I will never forget. Basically I learned that I had a lot more to learn.

What would you advise a young high school woman to do to prepare well to make the most of her university years?

I would say to figure out what she wants from those years. My sister goes to a big state school and she loves it. But she went in knowing that she wanted to be a history teacher. I think at a state school you have less room to explore different areas. It's hard to change majors should you decide on another track. I think I put too much emphasis on going to a "name" school" when I was deciding. It's more important to find a good fit.

Do you have any hobbies or particular interests?

Mainly reading. My father often talks about the importance of finding a "lifetime sport", but I have yet to find mine.

How long have you lived at Bayridge?

This will be my third year.

How did you find out about Bayridge?

There was a link to Bayridge on the off-campus housing website for Emerson.

How has living at Bayridge been different from your living situation (s) as an undergraduate?

Much better. The whole environment at Bayridge is much more conducive to serious study and to a general sense of geniality. As an undergrad, my freshman hall was fairly tame, yet we didn't really have "quiet hours" that were enforced. I also think single-sex housing makes a big difference. You don't have to worry about boys on your floor when you want to take a shower. I find that the rules at Bayridge, while some people may find them trying, they also tend to weed out those not interested in a fairly studious environment. I'm consistently impressed with the highly accomplished women of integrity that I meet at Bayridge.

What are the things you like best about Bayridge?

Well, as I've said, I like the residents. I think Bayridge has true diversity in that the women here are involved in so many different things. I don't think you would find that even in a college dorm. Some women are Berklee students, some are in the conservatories. We have dental students, med students, journalism students. The women here are purposeful.

They seem to have it pretty together. It's inspiring to be around them.

In addition to the company, the staff is excellent. They don't seem or behave like staff. Netty and Irene are like den mothers, they genuinely care about the residents. It's a very family-like atmosphere. The accommodations and food are also excellent. Also, as a Catholic it's very nice to have a chapel right here and to be able to take advantage to the spiritual formation offered.

What are the things you like least about Bayridge?

Hmmm. I think because I've lived in a lot of different housing situations, I might appreciate it more than someone who has less to compare it to. We do have a lot of freedom despite the rules. It keeps getting more expensive . . .

Do you think that having lived at Bayridge will benefit you as you go forward in life? And if so, how and why?

I think it has already benefited me a great deal. Before I came to Bayridge, I had worked and lived at home for a year. During the last years of college I had moved off campus with friends and had stopped going to mass. My formation up to then had been so little that I didn't think that was a such a bad thing. I didn't think of myself as less of a Catholic.

But when I lived at home, I went to mass regularly again and I read a lot that year so when I came to Bayridge I was ready to really appreciate the spiritual activities. It helped to solidify the things I had been thinking about and greatly helped fill the gaps in my formation, which are still numerous. I think it was particularly helpful for me in the program I was in. My graduate program didn't really provide much by way of a community.

Also, I won't say that my teachers and fellow students were openly hostile to Christianity, but it definitely came across as an antiquated idea whose time had passed. And Christian values are definitely not the most common in the contemporary publishing and literary world. At times I felt I was shuttling between two different planets--Bayridge and Emerson. But living at Bayridge helped keep me grounded and I don't know how I would have handled my graduate experience otherwise.

Bayridge has a spiritual dynamic to it; how does that work and what has been your impression of that?

Personally, the spiritual dynamic at Bayridge has been very important to me. I think it's handled very well at Bayridge. I can say for myself and from what I've seen with other people, the staff does not approach people and suggest that they do this or that program. They announce things like meditations and days of recollection so that people know about them and are always ready and willing to answer questions about Christianity in general or the Catholic faith in particular. But again, they respond to inquiries. I think the residents who are not Catholic benefit from the general atmosphere, which is one where morality and values are taken seriously.

I think it's especially important for young women who may have never been away from home before and are just now being confronted with new ideas and complicated situations. If I was a parent sending my child away to school, I would appreciate this aspect a great deal. College can be very confusing, especially when your teachers' values are at odds with the ones your parents gave you.

What do you think gives a person a sense of her meaning and purpose in life?

I think people feel purpose when they feel connected to something bigger than themselves, when they feel that they are valuable in themselves yet part of a whole, a whole they must contribute to in some way.

There's a big emphasis today on finding your personal destiny and following your dreams, but I think those pursuits can also become empty if they aren't part of a grander scheme.

