Working well,
working for love

On the sanctification of work
in the teachings of St Josemaría Escrivá

Javier López Díaz

© 2017 Opus Dei
Information Office

www.opusdei.org

Introduction

Millions of people go to work each day – some unhappily, if they don’ t like what they’re doing or it doesn’t interest them; others only concerned about the pay they will receive and the financial rewards; while others are an example of what Hannah Arendt calls the “animal laborans”: workers who have no other objective or aim than the very work that life has placed before them and which they carry out by natural inclination or by inertia.

At a higher level is the figure of the “homo faber”, the person who works with a wider view, with the aim of making a business or a project a success – sometimes seeking personal affirmation, but often with the noble aspiration of serving others and serving society as a whole.

Christians ought to be in this last category, and even higher. If they really are Christians, they will not see themselves as slaves or as paid workers, but as children of God for whom work is a vocation and a divine mission, to be carried out for love and with love.

In his celebrated address to the College des Bernadins in 2008 in Paris, Pope Benedict XVI showed that Christianity holds the key to understanding the meaning of work, when he said that man is called to continue the creative work of God, and that he perfects creation by working with freedom, guided by wisdom and love. The very Son-of-God-made-man worked for many years in Nazareth, and “in this way he sanctified human labor and endowed it with a special significance for our development” (Pope Francis, Laudato si’, 98). All this shows that work is man’s “vocation”, the “place” for his development as a child of God. Further, it is the “matter” of his sanctification and the fulfillment of his apostolic mission. Hence the Christian should not be afraid of effort or tiredness, but should embrace them with joy, “a joy that has its roots in the shape of the cross”.

The last sentence comes from St Josemaría Escrivá, the saint who taught us to “sanctify our work”, turning it into nothing less than the “work of God”. The pages of this book are inspired by his message, or rather, they are inspired by the message of the Gospel, since St Josemaría did nothing other than to teach us the words and life of Jesus, above all in his years spent in Nazareth working with St Joseph, from whom he learnt to work as an artisan, and with Our Lady, who served him with her work in the home.

The picture of Jesus, Mary and Joseph which appears on the cover of this book is taken from a photo of one of the scenes of the alabaster reredos in the Shrine of Torreciudad in northern Spain, which is the work of the sculptor Joan Mayné. In that picture the reader is able to contemplate everything which is contained in this book, to “enter” into that scene as one more member of the family of Nazareth: as a child of God. That house and workshop are the school where we can learn to turn our work into prayer, into a “Mass” that gives glory to God and redeems the world, making it a better place.

I wish to thank the Opus Dei Information Office for the suggestion of gathering into one volume the various articles that had previously been published individually on their website. The intention is not to present a systematic exposition of the message of St Josemaría on the sanctification of work, but to offer a series of texts – originally written to be read separately – on different aspects of the topic. For this reason some repetition is inevitable, although it does enable each chapter to stand alone. I wish to thank especially Dr Carlos Ruiz Montoya for his help in the writing of the articles.

I hope that these pages help many to discover, or rediscover, the ideal of sanctifying daily work and carrying it out with love, knowing that, as we work, we have a Father in heaven who takes delight in his children and attracts all humanity to himself.

Javier Lopez
Rome, June 26, 2016

Fr Javier Lopez (born in Madrid, 1949, ordained 1977) is a priest of the Opus Dei Prelature, lecturing at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, and specializing in the teachings of St Josemaría.

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Contents

Introduction.

A supernatural motive.

Working conscientiously.

Work and contemplation (I).

Work and contemplation (II).

God’s Work.

Work and rest.

The hinge of our sanctification.

Working for love.

Cross and Resurrection in Work.

Sanctifying with our work.

Unity of life in Professional Work.

Sanctifying the world from within.

Professional prestige.

Work and family.

The Strength of Leaven.

Work at all times.

Share…

A supernatural motive

St. Josemaría said that the spirit of Opus Dei contains the marvelous truth that all worthy and upright human undertakings can be turned into divine ones.

Many people have experienced a complete turnaround in their lives when they came to know this teaching, sometimes after simply hearing the phrase sanctification of work. These were men and women who were working with earthly horizons of just two dimensions but who became filled with enthusiasm when they learned that their professional work can take on eternal significance. We can think here of the joy of that person in the Gospel who, on finding a treasure hidden in a field, went and sold all that he had to buy that field!1

The Holy Spirit helped St. Josemaría discover this teaching in the Gospels, particularly in the many years Jesus spent in Nazareth: “He lived in obscurity, but, for us, that period is full of light.”2 “His hidden years are not without significance, nor were they simply a preparation for the years which were to come after—those of his public life. Since 1928 I have understood clearly that God wants our Lord's whole life to be an example for Christians. I saw this with special reference to his hidden life, the years he spent working side by side with ordinary men.”3

Thanks to a divine light the founder of Opus Dei always taught that professional work can be sanctified and can sanctify. The Church's Magisterium, above all since Vatican II, has stressed this simple but great truth.4 The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that “work can be a means of sanctification and a way of animating earthly realities with the Spirit of Christ.”5

“With supernatural intuition,” John Paul II stated, “Blessed Josemaría untiringly preached the universal call to holiness and apostolate. Christ calls everyone to become holy in the realities of everyday life. Hence, work too is a means of personal holiness and apostolate when it is done in union with Jesus Christ.”6

God chose St. Josemaría to be an instrument to spread this teaching, which opens up immense perspectives on personal holiness for a vast number of Christians and on the sanctification of human society from within, that is, from the very core of the professional activities that shape society.

This seed will yield all the fruit God expects, provided we strive to meditate on it in God's presence and to put it into practice with his help. The sanctification of work is not just an idea to be understood, but an ideal to be sought and acquired through love for God and under the guidance of his grace.

Meaning of work

From the very beginning of Scripture, in the Book of Genesis, we are shown the meaning of work. God, who made all things good, “freely willed to create a world 'in a state of journeying' towards its ultimate perfection.”7 And he created man ut operaretur,8 so that by working “he would, in a certain way, prolong the work of creation and attain his own perfection.”9

As a consequence of sin, work is accompanied by fatigue, and often too by suffering.10 But on assuming our nature in order to redeem us, Christ our Lord has transformed this fatigue and suffering into means for showing love for and obedience to God's will and making up for the disobedience of sin. “That was the way Jesus lived for thirty years, as the son of the carpenter (Mt 13:55)… He was the carpenter, the son of Mary (Mk 6:33). And he was God: He was achieving the redemption of mankind and drawing all things to himself (Jn 12:32).”11

As well as seeing in Jesus' hidden life a revelation of the deepest meaning of human work, we have to remember that through grace we have been made children of God, forming one single reality with Jesus Christ, one single body. His supernatural Life is our own life, and he makes us sharers in his priesthood so that we may become co–redeemers with him.

This deep union of the Christian with Christ sheds light on the meaning of all our activities, and especially our work. In St. Josemaría's teachings, the foundation of the sanctification of work is the sense of our divine filiation, the awareness that “Christ wishes to become incarnate in our tasks.”12

This Christian vision of the meaning of work is summarized in the following words of St. Josemaria: "Work is part and parcel of man's life on earth. It involves effort, weariness, exhaustion, signs of the suffering and struggle which accompany human existence and which point to the reality of sin and the need for redemption. But in itself work is not a penalty or a curse or a punishment: those who speak of it that way have not understood Sacred Scripture properly…

"Work, all work, bears witness to the dignity of man, to his dominion over creation. It is an opportunity to develop one's personality. It is a bond of union with others, the way to support one's family, a means of aiding in the improvement of the society in which we live and in the progress of all humanity.

“For a Christian these horizons extend and grow wider. For work is a participation in the creative work of God … And, moreover, since Christ took it into his hands, work has become for us a redeemed and redemptive reality. Not only is it the background of man's life, it is a means and path of holiness. It is something to be sanctified and something which sanctifies.”13

Sanctifying work

A familiar phrase of St. Josemaría brings us right to the heart of the splendid panorama of holiness and apostolate in the carrying out of our professional occupation: “Sanctity, for the vast majority of men, implies sanctifying their work, sanctifying themselves in it, and sanctifying others through it.”14

These are three inseparable aspects of one and the same reality. The first is to sanctify, to make holy, a specific task, the activity of working.15 To sanctify work is to sanctify that particular activity, to make the act of the person who is working holy.

It is on this that the other two aspects depend, since work that is sanctified is also sanctifying: it sanctifies the one who works and is a means for the sanctification of others and for imbuing society with a Christian spirit. It is worthwhile, therefore, for us to pause to consider this first point: what does it mean to make professional work holy?

Any action of ours is holy when it is an act of love for God and for others, for his sake. That is, when it is an act of supernatural love, of charity, which in this world presupposes faith and hope. Such an act is holy because charity is a participation in infinite Charity, the Holy Spirit,16 the subsistent Love between the Father and the Son. Therefore an act of charity is a sharing in the supernatural Life of the Most Holy Trinity, a sharing in the holiness of God.

In the case of professional work, whether cultivating a field, research in science, providing services, etc., in order for it to be humanly good and sanctifiable it has to be an exercise of the human virtues. But that is not sufficient for it to be holy.

Work is truly sanctified when done for love of God, to give him glory (and consequently as God wants, fulfilling his will, which entails practising the Christian virtues informed by charity) so as to offer it to God in union with Christ: “through Him, with Him, and in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory is yours Almighty Father, forever and ever.”17

“Add a supernatural motive to your ordinary work, and you will have sanctified it.”18 These few words of St. Josemaría give us the key to the sanctification of work. The human activity of working is sanctified when it is carried out for a supernatural motive.

What really matters, therefore, is not that it “turn out well” but that we work out of love for God. For God looks to the heart.19 What is decisive is that one has a supernatural motive, the ultimate goal, the rectitude of intention in one's will to work for love of God and to serve others for God. “Work is thus raised to the order of grace. It is sanctified and becomes God's work, operatio Dei, opus Dei.”20

A supernatural motive

Our supernatural motive is sincere if it effectively and radically influences our way of working, leading us to complete our task with perfection, as God wants it, within our personal limitations, which he always takes into account.

A supernatural motive that makes work holy is not merely something added on to professional work. Rather, it is love of God and love of others for God, which radically influences the activity itself. It leads us to do our work well, with competence and perfection because “it is no good offering to God something that is less perfect than our poor human limitations permit. The work that we offer must be without blemish and it must be done as carefully as possible, even in its smallest details, for God will not accept shoddy workmanship. Thou shalt not offer anything that is faulty, Holy Scripture warns us, because it would not be worthy of him (Lev 23:20). For that reason, the work of each one of us, the activities that take up our time and energy, must be an offering worthy of our Creator. It must be operatio Dei, a work of God that is done for God: in short, a task that is complete and faultless.”21

A “good intention” that did not lead one to work well would neither be a good intention nor an act of love for God. It would be an ineffective and hollow intention, a weak desire incapable of overcoming the obstacle of laziness or comfort. True love is shown through one's work.