The Incarnational Vision of St. Josemaria by Professor Laura Garcia

2002-11-16T21:31:00.000-05:00

I. Sacramental View Of Human Life And Work

Material reality, the visible world around us, is not only created by God but also ordered to God. The One who is Truth and Beauty and Goodness Itself is the end of all things. They exist to reveal and to glorify him. As the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.” Beyond this feature of all finite things, that they are created to reveal and glorify God, Christians know that God has united himself with the material world in taking on a human nature. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us . . . and we beheld his glory” (St. John 1:14). We saw it with our own eyes, the disciple tells us.

One of the great contributions of St. Josemaria to theological reflection comes from a deep and sustained meditation on the humanity of Jesus Christ. If we had any doubts about the value and dignity of ordinary, everyday activities and relationships, focusing on the life of Jesus can transform our view of these things. Whereas we are so often inclined to think that our work, our errands, our duties towards family and friends are major obstacles to deepening our spiritual life, St. Josemaria reminds us that these must be the very material of our growth in holiness. If our vocation is in the world, we don’t have some other life to give to God. We only have the one we’re living, complete with all of its big or trivial cares and concerns, successes and failures, joys and sorrows. Even the most apparently mundane item on our list of things to do can bear spiritual fruit in our lives and the lives of others.

Consider the life of Jesus. He spent 30 years in an obscure town, enjoying his family and relatives and friends, learning the prayers his mother taught him, going to school, attending weddings and funerals, helping to run a carpentry business. As Josemaria puts it, “Nothing is foreign to Christ’s care. . . . We cannot say that there are things–good, noble, or indifferent–which are exclusively worldly. This cannot be, after the Word of God has lived among the children of men, felt hunger and thirst, worked with his hands, experienced friendship and obedience and suffering and death.” (Christ is Passing By, 112)

The Acting Person

We can go a bit deeper into this theme by asking what it is that gives our actions their value. Pope John Paul II in his philosophical work The Acting Person argues that any freely chosen action has two effects: one is an external effect on the world outside of the agent, but one is an internal effect on the person who acts. In shaping the world, we are also shaping ourselves, and selves are more important than things. Taking these two dimensions of human acts in reverse order, let us consider first the way in which we form our character through work. This task is mainly a matter of the input to our actions–the attitude, effort, perseverance, wholeheartedness, and so on with which we do them. But beyond this, if we see our work as fulfilling the will of God for us at this moment, and so put ourselves into it out of love for him, as an offering, uniting it with the actions of Jesus, the value of that work increases to infinity. It becomes, in effect, an extension of the incarnation, of the human life of our Lord, and participates in the value of his actions who is Son of Man and Son of God.

The external effect of our actions is the more obvious one, since we are always forming the world through work. Some of our actions affect persons directly, while others do so only indirectly. When an act is directed toward another person, we must always bear in mind what the Holy Father calls the personalist norm: Persons are always to be loved for their own sake; they are never to be treated as means to an end, even a good end. It is easy to think we are living by this norm without reflecting very deeply on the actual persons who are the recipients of most of our actions–those closest to us. It goes against the grain for us to remember that, like our Lord, we have come not to be served but to serve–indeed, to spend our lives serving others for his sake.

When an act is not explicitly directed in some way toward persons, we cannot assume that it has no significance for persons. Indeed, all work, all actions, ultimately affect persons in one way or another, and this both gives them a deeper motivation and guides the way in which they are carried out. We will avoid much personal frustration and ungrounded criticism of others if we bear in mind that God does not judge actions by their measurable effects but rather by the love with which we do them.

II. MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE

This has all been rather abstract, but we cannot live it in the abstract. Rather, we bring it to life in our unique circumstances, with our own parents, spouses, children, friends, colleagues–our own list of things to do. St. Josemaria assures us that “Loving souls for God’s sake will make us love everyone: understanding, excusing, forgiving all. We should have a love that can cover the multitude of failings contrived by human wretchedness. We have to have a wonderful charity . . . defending the truth, without hurting anyone.” (Forge 559) This may sound easy, but in fact it calls for a lifelong personal training program. First we need to practice forgiveness, beginning with the faults and failings of those close to us, the offenses (real or imagined) that cause us the most pain. A priest of Opus Dei here in Boston, Fr. Salvador Ferigle, since gone to his reward, had a memorable way of expressing the second part of Josemaria’s point in this passage. “Truth and charity,” he would say, “charity and truth; but never one at the expense of the other.” Our relationships will be transformed if we make this our goal.