Working for a supernatural motive is not a matter of simply adding on something holy to the activity of working. To sanctify work it is not enough to pray while one is working, although this is a sign, when it is possible to do so, that one is working for love of God and is a means to grow in that love.

In order to have a supernatural motive and sanctify one's work it is essential to seek, in one way or another, the presence of God, often concretized in acts of love and aspirations. At times this will involve taking advantage of a break in one's work or other like circumstances, and making use of “human devices.”

However, it is worth insisting that this in itself is not enough, since sanctifying work is not essentially a matter of doing something holy at the same time as one is working. Rather, it is a matter of making the work itself holy by having a supernatural motive which shapes that activity and affects it so deeply that it turns it into an act of faith, hope and love, and transforms our work into prayer.

Another important consequence of the fact that the root of sanctifying one's work lies in a supernatural motive is that all professional work can be sanctified, whether outstanding to human eyes or quite humble, since sanctifying work depends on the love for God with which it is done. One has only to think of the work of Jesus, Mary and Joseph in Nazareth, who carried out everyday tasks like millions of other people but did so with the greatest love.

“The dignity of work depends not so much on what is done as on the one who does it, on the human person, who is a spiritual, intelligent and free being.”22 The value of work depends on its goodness as an action that is spiritual and free, that is to say, arising out of a love that can choose its end, which is the characteristic act of freedom.

“It is well to remember that the dignity of work is based on Love. Man's great privilege is to be able to love and to transform what is fleeting and ephemeral. He can love other creatures, pronounce an 'I' and a 'you' which are full of meaning. And he can love God, who opens heaven's gates to us, makes us members of his family and allows us also to talk to him in friendship, face to face. This is why man ought not to limit himself to material production. Work is born of love: it is a manifestation of love and is directed towards love.”23

Love for God makes little things big: small details of order, punctuality, service and amiability, which contribute to the perfection of work. “Do everything for Love. Then there will be no little things: everything will be big. Perseverance in little things for Love is heroism.”24

A person who realizes that the sanctifying value of work depends essentially on the love for God with which it is done and not on its social and human prominence will have great regard for little things, especially those that pass unnoticed to others and are seen only by God

In contrast, working for selfish motives, seeking self–affirmation or prestige out of vanity, pursuing one's own plans and likes, or making power or money one's supreme goal, radically prevents one's work from being sanctified because it means offering it up to the idol of one's own self love.

Rarely do such motives present themselves in a “pure state;” often they are intermingled with noble intentions and even supernatural ones, while remaining hidden, even for a long time, like clumps of dirt in the depths of clean water. It would be imprudent to ignore them, because at any moment—possibly on the occasion of a humiliation or a professional failure—they could be stirred up and cloud one's whole behavior. It is important to detect these selfish motives, to sincerely acknowledge them and combat them, purifying one's intention with prayer, sacrifice, humility, generous service to others and care for little things.

Let us frequently turn our eyes to Jesus' work during the years of his hidden life, to learn to sanctify our daily work. “Lord give us your grace. Open the door to the workshop in Nazareth so that we may learn to contemplate you, together with your Holy Mother Mary and the holy Patriarch St. Joseph, whom I love and revere so dearly, the three of you dedicated to a life of work made holy. Then, Lord, our poor hearts will be enkindled; we shall seek you and find you in our daily work, which you want us to convert into a work of God, a labor of Love.”25

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________

1 Cf. Mt. 13: 44

2 Christ is Passing By, 14

3 Christ is Passing By, 20

4 Lumen Gentium, 31-36; Gaudium et Spes, 33-39; Apostolicam actuositatem, 1-3, 7.

5 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2427

6 John Paul II, Homily, 17 May 1992. Cf. Discourse, 19 March 1979; Discourse, 12 January 2002, 2.

7 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 310

8 Gen 2:15. Cf. Gen, 1:28.

9 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2427. Vatican II, Past. Const. Gaudium et Spes, 34-35

10 Cf. Gen, 3:18-19

11 Christ is Passing By, 14

12 Ibid., 174

13 Ibid., 47.

14 Conversations, 55. Cf. Christ is Passing By, 45; Friends of God, 120

15 Cf. John Paul II, Enc. Laborem exercens, 14 September 1981, 6

16 Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, S. Th. II–II, q. 24, a.7 c

17 Roman Missal, Canon of the Mass

18 The Way, 359

19 I Kgs 16:7

20 Conversations, 10

21 Friends of God, 55

22 John Paul II, Discourse, 3 July 1986, 3

23 Christ is Passing By, 48

24 The Way, 813

25 Friends of God, 72

Working conscientiously

“If we really want to sanctify our work, we have inescapably to fulfil the first condition: that of working, and working well, with human and supernatural seriousness.”1

We have seen, in a previous article, that working for a supernatural reason is the “soul” of the sanctification of work.2 Now we will look at the “body” it animates: work well done. If our reason for working is truly love for God and neighbor, this necessarily entails that the job be done as well as possible.

We should especially keep in mind that, as St. Josemaria taught, sanctifying our ordinary work requires doing the work itself well, aiming to do it as perfectly as possible, and fulfilling all our professional and social obligations. It requires working conscientiously, responsibly, lovingly and perseveringly, without negligence or sloppiness.

To profit from this teaching of Opus Dei's founder, we should bear in mind that when we speak about working well we are referring above all to the activity involved, and not to its outcome.

It can happen that, in spite of our best efforts, the end product is defective, either through some unintentional mistake or through factors outside our control. In these cases, which are not uncommon, we see clearly the difference between working with a Christian outlook and being successful in a merely human sense. In the first case, it is the act of working itself which is esteemed, and although the desired object hasn't been achieved, it was done as well as possible for love of God and the desire to co–redeem with Christ, and so nothing has been wasted. Thus we don't get upset when confronted with setbacks but try to overcome them, seeing them as an opportunity to be more united to Christ's Cross. But if one is seeking primarily success, then when things don't work out well everything is regarded as a failure. Clearly someone with this perspective will never understand what it means to sanctify professional work.

Working conscientiously means trying to do things as perfectly as possible humanly speaking, for supernatural reasons. It doesn't mean working well and afterwards adding a supernatural motive. It is much deeper than that. What leads a Christian to do things perfectly is love for God, because “it is no good offering to God something that is less perfect than our poor human limitations permit. The work that we offer must be without blemish and it must be done as carefully as possible, even in its smallest details, for God will not accept shoddy workmanship. 'You shall not offer anything that is faulty,' Holy Scripture warns us, 'because it would not be worthy of him' (Lev 22:20).”3

When a person tries to do things well, he is usually successful and produces a good result. Moreover, striving to sanctify one's work generally leads to professional prestige, since love for God leads one “to excel oneself gladly in duty and in sacrifice.”4 But we should never forget something that bears emphasising: that at times God allows setbacks and failures precisely so that we purify our intention and share in Christ's Cross. And this doesn't mean that we haven't worked well and sanctified our work.

Human virtues in work

Work well done brings into play the human virtues informed by charity. “A complete range of virtues is called into play when we set about our work with the purpose of sanctifying it: fortitude, to persevere in our work despite the difficulties that naturally arise and to ensure that we never let ourselves be overwhelmed by anxiety; temperance, in order to spend ourselves unsparingly and to overcome our love of comfort and our selfishness; justice, so as to fulfil our duties towards God, society, our family and our fellow workers; prudence, to know in each case what course to take, and then to set about it without hesitation… And all this, I emphasise, is for the sake of Love.”5

We need all the human virtues in our work, because they form a fabric in which the threads mutually reinforce one another. But an order exists among them: some threads have to be inserted before others, as when weaving a tapestry.

Since the first requirement is to work, and work well, one understands why our Founder highlights “two human virtues, industriousness and diligence, which merge into one, for they both help us in our efforts to make good use of the talents we have each received from God.”6

As in the Gospel parable, our Lord has endowed us with talents to fulfil the mission of placing him at the summit of earthly activities by sanctifying our profession. We cannot behave like the wicked and slothful servant,7 who buried the talent he had received. God wants the gifts he has given us to be productive. And so we have to work hard, diligently, exactingly, to a high standard, doing the best we can.

Industriousness and diligence lead one to undertake the job that has to be done, not what we feel like doing, and to do it as and when we ought. “A hardworking person makes good use of time, for time is not only money, it is glory, God's glory! He does as he ought and concentrates on what he is doing, not out of routine nor to while away the passing hours, but as the result of attentive and pondered reflection. This is what makes a man diligent. Our everyday usage of this word 'diligent' already gives us some idea of its Latin origin. 'Diligent' comes from the verb 'diligo,' which means to love, to appreciate, to choose something after careful consideration and attention. The diligent man does not rush into things. He does his work thoughtfully and lovingly.”8

We have to fight against laziness, one of the seven deadly sins and “mother of all vices.”9 One of its forms is indolence in the fulfilment of duty:10 putting off what we find difficult and giving priority to other things we like more or which take less effort. “Don't put off your work until tomorrow,”11 St. Josemaría urges us. At times, “relying on flimsy excuses, we become too easygoing and forget about the marvellous responsibility that rests upon our shoulders. We are content with doing just enough to get by. We let ourselves get carried away by false rationalisations and waste our time, whereas Satan and his allies never take a holiday.”12 We don't serve God faithfully “if we can be called careless, unreliable, frivolous, disorganised, lazy or useless.”13

Professional work is a field for the exercise of all the human virtues, following the example of Jesus' years in Nazareth. Order, serenity, cheerfulness, optimism, fortitude, constancy, fidelity, humility, meekness, magnanimity, and all the other human virtues, turn professional work into a fruitful terrain that flowers under the rain of grace.

Without the daily effort to practise these virtues it is easy to commit the same mistake as those who consider themselves “practising” Catholics because they go to Mass and say some prayers, but whose professional life is not governed by Christian moral principles, and more or less openly coexists with faults against justice, truthfulness, or uprightness.

Work of this sort is not pleasing to God, and it cannot be described as well done, or sanctified, even though the end product may be humanly outstanding for its “technical” perfection in some aspects. St. Josemaría always taught the need to put one's faith into practice, to “incarnate” it, in one's professional work, in a unity of life. And this is done through human virtues informed by charity.

Without charity, a person is unable to sanctify his work, because charity (supernatural love for God and for souls) is the essence of holiness. A Catholic who is a conscientious worker does not sanctify his work if he is lacking in charity. In reality neither can he be said to work very well, because charity dwells within the virtues, and if it is absent they all sooner or later degenerate into injustice, hatred, anger, envy…

Love for God is not a mere sentiment. It is the action of the theological virtue of charity which, together with faith and hope, ought to govern the daily lives of the children of God through the exercise of the human virtues. Only thus can we identify ourselves with Christ, perfect God and perfect Man.

Little things

The Christian virtues are normally expressed and developed in professional activity through little things. Industriousness itself, which in a certain sense underlies the other virtues in a person's work, does not consist in just working a lot, because one shouldn't forget that “by neglecting small details you could work on and on without rest and yet live the life of a perfect idler.”14

The virtue of industriousness can lose its true value if we are inattentive to small points of order we find difficult, or we fail to begin and finish things punctually, or we neglect family duties or apostolic tasks with the excuse that work absorbs almost all our energies. Paying attention to little things helps protect against this danger, for it safeguards one's right intention, since many small details are noticed only by God.

Holiness does not consist in doing more difficult things every day, said St. Josemaría, but in doing them every day with greater love. The secret of working better each day lies in little things—small aspects a child of God pays attention to in order to finish a job as perfectly as possible.

Another thing altogether is being a perfectionist, the defect of seeking perfection in the external product of the work as the end in itself. This attitude represents a distortion of the human virtues, a sign that one has lost the big picture, the prudence that leads one to say at times: “the best is the enemy of the good.” This striving after perfection can cause one to neglect other qualities of good work, like finishing it on time. Perfectionism is a surrogate for perfection; it is a sign of self–love and vanity, and has to be overcome with the realism of Christian humility which recognises one's limitations and trusts in God.

God created everything out of love, and his works are perfect: Dei perfecta sunt opera.15 Our work is a participation in the work of creation,16 and it too has to be perfect, insofar as our abilities permit, with God's grace.

Attention to detail marks the “divine way” of working of a child of God, because it expresses the perfection of love. And it is fundamental to becoming contemplatives in our work, because just as God created the world and saw that it was good,17 contemplating the reflection of his Love and Truth in what he had created, analogously, with the infinite distance that analogy here implies, our work will be “good” and a means of contemplation if it is not only finished down to the last detail, but carried out in a morally upright fashion.. Thus it will be prayer, contemplative prayer, because work carried out as perfectly as possible, putting love into the small things, allows us to discover “that 'divine something' which is hidden in small details.”18 And so, our Father concludes, “when a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God.”19

Learning to work well

The marvelous panorama that the teaching of St. Josemaría opens to us has to be put into practice in daily life. “It's not enough to want to do good; we must know how to do it.”20 To serve God and others through our work requires preparation—competence not only in the technical aspects but also in the moral, human and Christian ones.

“To be useful, serve,” are words St. Josemaría wanted to engrave on our hearts so we would never forget that, in order to be a good doctor or a good housewife, it's not enough to have good will: we also require skill and virtues. “I cannot see the integrity of a person who does not strive to attain professional skills and to carry out properly the task entrusted to his care.”21

Professional formation to enable us to sanctify our work does not consist only in study and knowledge. As has been said above, it takes much more than that—human virtues informed by charity. This is the principal reason why professional formation lasts all of one's life, and is improved day by day when we strive to grow in Christian virtues. “It is not sufficient merely to want to have these virtues. We have to learn how to practise them. Discite benefacere—learn to do good (Is 1:17). We need to make a habit of exercising each virtue, by actually being sincere, truthful, balanced, calm and patient… For love is proved by deeds and we cannot love God only by word, but 'with deeds and in truth' (Jn 3:18).”22

A wonderful channel for this formation is to be found in spiritual direction. If we open our hearts wide, we will receive sound advice—at times relating to ethical or moral duties—because the Holy Spirit will grant us his light and grace. We also have to be ready to receive this formation in the workplace itself, by paying attention to our colleagues' observations. This requires humility, a readiness to recognise our own limitations and to allow ourselves to be helped, overcoming self–sufficiency, presumption and vanity.

Professional ambition

Professional ambition is a strong incentive to learn how to work well. But it is important to understand it from a Christian point of view, and not see it simply as a natural inclination. Rightly understood, it is the desire to serve God and others through our work, to give a Christian meaning to human progress and thereby imbue society with the spirit of Christ. This is the core of a child of God's professional ambition, which spurs our human interest in the task at hand and nourishes it with supernatural hope, leading us to strive to turn “the prose of each day into heroic verse.”23

The most humdrum activities are no longer a monotonous chain of repetitive actions, just as they weren't such for Jesus, Mary and Joseph in Nazareth. We discover in our tasks a new dimension, the joy of God's presence, who accepts the offering of work that is well done.

For a child of God, professional ambition is not a selfish whim. It is the ambition to carry out the work God wants, so that we sanctify it and make it fruitful. Therefore our professional vocation is an important part of our divine vocation. But God's will in this regard is discovered not only in our natural interests and aptitudes (though these are certainly an important factor) but also in the circumstances divine Providence places us in, and specifically through the duties we have to fulfil and the services we can offer.

The confluence of all these factors configures our professional vocation, which is called a “vocation” because it really does represent a call from God to choose, in accord with our circumstances, the professional activity best suited to our sanctification and apostolate.

In this context we see clearly the difference between professional ambition and its pathological expression, “professionalitis” The former is love for work as a means of sanctification and apostolate; the latter is enslavement to an idol that has become an end in itself. And this can happen without our expressly intending it, if we fail to rectify our intention and work in practice for earthly goals and human success.

St. Josemaría warns us of this danger: “you should put your professional interests in their place: they are only means to an end; they can never be regarded—in any way—as if they were the basic thing. These attacks of 'professionalitis' stop you from being united with God!”24 Learning to work well also means learning to keep work in its place, a place which is so important that it is the hinge of sanctification in ordinary life, but always only a means.

Good professionals are recognised by the quality of their work. Everybody knew St. Joseph as the carpenter;25 and Jesus was the carpenter's son, 'fabri filius,' a carpenter himself.26 They haven't left us any of the products of their work, the articles they made—and well made they were, within the limitations of the tools at their disposal, working with effort, order and cheerfulness, while Mary looked after the household chores with the same spirit. What they have left us, though, is Jesus' redemptive love in his daily work, and that of Mary and Joseph united to him with one heart. This is the core of the sanctification of work.

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1 The Forge, 698

2 Cf. The Way, 359

3 Friends of God, 55

4 Furrow, 527

5 Friends of God, 72

6 Ibid. 81

7 Mt 25:26

8 Friends of God, 81

9 Furrow 505. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1866

10 Cf. St Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II–II, q.54, a.2, ad 1

11 The Way, 15

12 Friends of God, 62

13 Ibid.

14 Furrow, 494

15 Deut 32:4 (Vg)

16 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2427

17 Gen 1:10 ff

18 Conversations, 116

19 Ibid.

20 Christ is Passing By, 50

21 Ibid.

22 Friends of God, 91

23 Christ is Passing By, 50

24 Furrow, 502

25 Mt 13:55

26 Cf. Mk 6:3

Work and contemplation (I)

“I would like us, in our meditation today, to make up our minds once and for all that we need to aspire to become contemplative souls, in the street, in the midst of our work, by maintaining a constant conversation with our God and not breaking it off at any time of the day. If we really want to be loyal followers of our Master, this is the only way.”1

For those who have been called by God to seek sanctity in the middle of the world, to convert work into prayer and have a contemplative soul, this is indeed the only way. For “either we learn to find our Lord in ordinary, everyday life, or else we shall never find him.”2

We should meditate slowly on this fundamental point of St. Josemaría's teaching. In this article we will focus on what contemplation is; later articles in this series will explore more fully the meaning of contemplative life in work and in our daily activities.

Like at Nazareth, like the first Christians

The discovery of God in the ordinary activities of each day gives our life its ultimate value and full meaning. Jesus' hidden life at Nazareth comprised “years of intense work and prayer, years during which Jesus led an ordinary life, a life like ours, we might say, which was both divine and human at the same time.”3 Thus he teaches us that our professional, family, and social life is not a hindrance to praying always,4 but rather an opportunity to stay very close to God, until a moment comes when it is impossible to distinguish between work and contemplation.

The first Christians traveled along this path of contemplation in daily life, following in the Master's footsteps. “While walking, while conversing, when resting, while working or reading, a Christian believer prays,”5 writes a second–century author. Centuries later, St. Gregory the Great describes an ideal found among many of the faithful: “the grace of contemplation is not something given to the great but denied to the lowly. Many great people receive it, as do many of the lowly, both among those who live apart from the world and those who are married. So if no state among the faithful is excluded from the grace of contemplation, anyone who guards his heart interiorly can be enlightened by this grace.”6

The Church's Magisterium, especially since the Second Vatican Council, has often reminded us of this teaching. It is especially important for us, since we have the mission of bringing Christ everywhere and imbuing the world with a Christian spirit. As John Paul II said, in reference to St. Josemaría's teaching : “Daily activity is understood as a precious means of union with Christ, capable of becoming the setting and the material for sanctification, the terrain for the exercise of the virtues, the dialogue of love which is realized in works. Work is transformed by the spirit of prayer and thus it becomes possible to remain in the contemplation of God, even when one is intent on carrying out various occupations.”7

The contemplation of the children of God

The Catechism teaches that “the Church calls the contemplation of God in his heavenly glory 'the beatific vision.'”8 Already here on earth we can have a foretaste of the perfect contemplation of God in heaven. This beginning, although limited and of a different nature than vision,9 is already true contemplation of God, just as grace, while being different from glory, is nevertheless a true participation in the divine nature. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood ,10 writes St. Paul.