Marriage

We are used to hearing that marriage is a vocation, one way of dedicating our lives to God, but we don’t always think very personally about what this means. If anything, just as in the case of work, we may be tempted to think that the demands of marriage and family are major obstacles to our holiness or to deepening our interior life. We could be the picture of patience if only the spouse and the children would see the wisdom of all our suggestions. In fact, just the opposite is true. Our lives are spent in family relationships and friendships of many kinds, and these must be the very material of our growth in holiness and likeness to Christ. Most of the changes required for our spiritual progress are not going to be changes in others. Early in our marriage, one of our married friends, a father of six children, told my husband, “Remember that marriage is a school of virtue.” Whether we’re taking graduate courses or repeating the courses we took last year, the point is to persevere.

A vocation from God is never to “marriage-in-general” or “marriedness”–rather it is to give ourselves exclusively and unconditionally to this man or this woman. Unconditional giving does not mean just that when we get to the end of our rope, we should tie a knot and hang on (though we should definitely hang on!). We are called to make the good of the other, the beloved, our own good. Christ is our model in this as in all things, and we are called to the same humility, mercy, selflessness, and understanding that he showed to others (and that he shows to us).

Obviously we cannot accomplish all this on our own. This reality was much on the heart of St. Josemaria and contributed greatly to the inspiration for the beginnings of Opus Dei. Ordinary Christians need extraordinary graces if they are to live their vocation well. We can only live the life of Christ by uniting ourselves to him. In a homily entitled “Getting to Know God,” Josemaria offers this advice: “Try to commit yourself to a plan of life [a plan for your interior life], and to keep to it: a few minutes of mental prayer, Holy Mass–daily, if you can manage it–and frequent Communion; regular recourse to the Holy Sacrament of Forgiveness–even though your consciences do not accuse you of mortal sin; getting to know Jesus in the tabernacle; praying and contemplating the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, and so many other marvelous devotions you know or can learn.” (Friends of God, 149)

Some might be tempted to reply at this point: “Get real! These are basically luxury items in the Christian life. They’re great if you have extra time on your hands–if you’re sick for a long time, or retired--or if you’re just naturally pious. But most people can’t afford them. We just have too much to do already.” Americans find this attitude very natural, I think; we believe in cramming every minute of the day with activity. If we’re parents, we’re tempted to schedule every minute of the children’s day too. This relentless ‘busy-ness’ can blind us to the truth about our lives. Contact with Christ is food for our souls and there is no substitute. Of course we can live without cultivating Christ’s presence in our lives, just as we can live on a diet of junk food, but we cannot live our vocation well without him. Moreover, no one else can take our place in this face-to-face meeting with our Lord. We cannot just hang around holy people hoping it will be contagious. We need to hear for ourselves the voice of our Father God, “This is my son, the Beloved. . . . This is my daughter, the Beloved.”

Universal Vocation

Marriage is only one way of living the universal vocation of every Christian, indeed of every person–a total gift of oneself to God who is Love. One can give oneself to God in other ways too, but each of these involve a gift of self to others as well. For married persons, giving oneself to God is realized in and through giving oneself to one’s spouse. There is no either/or here; it’s not a matter of choosing one or the other. Rather, the vocation to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength is one with the vocation to love this man, this woman, with a love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things–a love that never fails.

In his play The Jeweler’s Shop, written when he was a young priest, John Paul II follows the lives of two couples from their courtship and marriage to the time when their respective children are grown and, as it happens, fall in love with each other. One of the young husbands was killed in the war, so his wife has raised their son to manhood on her own. The other couple has a daughter, but their marriage has grown cold and bitter over the years, and the wife, Anna, often dreams of escaping. She has visions of meeting the man who will embody her ideal image of a husband–the Bridegroom, as she calls him. But when at one point the man in her visions turns and comes towards her, she finds to her dismay that his face is that of her husband, Stefan. Taking up this theme many years letter in his Letter to Families (19), the Holy Father asks: “Could we even imagine human love without the Bridegroom [Jesus Christ] and the love with which he first loved to the end? Only if husbands and wives share in that love and in that ‘great mystery’ can they love ‘to the end.’ Unless they share in it, they do not know ‘to the end’ what love truly is and how radical are its demands.” Our love is not like Christ’s love unless it lasts to the end. One of St. Josemaria’s favorite prayers was: “May you seek Christ; may you find Christ; may you love Christ.” The prayer of a married person must be: “May I seek Christ in my spouse; may I find Christ in that face; may I love Christ in that heart.”