Already in this life, contemplation of God as “in a mirror” is possible thanks to the theological virtues—a living faith and hope, informed by charity. Faith, united to hope and vivified by charity, “makes us taste in advance the light of the beatific vision, the goal of our journey here below.”11

Contemplation is a loving and joyful knowledge of God and his designs as expressed in creatures, in supernatural revelation, and most fully in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord. St. John of the Cross calls contemplation the "science of love.12 St. Thomas Aquinas defines it as a clear knowledge of the truth, attained not by a process of reasoning but by an intense charity.13

Mental prayer is dialogue with God. “You write: 'To pray is to talk with God. But about what?' About what? About Him, about yourself: joys, sorrows, successes and failures, noble ambitions, daily worries, weaknesses! And acts of thanksgiving and petitions: and Love and reparation. In a word: to get to know him and to get to know yourself: 'to get acquainted!'”14 In the spiritual life, this dialogue with God tends to simplify progressively as one's trusting filial love increases. Then words are often no longer needed in order to pray, neither externally nor internally. “One no longer speaks, because the tongue doesn't know how to express itself. The mind is stilled. One doesn't speak: one looks!”15

This is what contemplation means: an active prayer without words, intense and serene, deep and simple. It is a gift God grants to those who seek him sincerely, who put their whole heart into fulfilling his will with deeds, and who try to remain in his presence. “First one brief aspiration, then another, and another… till our fervor seems insufficient, because words are too poor… then this gives way to intimacy with God, looking at God without needing rest or feeling tired.”16 All this can take place, St. Josemaria insists, not only in the periods dedicated expressly to prayer, but also “while we carry out as perfectly as we can (with all our mistakes and limitations) the tasks allotted to us by our situation and duties.”17

Under the action of the Paraclete

The Father, Son and Holy Spirit dwell in our soul in grace;18 we are temples of God.19 Words fail to express the richness of the mystery of the Blessed Trinity's indwelling in our soul. The Father eternally engenders the Son, and the Holy Spirit, subsistent bond of Love, proceeds from the Father and the Son. Through God's grace we take part in this Trinitarian life as sons and daughters. The Paraclete unites us to the Son, who has assumed human nature in order to make us sharers in the divine nature: when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman… so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”20 In this union with the Son we are not alone, but form one body, the Mystical Body of Christ, to which all men and women are called to be incorporated as living members and to be, like the apostles, instruments to draw others, sharing in Christ's priesthood.21

Contemplative life is the life of the children of God, a life of intimacy with the divine Persons and overflowing with apostolic zeal. The charity that the Paraclete pours into our hearts grants us a knowledge of God that would otherwise be unattainable, because he who does not love does not know God; for God is love.22 The more we love God the more fully we know him, because that love (supernatural charity) is a participation in the infinite charity of the Holy Spirit,23 who searches everything, even the depths of God. For what person knows a man's thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.24

This Love, with a capital L, gives the soul a deep familiarity with the divine Persons, and an understanding of God that is more penetrating and rapid, more accurate and spontaneous, in profound harmony with the Heart of Christ.25 On the human plane as well, those who love one another understand each other more easily. St. Josemaria used this analogy to explain to some degree what the contemplation of God is like. “Where I come from they sometimes say, 'See how that person contemplates!' They may be referring to a mother with a child in her arms, or to a fellow looking at his future wife, or to a woman watching over her sick husband—pure and noble human affection. That's how we should contemplate.”26

But all human experience, however beautiful, is no more than a glimmer of the contemplation that God grants to faithful souls. Supernatural charity greatly exceeds any simply human love in stature, quality and strength, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit enable us to be led docilely by him. These gifts (wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety and filial fear) grow in unison with a “co–natural” familiarity with God, and the whole spectrum of the contemplative life begins to unfold.

In particular, through the gift of wisdom, the first and greatest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit,27 we are granted not only to know and assent to the revealed truths about God and creatures, as happens with faith, but to “savor” them, to know them with “a certain tasting of their sweetness.”28 Wisdom, sapientia, is a knowledge that is “tasted”: sapida scientia. Thanks to this gift, not only does one grow in love for God, but one comes to know in a new way.29 “There is a knowledge which is attained only with holiness. One encounters hidden souls, unknown to the world, who are deeply humble, self–sacrificing and holy, and who have a marvelous supernatural outlook. I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hid these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed them to little ones (Mt 11:25).”30

Through the gift of wisdom contemplative life enters into the depths of God.31 St. Josemaria invited us to meditate on “a text from St. Paul in which he proposes to us a whole program of contemplative life—knowledge and love, prayer and life… May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith; may you, being rooted and grounded in love, have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God ( Eph 3:17-19).”32

We should ask the Holy Spirit for the gift of wisdom, together with the other gifts that accompany it. They are gifts of divine Love, jewels the Paraclete gives to those who love God with all their heart, all their soul, and all their strength.

The path of contemplation

The greater one's degree of charity, the greater is one's familiarity with God, which makes contemplation possible. Even the lowest stage of charity, found in a person who is content with not sinning grievously but who doesn't seek to do God's will in everything, establishes a certain conformity with the divine will. Nevertheless, a love that does not aspire to love more, that does not possess the fervor of piety, is more akin to the formal courtesy of a stranger than to the affection of a son or daughter. Anyone who is satisfied with this relationship with God will attain only a weak and transient knowledge of revealed truth, for if any one is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.33

Very different is the case of a person who sincerely desires to embrace God's will in all things and, with the help of grace, uses the means at his disposal: mental and vocal prayer, reception of the sacraments (frequent confession and holy communion), work and the faithful fulfilment of one's duties, seeking God's presence throughout the day, being faithful to a plan of life and striving for a deep Christian formation.

Modern society leads many people to live on externals, ever anxious to acquire things, to move around, to look, to distract oneself, perhaps seeking to mask one's inner emptiness, the loss of the transcendent meaning of one's life. But we, having discovered the divine call to holiness and apostolate, should have the opposite experience. The more agitated our exterior activity, the more intense should be our inner life, our interior recollection, seeking to dialogue with God present in our soul in grace, mortifying the desires of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.34 To contemplate God one needs a clean heart. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.35

Let us ask our holy Mother Mary to obtain for us from the Holy Spirit the gift of being contemplatives in our daily life, a gift that shone forth so brightly in her own life.

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1 St. Josemaría , Friends of God, 238.

2 St. Josemaría , Conversations, 114.

3 St. Josemaría , Friends of God, 56.

4 Cf. Lk 18:1.

5 Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 7, 7.

6 St. Gregory the Great, Homilies on Ezechiel, 2, 5, 19.

7 John Paul II, Address to conference o “The greatness of ordinary life” for the centenary of Blessed Josemaría, 12 January 2002, 2.

8 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1028.

9 Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q.12, a.2, c; II–II, q.4, a.1; q.180, a.5, c.

10 1 Cor 13:12.

11 Catechism of the Catholic Church, 163.

12 St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul, 2, 18, 5.

13 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II–II, q.180, a.1, c and a.3, ad 1.

14 St. Josemaría , The Way, 91.

15 St. Josemaría, Friends of God, 307.

16 St. Josemaría , Friends of God, 296.

17 Ibid.

18 Cf. Jn 14:23.

19 Cf. 1 Cor 3:16; 2 Cor 6:16.

20 Gal 4:4-6.

21 Cf. 1 Cor 12:12-13, 27; Eph 2:19-22; 4:4.

22 1 Jn 4:8.

23 Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II–II, q.24 a.7, c. In Epist. Ad Rom., c.5, lect. 1.

24 1 Cor 2:10-11.

25 Cf. Mt 11:27.

26 St. Josemaría, “The joy of serving God”.

27 Cf. John Paul II, Address, 9 April 1989.

28 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II–II, q.45, a.2, ad 1.

29 Cf. Jn 6:69; Rom 8:5.

30 St. Josemaría, “The liqueur of wisdom”.

31 1 Cor 2:10.

32 St. Josemaría , Christ is Passing By, 163.

33 Jas 1:23-24.

34 1 Jn 2:16.

35 Mt 5:8.

Work and contemplation (II)

Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”1

The figures of Martha and Mary have often been used throughout history to represent two different forms of life, the contemplative life and the active life, with the first being seen as the more perfect, in keeping with our Lord's words: Mary has chosen the good portion.

Usually these concepts have been applied to the religious vocation, understanding by contemplative life, in broad terms, living apart from the world in order to dedicate oneself to prayer, and by active life efforts such as teaching Christian doctrine, caring for the sick, and other works of mercy.

Viewed from this perspective, for centuries the possibility to be a contemplative “in the midst of activity” has been recognized. The classical meaning of this expression, however, is not that it is possible for the ordinary faithful to be contemplatives in their professional, family and social activities, but rather that this is possible through the apostolic activities and works of mercy on the path of the religious vocation.

St. Josemaría drew new meaning from our Lord's words to Martha and showed that there is no opposition between contemplation and carrying out, as perfectly as possible, our professional work and daily duties.

In a previous editorial we have considered the meaning of Christian contemplation: the simple prayer of many souls who, with loving docility to the Holy Spirit and seeking identification with Christ in everything, are led by the Paraclete to penetrate the depths of God's intimate life, his works and designs, with a wisdom that expands their hearts and minds ever more fully. It is a prayer in which “words are not needed, because the tongue cannot express itself. The intellect grows calm. One does not reason; one looks! And the soul breaks out once more into song, a new song, because it feels and knows it is under the loving gaze of God, all day long.”2

We now want to examine three possible “modes” of contemplation: in periods dedicated exclusively to prayer; while working at a task or doing something that doesn't require total concentration; and finally, in the case of work that absorb all of one's attention. These three channels together make up the life of contemplation, whereby amid daily activities the soul dwells both “in heaven and on earth,” as St. Josemaría used to say.

In the prayer and acts of piety

Contemplation has to be sought first of all in the acts of piety that adorn each day, especially the periods dedicated exclusively to mental prayer.

“Et in meditatione mea exardescit ignis —'And in my meditation a fire shall flame out.' That is why you go to pray: to become a bonfire, a living flame giving heat and light.”3 Well done mental prayer is, as it were, a “boiler” that spreads heat to all the other moments of the day.

Daily fidelity to mental prayer is what enables a person to become a contemplative soul in the middle of the world throughout the day. This requires struggling to maintain a spirit of recollection in the periods dedicated to prayer; assiduous dialogue with our Lord, at times by meditating on a passage from Scripture or a book that helps to focus our mind and heart on God; fighting to overcome distractions; the humility to begin again and again, relying not on our own strength but on God's grace.

St. Josemaría taught us to seek contemplation in the periods dedicated to mental prayer: to contemplate Christ's life, to look steadily at him in the Eucharist, to converse with the three Divine Persons through our Lord's Most Holy Humanity, to go to Jesus through Mary.… In the mental prayer we cannot settle for just reciting vocal prayers, although perhaps we may have to make use of them for an extended period, but always seeing them as the door that opens the path to contemplation.

Also on a human plane, when friends meet, their conversation normally starts with some conventional phrases. But this can't be the extent of their dialogue. Their conversation has to become more personal, until eventually words become superfluous because of a deep mutual understanding and familiarity. This is even more true with God. “We start with vocal prayers… First one brief aspiration, then another, and another… till our fervor seems insufficient, because words are too poor… then this gives way to intimacy with God, looking at God without needing rest or feeling tired.”4

While working or in any activity

Contemplation is not restricted to times dedicated to mental prayer. It can be a reality throughout the day, in ordinary activities, while doing the things that need to be done but that don't require total concentration, or during a break in our work.

We can contemplate God while walking along the street, while fulfilling family and social duties, while doing something we find easy, or during an interval in our work, or simply while waiting.…

Just as aspirations, during our mental prayer, can be a pathway to contemplation, so too in the midst of other occupations the search for God's presence leads to contemplative life, as God made St. Josemaría experience. “I can't understand it: I know someone who is cold (in spite of his faith, which is unbounded) when close to the divine fire of the Tabernacle. And yet later, in the street, amid the noise of cars and trams and people—even reading a newspaper!—he is carried away by a mad love for God.”5

This reality is entirely God's gift, but we will receive it only if we truly want it and don't hinder it through our actions. We can refuse it by failing to keep our senses recollected, or by allowing ourselves to be overcome by curiosity, or immersing ourselves in a torrent of useless thoughts and daydreams that lead us to become distracted and spiritually drained. In a word, when our head and heart “are not in” what we are doing.6 Contemplative life requires interior mortification, denying ourselves for the love of God, so that he can reign in our hearts and be the focus of all our thoughts and affections.

Contemplation in and through ordinary activities

We know that in our prayer we can't be satisfied with reciting aspirations or just reading or meditating; rather we need to dialogue with God and seek to attain, with his grace, contemplation. So too in our work, which has to become prayer, it's not enough just to offer it at the start and give thanks at the end, or to try to renew the offering from time to time, united to the sacrifice of the Mass. All this is undoubtedly very pleasing to God. But a son or daughter of God has to be more daring and aim higher: to work like Jesus in Nazareth, united to him—so that, thanks to the supernatural love with which we work, we come to contemplate God who is Love.7

St Josemaría always taught that contemplation is possible not only while we are doing something, but also by means of the things God wants us to do, in and through the tasks themselves, even when requiring total concentration. St. Josemaria insisted that, if we struggle, a moment will come when we won't be able to distinguish contemplation from action; these two words will end up meaning the same to us.

As. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote: “When of two things the first is the reason for the second, the attention of the soul to the second does not hinder or lessen its attention to the first. And since God is apprehended by the saints as the reason for all things that will be done or known by them, their efforts in perceiving sensible things or in contemplating or doing anything else will in no way hinder their contemplation of God, nor conversely.”8 Thus if we want to receive the gift of contemplation, we need to make God the end of all our actions,doing them not to please men, but to please God who tests our hearts.9

Since contemplation is, as it were, an anticipation of the beatific vision, the ultimate goal in our life, anything that forms part of God's will for us (including our work, and family and social duties) can be a channel for contemplation. In other words, given that any of these activities can be carried out for and with the love of God, they can also be a means of contemplation, which is nothing other than an especially intimate form of knowing and loving him.

We can contemplate God in the activities we carry out for love of him, because that love is a participation in the infinite Love which is the Holy Spirit, who searches everything, even the depths of God.10 The soul that works out of love for God realizes (without becoming distracted) that it loves while working, with the love the Paraclete pours into the hearts of the children of God in Christ.11 “We see the hand of God, not only in the wonders of nature, but also in our experience of work and effort.”12

We can also contemplate God through our work, because if it is done for love it will be done as perfectly as possible given the circumstances; it will reflect the divine perfections, like the work of Christ himself. Not necessarily because it is humanly successful, but because it is successful in God's eyes. It may in fact turn out badly, or be a failure from a human point of view, yet nevertheless be well done from God's point of view—done with an upright intention, a spirit of service, and the practice of virtue: in a word, both humanly and supernaturally perfect. Work done in this way is a means of contemplation. And thus we can see that contemplation is possible in and through activities that require total concentration

A Christian who works for love of God works in vital union with Christ. Our work thus becomes God's work, operatio Dei, and hence a means of contemplation. But for this to be true, it is not enough to be in the state of grace and for the work to be morally acceptable. It must also be informed by heroic charity, and carried out with heroic virtue, and in the divine manner the gifts of the Holy Spirit confer on those who are docile to his action.

Contemplation in daily life gives the soul a foretaste of definitive union with God in heaven. It leads us to work with ever greater love, enkindling the desire to see him not just through the activities we carry out, but face to face. “We begin to live as captives, as prisoners. And while we carry out as perfectly as we can (with all our mistakes and limitations) the tasks allotted to us by our situation and duties, our soul longs to escape. It is drawn towards God like iron drawn by a magnet. One begins to love Jesus, in a more effective way, with the sweet and gentle surprise of his encounter… It is a new mode of going about this earth, a mode that is divine, supernatural, marvellous. Remembering oft‑repeated phrases of the Spanish Golden Age, we may like to taste for ourselves that truth: 'I am alive; or rather, not I; it is Christ that lives in me!' (cf. Gal 2:20).”13

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1 Lk 10:38-42

2 St. Josemaría, Friends of God, 307

3 St. Josemaría, The Way, 92

4 St. Josemaría, Friends of God, 296

5 St. Josemaría, Intimate notes, no. 673 (26 March 1932). Cited by Andres Vazquez de Prada, in The Founder of Opus Dei, vol. 1, p. 320.

6 St. Josemaría, cf. The Way 815.

7 Cf. 1 Jn 4:8

8 St. Thomas Aquinas, S. Th., Suppl., q. 82, a. 3 ad 4

9 1 Thess 2:4

10 1 Cor 2:10

11 Cf. Rom 5:5

12 St. Josemaría, Christ is Passing By, 48

13 St. Josemaría, Friends of God, 296-297

God’s Work

St. Josemaría used to speak about the “old novelty”of the message he had received from God. It is, he said, “as old as the Gospel, and also as new.”1 It is “old” because the spirit of Opus Dei was practised by the first Christians, who knew they were called to holiness and apostolate without leaving the world, without setting aside their daily occupations. Therefore, “if you want a point of comparison, the easiest way to understand Opus Dei is to consider the life of the early Christians. They lived their Christian vocation seriously, seeking earnestly the holiness to which they had been called by their Baptism.”2 The Founder of Opus Dei was filled with joy when he found traces of this message in the writings of the Fathers of the Church. St. John Chrysostom's words addressed to the faithful of the fourth century are very clear in this regard. “I do not say to you that you should forsake the cities, and leave aside the business citizens do. No. You should remain where you are, but practise virtue. In truth, I would prefer that those who live in the midst of cities should shine out on account of their virtue rather than those who have gone to live in the mountains. Because a great good ensues from this, since no one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel. And do not come to me saying: I have children, I have a wife, I have to look after a household and cannot fulfil what you ask of me. If you had none of these things, and you were lukewarm, everything would be lost. Even when all these things surround you, if you are fervent, you will practise virtue. Old men and young, married men and fathers of families, artisans and soldiers, all have fulfilled what was commanded them by the Lord. David was young. Joseph was a slave. Aquila worked at a manual task. Another was the guardian of a prison, and another a centurion like Cornelius. Another was sick like Timothy, and another a fugitive slave like Onesimus. And still none of this was an obstacle for any of them, and they all shone out on account of their virtue: men and women, old and young, slaves and freemen, soldiers and ordinary people.”3

The circumstances of ordinary life are not an obstacle, but rather the material and the path of sanctification. This reality is fulfilled in Opus Dei. Along with the weaknesses and defects proper to each one, those striving to practice the spirit of the Work are, like the first disciples, “Christian citizens who want to respond fully to the demands of their faith.”4 The spirit of Opus Dei is for Christians who do not need to leave their place in the world in order to find and love God. As John Paul II said, commenting on a teaching of St. Josemaría, “the Lord wants to enter into a communion of love with each one of his children, in the context of everyday activities, in the ordinary context in which one's existence unfolds.”5

St. Josemaría said back in 1932: “In raising up the Work during these years, God has wanted to ensure that people never again forget the fact that everyone should seek holiness, and that for the majority of Christians this means sanctifying themselves in the world, in their ordinary work. That is why, as long as there are men on earth, the Work will exist. This will always be a reality: people of every profession or occupation who seek holiness in their ordinary work and circumstances, being contemplative souls in the middle of the world.”6

The teachings St. Josemaría transmitted to us with his word and writings, along with his example, make up a spirit that has its own characteristic features: the sense of divine sonship, contemplative spirit in ordinary life, fusion of priestly soul and lay mentality, love for freedom, the joy of God's children… These and all the other aspects of our Founder's teachings are not merely juxtaposed elements, but sparks from that unique spirit capable of shaping and penetrating all the moments and circumstances of our lives.

Like a door that turns naturally on its hinge, the spirit of the Work“hinges upon ordinary work, professional work carried out in the midst of the world.”7 The hinge of a door is not more important than the door itself, but it occupies a singular position. Just as a hinge by itself would be useless, without the door, similarly a professional occupation, however much it might shine, would have little meaning if it became an end in itself, rather than a means to sanctify all one's ordinary, family and social life. And at the same time, what good is a door without its hinge? For us, professional work and family and social duties are inseparable elements of our unity of life, absolutely necessary to sanctify ourselves and to sanctify the world from within, shaping human society according to God's will.8

Our professional work can indeed be God's work, operatio Dei, because we are adopted children of God and we are all identified with Christ. The only–begotten Son has become man to unite us to himself, as the members of a body are united to the head, and he wants to work through each one of us. Truly we are Christ's as Christ is God's.9 He lives and works in the Christian through grace.

St. Josemaría preached tirelessly that any honest human task can be sanctified, can become holy, can be turned into a work of God. And work sanctified in this way identifies us with Christ, perfect God and perfect Man, sanctifying and perfecting us, shaping us into his image. “It is time for us Christians to shout from the rooftops that work is a gift from God.”10 Work is not a punishment or a curse, but a reality desired and blessed by the Creator before original sin,11 a reality the Son of God Incarnate took upon himself at Nazareth. There Jesus spent many years at his daily work in the company of our Lady and St. Joseph, without human glamour, but with divine splendor. “In his hands, a professional occupation, similar to that carried out by millions of men in the world, was turned into a divine task. It became a part of our redemption, a way to salvation.”12 Christ has raised the very effort demanded by work to being an instrument of liberation from sin, of redemption and sanctification.13 There is no upright human task, insisted John Paul II, that cannot “be transformed into a sphere and matter of sanctification, into a field for development of the virtues and into a dialogue of love.”14

Work in our hands, as it was in Christ's, must be turned into prayer to God and service to mankind for the co–redemption of the whole human race. God formed man from the mud of the earth and made him share in his creative power, so that man could bring creation to perfection, transforming it with his own intelligence.15 However, after sinning, instead of raising the realities of the earth to God's glory by means of work, man frequently blinds and degrades himself. But Jesus has turned the mud into ointment to cure our blindness, as he did with the man born blind from birth.16 When we discover that work can be sanctified, everything we do or touch takes on a new meaning. And we begin to see and love God, to be contemplatives, in situations where beforehand everything seemed monotonous and very ordinary, or else unfolded along a merely earthly horizon, without any eternal and supernatural repercussion.

A splendid panorama unfolds before our eyes: “sanctifying work, sanctifying ourselves in our work, sanctifying with our work.”17 We are the protagonists in the divine plan of placing Christ at the summit of all human activities. This is a plan God wanted our Father to see with a startling clear view that led him to write, full of faith in grace and confidence in our response: “I contemplate now, throughout the ages to come, all my children who, right to the end of time, will carry out their profession—since we are children of God, I repeat—with the wisdom of an artist, the happiness of a poet, the security of a master and a modesty more persuasive than eloquence. And I see them, in seeking Christian perfection in their profession and state in the world, contributing to the good of all mankind.”18

How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings… For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.19 The Blessed Trinity granted light to St. Josemaría to contemplate deeply the mystery of Jesus Christ, the light of men.20 God granted him “a vivid perception of the mystery of the Incarnate Word, thanks to which he understood in a profound way that the framework of human realities is intimately fused, in the heart of a person reborn in Christ, with the economy of supernatural life, and so is being turned into the place and means of sanctification.”21 The spirit of the Work has already illumined the paths of a multitude of men and women from the most varied cultures and conditions, leading them to take up the adventure of seeking holiness in the naturalness of ordinary life. It is an adventure of love for God, filled with self–denial, that imbues the soul with happiness and sows Christ's peace all over the world.22

John Paul II encouraged us to follow faithfully the example of St. Josemaría. “You should continue your mission faithfully and zealously, following in the footsteps of your Founder. Show with your daily efforts that Christ's love can bring life to every facet of one's existence.”23 We count above all on the intercession of our Mother. We ask her to prepare our daily path for us, and to always keep it safe. Cor Mariae dulcissimum, iter para tutum!, iter serva tutum!