III. IMPLICATIONS–PUBLIC AND PRIVATE

Defending marriage

We cannot give up on our culture. Even when fundamental requirements of human nature and human love are forgotten or trampled upon, we must continue to defend and support them. One of the most basic and necessary features of marriage is its indissolubility. In recent addresses to the Roman Rota (the highest marriage tribunal in the Church), the Holy Father keeps insisting that the permanence of marriage is not based on the will of human beings (of the man and woman who commit themselves to this)–rather it is based on the will of God in creating us as persons. The love that perfects a husband and wife, the love they long for from one another, the love they long to give to one another, must have this kind of permanence. It cannot have term limits. This is simply built into the nature of marriage and the purposes of marriage–into the kind of union it is. Hence, Christians have a right and a duty to defend the indissolubility of marriage within the public square. The sacraments of the Church add graces to enable a couple to live out their wedding promises, but here as elsewhere, grace builds on nature–the promises themselves are required by the nature of the union being entered into.

I believe we can also make a difference in our culture simply by living our own vocation faithfully, leaning on the strength of Jesus Christ. Speaking to the Council on the Laity in 1974, Pope Paul VI reminds us that “Contemporary man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he listens to teachers it is because they are witnesses.”(Cited in Letter to Families 23). Never underestimate the influence you have on those around you, especially those closest to you. Children are particularly hard to fool. But so are siblings, roommates, close friends, the people we see day after day. People we don’t even know will be observing our lives. The good news is that the Holy Spirit wants them to find Christ–yes, even in us.

Living the Little Things

We need to get used to the idea that our lives consist almost entirely of things that seem to have little significance. If we don’t learn to offer these to God, to find him in them, we may not find him at all. St. Josemaria was adamant about the importance of the details. As he well knew, there’s no point in waiting for a great crisis or a vivid religious experience or some other dramatic moment in order to seek God out; he is as present to us in this moment as in any other. It’s like us to want to do great things for God, and perhaps for others to know we have done them; but God is looking for great love from us.[1]

The same principle applies to those who are especially entrusted to our care in one way or another. Most of our dealings with others, even with those dearest to us, are small-scale–routine things, almost unnoticeable, but sending a message all the same. Regardless of what the ads say, diamonds are not a girl’s best friend. The gifts that mean the most are much less glamorous–taking out the garbage, even if it’s not your turn; paying the bills; reading to the children; and thousands of other small actions of the same kind. Time is one of the most important things we can give to others, and one of the things we are most reluctant to part with; here again, even a few minutes time for a phone call or a conversation can mean so much. Whatever we do for others, Jesus tells us, we do for him. Keeping this before our minds adds a deeper dimension to the apparently trivial details of our lives. It’s as though we were watching a 3-D movie and then someone gives us the special glasses that make the images jump off the screen.

It’s possible, of course, that we will be called upon to do great things: to give our lives in defense of the Christian faith or to follow in the steps of the great saints in some other way. But I want to close by reflecting on a saint we know very little about. She appears in the devotion of the Stations of the Cross–Veronica, a follower of our Lord who loves him dearly. When he passes near her on the road to Calvary, carrying his cross, she reaches out to wipe his face with her veil. From the time of his arrest in Gethsemene until his last breath on the cross, this is the only time Jesus experiences a human touch motivated by tenderness and love.

He is the same Lord yesterday and today and forever, and he still passes by in the person of those close to us. With Veronica, we can offer them a touch of kindness that lightens their burdens and gives them encouragement for the journey. If we ask what prompted St. Veronica toward this act of courage and love, no doubt the answer would be that she was moved by the sight of Jesus’ face. In a recent apostolic letter on the Rosary, the Holy Father recommends that prayer as a way of contemplating Christ along with Mary. “To look upon the face of Christ, to recognize its mystery amid the daily events and the sufferings of his human life, and then to grasp the divine splendor definitively revealed in the Risen Lord, seated in glory at the right hand of the Father: this is the task of every follower of Christ and therefore the task of each one of us.” No other task is as important as this one; so let’s put it at the top of that list of things to do and see what a difference it makes to all the others.

Laura Garcia, Ph.D. gave this address at a conference at Bentley College, November 16, 2002, entitled “Among Family and Friends: The American Legacy of a New Saint, Josemaria Escriva." Professor Garcia teaches philosophy at Boston College.

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[1]This is a paraphrase of M. Eugene Boylan’s point in This Tremendous Lover (Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1987 [first published in 1947], p. 243.