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1 Conversations 24

2 Ibid.

3 St. John Chrysostom, In Mattheum homiliae 43, 5

4 Conversations 24.

5 John Paul II, Allocution in the audience for participants in the congress “The grandeur of ordinary life” 12 January 2002, 2

6 St. Josemaría, Letter 9 January 1932, 91-92

7 Christ is Passing By,45.

8 Cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Lumen Gentium, 33.

9 Cf. Jn 6:56-57; 17, 23; I Cor 3:23; Col 1:26-29; Gal 2:20; Rom. 8:10-11

10 Christ is Passing By,47

11 Cf. Gen 2:25

12 Conversations 55

13 Cf. I Cor 6:11

14 John Paul II, Address at the audience for participants in the congress “The grandeur of ordinary life” 12 January, 2002, 2

15 Cf. Gen 2:7.15

16 Cf. Jn 7:7

17 Christ is Passing By,44

18 St. Josemaría, Letter,9 January 1932, 4

19 Ps 36:7-10

20 Jn 1:4

21 Congregation for the Causes of the Saints. Decree on the heroic virtues of the Venerable Servant of God, Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer,9 April 1990

22 Cf. Eph 1:10

23 John Paul II, Address at the audience for participants in the congress “The grandeur of ordinary life” 12 January 2002, 4

Work and rest

“Man ought to imitate God both in working and also in resting, since God himself wished to present his own creative activity under the form of work and rest.”1

These words of John Paul II refer to the Creation account, the first “gospel of work.”2 The sacred author, after describing how over the course of six days God gave existence to the heavens, to the earth and all that was in it, concludes: And on the seventh day God finished his work which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all his work which he had done in creation.3

From then on men and women are called to perfect this divine work through their own work,4 not forgetting that they too are creatures, the fruit of God's love and called to a definitive union with him. Resting on the seventh day, hallowed by God, takes on a deep human significance. As well as a need, it is the appropriate time to acknowledge God as the author and Lord of all creation, and an anticipation of the definitive rest and joy of the Resurrection.

A life that is lived under the constant pressure of work, without time to consider the source from which all things come and to which all things tend as their final goal, could lead people “to forget that God is the Creator upon whom everything depends”5 and to whom everything is directed.

Doing everything for the glory of God, unity of life, means living with a solid foundation and a supernatural meaning and goal. It means resting on our divine filiation as we work and converting our rest into a service to God and others.

“In the Work, everything is a means of holiness: work and rest; life of piety and the joys of living together; happiness and pain. In a word, every moment in our life contains a possibility for sanctification: in all things we ought to love and fulfil God's will.”6

Place of work and rest

Work is a gift of God and creation itself is already a call.7 The fact that God calls a free creature into existence out of love implies a vocation that asks for a reply.

Work is the place of encounter between God's creative freedom and human freedom, the place for our response, and therefore for prayer and contemplation, expressed in deeds. When a person sees God's hand in all created realities, especially in others and in himself, he strives to do everything with the perfection willed by God, seeking in this way his own fulfillment.

The divine invitation to work comes from the heart of a Father who wishes to count on the cooperation of his children. Our response has to be a humble and child–like response, undertaken out of love, not an autonomous initiative that seeks our own glory.

St. Josemaria used a graphic image that can be applied to our work. A little boy goes to help a group of fishermen as they haul in a net. He grabbed hold of the net “with his tiny hands and began to tug away with evident clumsiness. The tough, unsophisticated fishermen must have felt their hearts soften, for they allowed the child to join in, without chasing him away, even though he was more of a hindrance than a help.”8

God knows his creatures well. While inviting us to collaborate with him, he knows that our nature is fragile and vulnerable. The divine calling to work includes the need to rest. As we see in the creation account, “the alternation between work and rest, built into human nature, is willed by God himself.”9

This need is due in the first place to our physical limitations. If we were to overestimate our own strength, or misunderstand the true meaning of a spirit of sacrifice, we could cause damage to our own health that is not willed by God and that could end up limiting our ability to serve him.

There are times, certainly, when our Lord may ask us for more of an effort or place us in situations that require a heroic detachment even from our health in order to carry out his will. Don Álvaro, who rose from his sick bed with a very high fever to go looking for money when Villa Tevere was being built, is an example of this unconditional love.

At the same time, however, and for the same reason, in order to serve God, we need time to relax, as our Father indicated on numerous occasions: “I think it is appropriate to remind you about the need for rest. If sickness comes, we receive it joyfully as coming from the hand of God. But we cannot provoke it by our own imprudence. We are human and we need to restore our strength.”10

It would be a pity if, despite the opportunity to rest, our strength were to be undermined because we failed to make use of this opportunity. Knowing that we belong to God and not to ourselves, we have the responsibility to look after our health, in order to be able to give all the glory to God.

Rest is also a spiritual need, “something sacred, because it is man's way of withdrawing from the sometimes excessively demanding cycle of earthly tasks in order to renew his awareness that everything is the work of God.”11

Time spent away from the demands of work, with its deadlines, goals, risks and uncertainties, facilitates the serenity required to get a broader perspective on life.

Discerning when to disconnect ourselves periodically from these demands can sometimes require an act of abandonment in our Lord. It also helps us to see our job in the right perspective, “convinced that the triumphs of the human race are a sign of God's greatness and the flowering of his own mysterious design.”12

We work out of fidelity, out of love, so that God can use our self–giving as he wishes, never attributing any results to ourselves: So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.13 Taking a break from our usual work helps us to value the disproportion between our personal contribution and the fruits of holiness and apostolate it produces.

If we are objective, with the objectivity that comes from faith and from being close to our Lord, we will see that even the effort we put into our work is a gift of God, who sustains, guides and encourages us. Professional work, whether in the laboratory, factory, workshop, field or family home, is the hinge of our holiness and the framework for our existence. But it should never absorb other aspects of our life that are equally important.

“If after six days of work… people look for time to relax and to pay more attention to other aspects of their lives, this corresponds to an authentic need which is in full harmony with the vision of the Gospel message.”14

Time spent with family and friends, or to improve one's formation and culture, or to talk more calmly with our Lord, are wonderful opportunities to seek holiness, where “daily concerns and tasks can find their proper perspective: the material things about which we worry give way to spiritual values; in a moment of encounter and less pressured exchange, we see the true face of the people with whom we live.”15

Leisure thus also responds to the need to be vigilant, to slow down sufficiently to correct our direction so as to place God at the center and discover him in those around us. Workshops, a walk with one's family, times of prayer, get–togethers, retreats, are all examples of activities which, in their own way, meet this need to be vigilant.

They also have the essential elements of meaningful rest: restoring bodily and spiritual strength through a change of activity (because to rest does not mean to be idle), which helps us set aside daily concerns and put them in their proper place.

This is particularly important in spheres where excessive competitiveness motivated by the quest for success tends to absorb so much time and energy that it is hard to meet other obligations. God's way of working is the model for our own work. If God “rested and was refreshed” on the seventh day, we too should rest and ensure that those around us, especially those in need, “are refreshed.”16

“Sunday rest then becomes 'prophetic,' affirming not only the absolute primacy of God, but also the primacy and dignity of the person with respect to the demands of social and economic life, and anticipating in a certain sense the 'new heavens' and the 'new earth,' in which liberation from slavery to needs will be final and complete. In short, the Lord's Day thus becomes in the truest sense the day of man as well.”17

Foretaste of the Resurrection

In Christ, with the fullness of Revelation, work and rest are ennobled, inserted into the plan of salvation. As a foretaste of the Resurrection, rest illuminates the weariness of work and reveals it as union with the Cross of Christ.

“'My Father is working still' (Jn 5:17)… He works with creative power by sustaining in existence the world that he called into being from nothing, and he works with salfivic power in the hearts of those whom from the beginning he has destined for 'rest' (Heb 4:1.9-16) in union with himself in his 'Father's house' (Jn 14:2).”18

Just as Christ's Cross and Resurrection are inseparably united, although one occurs after the other in time, so too should work and rest constitute a living unity in our own life. Therefore, above any temporal events or change of occupation as we take a break from our work, we rest in our Lord, we find repose in our divine filiation.

This new perspective places rest alongside work as a filial task, even though it does not rid work of the effort and tiredness it involves. But what is eliminated is the tiredness that stems from working out of pride and self affirmation, or solely for human motives. God doesn't want this kind of tiredness: It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil.19

“Rest, my children, in your divine filiation. God is a Father, full of tenderness and infinite love. Call him Father often, and tell him, when you are alone with him, that you love him, that you love him greatly, that you feel the pride and strength of being his children.”20

The strength of being God's children leads us to work with more sacrifice and abnegation, embracing the daily Cross with the strength of the Holy Spirit, so as to fulfill God's will faithfully. It enables us “to work without rest,” because the tiredness produced by work becomes redemptive. It is worthwhile, then, expending all our energies in our work, not only for the material reward we can expect, but because we are bringing the world to Christ.

When we work with this goal, we experience the supernatural reward of peace and joy: Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful over a little, I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.21 And our work yields apostolic fruit: Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.22

Therefore, work “cannot consist in the mere exercise of human strength in external action; it must leave room for man to prepare himself, by becoming more and more what in the will of God he ought to be, for the 'rest' that the Lord reserves for his servants and friends.”23

In the account of the Transfiguration, we are told that six days after announcing his passion and death, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart. And he was transfigured before them.24 St. Thomas, in commenting on this passage, relates the seventh day when God rested from his work of creation to the seventh day (six days after announcing…) when our Lord revealed himself to his disciples to give them an anticipation of his glorious Resurrection, so that they would raise their sights and not settle for purely earthly goals.25 The three disciples, overcome by the contemplation of the glory to which they have been called, express the joy of resting in the Lord and with the Lord: Lord, it is well that we are here; if you wish, I will make three booths here,26 Peter exclaims, anticipating the joy and peace of heaven.

This moment would not yet last forever. Nevertheless, the light and peace of Tabor will be the source of strength to continue on the path that passes through the Cross and leads to the Resurrection. We too find rest in our filial abandonment, the peace and serenity of knowing that behind the tiredness, difficulties and concerns that life here on earth brings, we have an eternal and all–powerful Father who upholds us.