Dream and your dreams will fall short by Mary Hamm

2002-10-06T21:17:00.000-04:00

When people ask me how many children I have, I often tell them twelve, plus two non-profits: working with a non-profit is like having another child. It was largely through the inspiration of Josemaría Escrivá and the support of Opus Dei that I came to this. I became familiar with Opus Dei and the teaching of its founder, as a teenager, through The Way. What I read resounded with what my parents had taught me about "unity of life": our sacramental life has to inform our everyday life, with the Mass as the center and root of our interior life. It is there, at the daily offering of Christ crucified, that I find my strength to continue to build up a culture of life.

As a mother with very little household help, many hours a day are spent providing for the physical needs of my family. It is precisely this that I unite to Christ's offering. For the first eighteen years of my marriage I concentrated on creating a "bright and cheerful home," St. Josemaría's ideal for family life. When I had eleven children and my youngest was four I began to expand my sphere of influence and become involved with building a culture of life also outside my home.

People often ask me, "You went to Harvard and you have twelve children?" To this, I respond: "Well, they taught me that if you are going to do something, do it big." Actually, it is St. Josemaría, with his insight that "these world crises are the crises of saints" (The Way, 301), that inspires me and helps me to "cast out into the deep" (Lk 5:4) with respect to shaping culture.

I became involved with the National Institute of Womanhood (NIW), of which I was a founding board member, and served as Vice-President of the Institute. It was becoming more and more apparent that the fight for women's advancement was being fought at the expense of woman's basic role as wife and mother. At NIW we worked to articulate what "authentic womanhood" is. Friends asked, "How can you find time for NIW?" And I responded, "It is precisely because I have many children, and seven of them are girls, that I have to fight for the rights of motherhood." In 1994 and 1995, the Cairo and Beijing UN conferences dealt with the issues of "gender" and "gender roles." Once again Opus Dei founder's insight, this time on the "genius of woman" served me as a guiding principle. In the mid 1990's I had to find paid work and took a position at Centro Tepeyac, a crisis pregnancy center serving the needs of Latino women, where I could continue to advance the cause of "authentic womanhood" and fight the rising tide of sensuality with a "crusade of manliness and purity" (The Way, 121).

Centro Tepeyac helps women who are experiencing an unexpected pregnancy, most of them recent immigrants from Central and South America who are fleeing war, poverty, or both. I had learned from Josemaría Escrivá that there are "no souls for the trashcan": this applies especially to the unborn child of a poor woman. In my seven years at Centro Tepeyac, it has grown from one hundred to one thousand clients. I can say that this is due, in a large measure, to faithfulness to the plan of life mapped out by the founder of Opus Dei. His teaching on the "greatness of ordinary life" reminds me constantly that my "boat —your talents, your hopes, your achievements— is worth nothing whatsoever, unless you leave it in Christ's hands, allowing him freedom to come aboard" (Friends of God, 21). Daily Mass, the Rosary, and spiritual reading feed my life of prayer and are like the "glue" that holds my family and home together, while allowing me to carry the message of the culture of life on the national and international scene.

I often recall that Josemaría Escrivá in his endless treks through Madrid sought and discovered images of Our Lady, as well as tabernacles. He encouraged us to visit Our Lord there, even if only with a glance and an aspiration. I too began to seek and find "nooks and crannies" on my way to Tepeyac where I could silently greet Our Lord and Our Lady in hidden places. I also taught my children to deal with Our Lord this way as we traveled around town, with carpools and sports practices.

In striving to fulfill the call to evangelize, I have learned from Josemaría Escrivá about the "letter writing apostolate", which always helps me to do outreach, especially with our donors. His words on the apostolate of public opinion help me connect with journalists and wherever I go, I bring some useful printed material. He said, "Out of a hundred souls we are interested in a hundred" (Furrow, 183), and I try to live by this. I remember hearing that when he saw the astronauts land on the moon, he prayed for them; I too try to pray for the persons I see on TV. From him I have learned to try to love and pray for all people, whether of the left or of the right, just as he did.

With his canonization, Josemaría Escrivá will become an inspiration and a teacher to countless souls, who like me, live normal, every day lives, and who want to seek union with God in the midst of that very normality.

Mary and her husband Peter live in Bethesda, MD with five of their twelve children. Grandmother, mother and home maker, Mary also serves as the Executive Director at Centro Tepeyac, a crisis pregnancy center for Latino women. This article originally appeared in the October 6, 2002 issue of L'Osservatore Romano on the occasion of the canonization of St. Josemaría.