Working with a vision of eternity prevents useless worries and sterile anxieties, and infuses every task with the desire to see the face of Christ definitively. Sanctifying rest, and especially Sunday, which is the paradigm of Christian rest and a celebration of our Lord's Resurrection, helps us to discover the sense of eternity and to renew our hope.

“Sunday symbolises that truly singular day which will follow the present time, the day without end which will know neither evening nor morning, the imperishable age which will never grow old; Sunday is the ceaseless foretelling of life without end which renews the hope of Christians and encourages them on their way.”27

Sanctifying rest and relaxation

The first Christians lived their faith in a pagan and hedonistic environment. From the beginning, they realized that following Christ was incompatible with forms of rest or relaxation that corrupt and dehumanize people. St. Augustine, referring to this type of entertainment, said in a homily: “Refuse to go; assert control over the concupiscence of your heart and be strong and persevering.”28

We shouldn't be surprised to see once again today, in “neo–pagan” environments around us, blatant expressions of this spiritual poverty. “Therefore, among the forms of culture and entertainment which society offers, the faithful should choose those which are most in keeping with a life lived in obedience to the precepts of the Gospel.”29

It is not a question of shutting ourselves up in a hermetically sealed environment. Each of us, with initiative and daring, and with genuine love for souls, needs to strive to transmit the Christian meaning and joy of rest to the society around us. As Don Alvaro reminded us, each of us is called to strive to foster “a Christian tone in social life, in entertainment, in the way free time is spent.”30

Jesus, Mary and Joseph show us that family life can allow time for rest and celebration: Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover.31 The family, a spiritual space, is a school for learning how to rest while thinking of others. Therefore it is important to plan holidays well, to spend leisure time with one's children, in order to get to know them well and converse with them, and play with the younger ones.… We need to learn how to make family life pleasant, and not fall back on the easy option of leaving the younger children in front of the television or surfing the Internet.

Today it is more important than ever to select interesting programs on television and watch them with the children, to teach them temperance in the use of the computer, so that they learn to use it above all as work tool and always with a specific goal in mind.

St. Luke's Gospel also shows us how the boy Jesus, moved by the Holy Spirit, took advantage of the Passover journey to Jerusalem to bring light to those around him: and all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.32

The need to rest is not an interruption in our apostolic efforts. On the contrary, it opens new possibilities, new occasions to deepen in our friendship and to get to know people and environments where we can bring the light of Christ. The Second Vatican Council encouraged all Christians to take on the challenging effort “to animate the cultural expressions and group activities characteristic of our times with a human and a Christian spirit.”33

The Church needs people with a lay mentality to help implement this aspect of the new evangelisation. “It is urgent that we strive to re–christianise popular celebrations and customs. It is urgent that public amusements should no longer be left to face the dilemma of being either 'soppy' or pagan. Ask God to provide laborers for this much–needed work, which could be called the 'entertainment apostolate'.”34

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1 John Paul II, Encyclical Laborem exercens (14 September 1981), 25

2 Ibid.

3 Gen 2:1-3

4 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 307

5 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Dies Domini (31 May 1998), 65

6 Alone with God, 29

7 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2566

8 Friends of God, 14

9 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Dies Domini ( 31 May 1998), 65

10 St. Josemaria, Letter 15 October 1948, 14

11 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Dies Domini (31 May 1998), 65

12 John Paul II, Encyclical Laborem exercens (14 September 1981), 25

13 1 Cor 3:7

14 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Dies Domini (31 May 1998), 67

15 Ibid.

16 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2172

17 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Dies Domini (31 May 1998), 68

18 John Paul II, Encyclical Laborem exercens (14 September 1981), 25

19 Psalm 127[126]:2

20 Alone with God, 221

21 Mt 25:21 and 23

22 Lk. 19:17

23 John Paul II, Encyclical Laborem exercens (14 September 1981), 25

24 Mt 17:1-4

25 Cf. St. Thomas, In Matth. Ev., XXVII, 1

26 Mt 17:4

27 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Dies Domini (31 May 1998), 26

28 St. Augustine, Sermo 88, 17

29 John Paul II, Apostolic Letter, Dies Domini (31 May 1998), 68

30 Don Alvaro del Portillo, Family Letters (I),386

31 Lk 2:41

32 Lk 2:47

33 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et spes, 61

34 The Way, 975

The hinge of our sanctification

Among all the temporal activities that can be sanctified, daily work holds a primordial place in St. Josemaría's teaching. He constantly stressed that the sanctification of work “is, as it were, the hinge of true spirituality for people who, like us, have decided to come close to God while being at the same time fully involved in temporal affairs.”1

And he insisted: “the sole objective of Opus Dei has always been to see to it that there be men and women of all races and social conditions who endeavour to love and to serve God and the rest of mankind in and through their ordinary work, in the midst of the realities and interests of the world.”2

This teaching of St. Josemaría is a particular characteristic of the spirit God revealed to him on October 2nd, 1928. It is not the only way to approach the sanctification of temporal affairs, but it is the one that is proper and specific to the spirit of Opus Dei. Since the human condition, our human lot, is to work, “the supernatural vocation to holiness and apostolate according to the spirit of Opus Dei confirms this human vocation to work … one of the essential signs of this vocation is precisely a determination to remain in the world and to do a job as perfectly as possible (taking into account, of course, one's personal imperfections), both from the human and from the supernatural point of view.”3

Professional work

“Our ordinary activities are not an insignificant matter. Rather they are the very hinge on which our sanctity turns, and they offer us constant opportunities of meeting God, and of praising him and glorifying him through our intellectual or manual work.”4 In this passage and on many other occasions St. Josemaria, employing the expression the “hinge on which our sanctity turns,” refers at times to work and at other times to the sanctification of work. To work, because it is the very material the hinge is made of. And to the sanctification of work, because work alone is not enough: if it is not sanctified it cannot act as a hinge in the search for holiness.

The work St. Josemaria envisages as the hinge of the spiritual life is not just any kind of activity. It does not involve tasks carried out as a “hobby” to cultivate an interest, or for other reasons, even if done out of necessity and requiring effort. It is specifically a question of professional work : the publicly recognised task— munus publicum —which each one carries out in civil society, as an activity that configures, serves and builds up society. This activity brings with it duties and responsibilities, as well as rights, including the right to a just remuneration. Professional work includes, for example, that of an architect, carpenter, teacher, or work in the home.

In a certain way the priestly ministry can also be referred to as professional work (St. Josemaria does so at times5 ), insofar as it is a public task at the service of all souls and, specifically, of the sanctification of the ordinary faithful in the fulfilment of their professional work, whereby they contribute to building up society in a Christian way. This mission requires the cooperation of the common and the ministerial priesthood. Although the priesthood is in itself a sacred ministry, a holy rather than a profane task, that doesn't automatically make holy the person who carries it out. The priest has to struggle to sanctify himself in the exercise of his ministry, and consequently he too can sanctify his work as the Founder of Opus Dei taught, carrying it out with a “truly priestly soul and a fully lay mentality.”6

It is also worth mentioning that at times St. Josemaria used the expression “professional work” to describe illness, and also old age and other situations in life that absorb the energies one would otherwise dedicate to a profession if one were able to do so. Such would be the case for example of a person searching for a position of employment. In referring to these situations as “professional work,” he makes it clear that those who find themselves in these circumstances ought to respond as if it were a professional task that has to be sanctified. Just as love for God leads us to carry out our professional duties as perfectly as possible, so also a sick person can, for love of God and with an apostolic intention, accept the demands of medical treatment, exercise or diet, and be a “good patient,” obeying to the point of becoming identified with Christ, obedient unto death, even death on a cross.7 Thus “illness and old age, when they come, are transformed into professional work. And so the search for holiness, in accord with the spirit of the Work, is not interrupted, which, like a door on its hinge, is supported by professional work.”8

Normally, though, the term “professional work” is used to describe a civil profession, and not these other situations to which it is applied by analogy. This professional work, in its proper and principal sense, is what constitutes the hinge or pivot of sanctification in the spirit of Opus Dei.

The tapestry of ordinary life

Family, professional and social duties form, as it were, a “tapestry” that is the raw material of sanctification and the apostolic terrain proper to the ordinary faithful. This tapestry can be woven in many different ways. One of the principal characteristics of the teaching of St. Josemaría is that family and social tasks are centered around professional work, a fundamental factor used by society to classify its citizens.9

Sanctification in the middle of the world demands the sanctification of the world “from the very heart of civil society, so as to fulfil St. Paul's dictum: instaurare omnia in Christo —to restore all things in Christ.”10 Carrying out this mission requires sanctifying the family, “the beginning and foundation of human society” and “its primary and vital cell.”11 But society is not simply a conjunction of families, just as a body is not a conglomerate of cells.

The social body has an organisation and structure, a life of its own. To imbue society with a Christian spirit, besides sanctifying the family, we need to sanctify social relations, creating a climate of friendship and service, giving a Christian tone to lifestyles, fashions and entertainment. Nevertheless, the diverse professional activities are what radically shape society, its organisation and life, and deeply influence family and social relations.

The sanctification of professional work (together with the sanctification of family and social life) is not only essential in order to shape society in accord with God's will, but it forms the “hinge” in the tapestry that these three aspects make up. It is not that professional duties are more important than family and social tasks, but rather that they serve as a support for the family and for social cohesion. The importance or priority of a duty depends on the order of charity, not on whether it is a professional, social or family duty.

Work can be the hinge of the whole spiritual life because, in addition to being of service for the good of the family and for the Christian configuration of society, it is also a field for attaining perfection through the exercise of virtue in ways specific to the professional setting, including justice in labor relations, responsibility and industriousness in one's work, and many expressions of fortitude, constancy, loyalty, and patience, to mention just some examples.

It is to the conjunction of all these elements that St. Josemaria is referring when he invites us to consider that “work is the vehicle through which each person is inserted into society, the means by which we find a place in the ensemble of human relationships, the instrument for assigning us a position, a place in human society. Professional work and being in the world are two sides of the same coin, two realities that mutually require one another, so that it is impossible to understand one outside the other.”12

Professional vocation

Since work is the hinge of the spiritual life in Opus Dei, we can understand why “our professional vocation is not simply a part, but rather a principal part of our supernatural vocation.”13

Each one's “professional vocation” stems from a number of factors: the qualities and aptitudes we receive from God; the particular duties we have to fulfil; the needs of our family and society; the real possibilities of choosing a particular career. All these factors, and not only our preferences and likes, are what configures each one's “professional vocation.” It is called a “vocation” because this conjunction of factors represents a call from God to choose the professional activity that is most appropriate as material for our sanctification and apostolate.

We should never forget, St Josemaría writes, that the professional vocation is part of our divine vocation “in so far as it is a means for attaining sanctity and for helping others to do so.”14 And therefore “if at any point the professional vocation were to become an obstacle … if it absorbs one to such an extent that it impedes interior life or the faithful fulfilment of one's duties of state … it is not part of the divine vocation, because it is no longer a professional vocation.”15

Since our professional vocation is determined in part by our specific situation, it is not a calling to exercise a fixed and predetermined professional work independent of circumstances. “The professional vocation is something continually being defined throughout our life. It often happens that a person who began a particular course of studies discovers afterwards that he is better gifted for other jobs, and switches career; or he ends up specialising in a different field from the one foreseen at the beginning; or he finds, in the full exercise of his chosen profession, a new field of work that allows him to improve his family's social position, or to contribute more effectively to the good of the community; or he is obliged, for reasons of health, to change his environment and occupation.”16

The professional vocation is a call to carry out a particular function in society: not just any one but, within the range of options available, the one best suited to the pursuit of holiness and apostolate through one's work. By carrying out this profession, one “earns a living, supports one's family, contributes to the common good, and develops one's own personality.”17 We shouldn't take just the easy option, as if all possibilities were equally valid, nor decide superficially, guided only by ours own preferences or career. The criterion for choosing has to be love for God and souls: the service we can offer to spread more effectively the Kingdom of Christ and further human progress, making a return on the talents we have received.

When the hinge is firmly in place the door turns safely and smoothly. When work is firmly grounded on divine filiation, when it is the work of a son or daughter of God—the “work of God,” like Christ's work—the entire tapestry of ordinary life is opened to God's grace. But if the hinge is missing, how can we imbue society with a Christian spirit? If it is rusted, or bent, or badly aligned, what use will it be no matter how precious the metal it is made of?

If it conflicts with family and social duties, even to the extent of paralysing them, we would have to ask: of what value is the hinge without the door? Above all, if work is torn away from its foundation, which is divine filiation, if it is not sanctified, what meaning can it have for a Christian?

“Let us ask our Lord Jesus for light, and beg him to help us discover, at every moment, the divine meaning which transforms our professional work into the hinge on which our calling to sanctity rests and turns. In the Gospel you will find that Jesus was known as faber, filius Mariae —the workman, the son of Mary. Well, we too, with a holy pride, have to prove with deeds that we are workers, men and women who really work!”18

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1 St. Josemaria, Friends of God, no. 61.

2 St. Josemaria, Conversations, no. 10.

3 Ibid., no. 70.

4 Friends of God, no. 81.

5 Cf. Friends of God, no. 265.

6 St. Josemaria, Letter ,28 March 1945, no. 3.

7 Phil 2:8

8 St. Josemaria, notes taken from his preaching, cited by Ernst Burkhart and Javier Lopez, Vida Cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de san Josemaría, Madrid 2013, vol. III, p. 165.

9 Cf. Vida Cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de san Josemaría, Madrid 2013, vol. III, pp. 222 ff.

10 St. Josemaria, Letter 14 February 1950, no. 20, cited by Ernst Burkhart and Javier Lopez, Vida Cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de san Josemaría, Madrid 2013, vol. 1, p. 81. Quote from St. Paul is Eph 1:10.

11 Second Vatican Council, Decree on the Lay Apostolate Apostolicam actuositatem, 11.

12 St. Josemaria, Letter, 6 May 1945, no. 13, cited by Ernst Burkhart and Javier Lopez, Vida Cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de san Josemaría, Madrid 2013, vol. III, p. 161.

13 St. Josemaria, Text from 31 May 1954. cited by Jose Luis Illanes in La sanctificacion del trabajo, Palabra, Madrid 1981, p. 42

14 St. Josemaria, Letter, 15 October 1948, no. 7, cited by Ernst Burkhart and Javier Lopez, Vida Cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de san Josemaría, Madrid 2013, vol. III, p. 180.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid., no. 33.

17 Conversations, no. 70

18 Friends of God, no. 62 (Gospel quote is Mk 6:3)

Working for love

“Work is born of love; it is a manifestation of love and is directed towards love.”1 On reading these words of St. Josemaría, questions may arise in our heart that lead to a sincere dialogue with God: Why do I work? Do I work well? What am I trying to achieve in my work? These questions can help us to remember that the aim of our life is not “to produce things” but to love God. “Holiness does not consist in doing more difficult things every day, but in doing them every day with greater love.”2

Many people work, and work a lot, but fail to sanctify it. They make things, construct objects, look for results. They work out of a sense of duty, or to earn money, or driven by ambition. Sometimes they are successful; other times they fail. They may find their work interesting and exciting, or tedious and boring. Their work may give rise to human fulfilment, but also to concerns and worries. Some give in to activism, others to laziness. Some work until exhaustion; others try to avoid tiredness at all costs.

All these attitudes have one thing in common: they stem from a human nature wounded by the consequences of sin, with all its conflicts and confusions. It is like a labyrinth in which people wander, as St. Paul says, according to the flesh (the “animalis homo”), entrapped and unable to find the path to the true meaning of freedom.

This path can only be discovered by raising our sights to contemplate life and work with God's light, who sees from on high. “Most people,” St. Josemaría writes in The Way, “have a plane–like vision, stuck to the earth, of two dimensions. When you live a supernatural life, God will give you the third dimension: height, and with it, perspective, weight and volume.”3

Work born of love

What then does it mean for the Christian that “work is born of love; it is a manifestation of love and is directed towards love?”4 In the first place, we need to have clear what kind of love St. Josemaría is referring to. People can have what is called a “love of concupiscence” when they love something to satisfy their own desires. In the final analysis, the work of a child of God does not stem from this kind of love, even though he or she may often work with great interest and enthusiasm.

Christians should not work only or principally when they feel like it or when things are going well. Their work stems from a higher kind of love: the “love of benevolence,” which directly wills the good of another person ( benevolentia ), not one's own advantage. If the love of benevolence is mutual it is called “love of friendship,”5 all the more so if one is ready, for friendship's sake, to give not just some object, but oneself: Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.6

We can love God with the love of supernatural friendship, because he has made us his children; he wants us to have recourse to him with filial trust, and to see others as his children and our brothers and sisters. This is the love to which the Founder of Opus Dei refers when he writes that “work is born of love”; it is the love of the children of God, a supernatural love for God and for others for his sake: God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.7

To want the good for someone doesn't mean always trying to please them. It may happen that what they want is not for their own good, as is the case when mothers don't give their children everything they want because it might do them harm. In contrast, to love God means always wanting to do his will, because God's will is the good.

Consequently, for a Christian, work is born of love for God, since filial love leads us to want to do his will, and his will is that we work.8 St. Josemaría used to say that for love of God he wanted to work like a donkey, like a donkey at the water–wheel.9 And God blessed his generosity, pouring out abundant graces that have given rise to countless fruits of holiness all over the world.

It is worthwhile asking ourselves frequently: why do we work? Is it for love of God or love of self? We might come up with other answers: for example, working out of necessity. However, this would indicate that our examination wasn't going deep enough, because working out of necessity is not the ultimate answer.

We also have to nourish ourselves out of necessity, in order to live. But what do we live for: for the glory of God, as St. Paul exhorts us,10 or for our own glory? This is also the reason why we eat and why we work. This is the fundamental question that goes right to the heart of things. If we examine ourselves sincerely, asking God for light, we will come to see clearly what is the real motive behind our professional efforts. And God will also give us the grace to purify our heart and to yield all the riches of love that he expects from the talents he has given us.

Work as an expression of love

A Christian's work expresses love, not only because, as we have seen, love for God leads us to work, but also because it leads us to work well, since that is what God wishes. Human work is truly a participation in the work of creation,11 and God, who created everything out of Love, wants all his works to be perfect— Dei perfecta sunt opera12 —and he wants us to imitate him in the way we work.

A perfect model for our work is Christ, who, as the Gospel tells us, did all things well.13 These words of praise that welled up spontaneously when people saw his miracles, worked by virtue of his Divinity, can also be applied to his toil in the workshop at Nazareth (as St. Josemaría does), carried out through his Humanity. It was a work done out of love for the Father and love for us; and it expressed this love precisely through the perfection with which it was done, not only technical perfection but a deep human perfection—the perfection of all the virtues that love puts into effect in a full and harmonious way, giving them an unmistakable tone: the joyful tone of a loving heart eager to give itself totally.

Our professional work is able to be an expression of love for God when it is well done. This doesn't imply that it necessarily has to turn out well, but rather that we try to do it as well as possible, using all the means available in the given circumstances.

Between the toil of a person who works out of self–love, and that of the same person who begins to work out of love for God and for others because of God, there is as much difference as that between the sacrifice of Cain and Abel. Abel strove to offer the best to God, and his offering was found acceptable. Our Lord expects the same of us.

“For a Catholic work is not just a matter of fulfilling a duty—it is to love, to excel oneself gladly in duty and in sacrifice.”14 “Carry out your work in the knowledge that God contemplates it: laborem manuum mearum respexit Deus ( Gen 31:42), God regarded the work of my hands. Our work therefore has to be holy and worthy of him: not only finished down to the last detail, but carried out with moral rectitude, nobility, loyalty, justice.”15 Then our professional work will not only be upright and holy but will also be prayer as well.16

When a person works for love of God, their professional activity reveals this love in one way or another. A simple glance at different people doing the same activity would probably not be sufficient to grasp the motive for which it is being done. But if one could observe with greater detail their overall attitude to work—not only the technical care, but also human relations with other colleagues at work, the spirit of service, loyalty and cheerfulness—it would be difficult not to recognise anyone possessing the bonus odor Christi,17 the aroma of Christ's love.

At the end of time, Jesus teaches, two men will be in the field; one is taken and one is left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one is taken and one is left.18 They are doing the same work, but not in the same way: one is pleasing to God and the other is not.

Nevertheless, the strong materialistic environment around us can often make us forget that we are called to share in eternal life, and we end up thinking only about immediate sensible goods. Therefore St. Josemaría stressed: “Work facing God, without seeking human glory. Some people see in work a means for winning recognition, or for acquiring power or wealth that gratifies their personal ambition, or for feeling the pride of their own capacity for work.”19

In this sort of climate, it will be hard not to notice a person who works for love of God. How could one fail to notice when justice is informed by charity, rather than being merely a dry and cold justice? Or when someone is striving for uprightness before God, rather than a self–serving uprightness before men, serving others out of love for God, not self–interest?

If one's work fails to express love for God, perhaps it is because the fire of love is quenched. If the warmth isn't noticed, if after a certain time of daily interaction with one's professional colleagues they cannot tell whether they are dealing with a committed Christian or just a decent and reliable person, then perhaps it is that the salt has become insipid.20 Love for God is contagious, seeking to share with others the greatest good possible. Is my work an expression of love for God? This question can give rise to abundant prayer.

Work directed towards love

Work, when carried out for love and with love, is work directed towards love—to the growth of love in the one who carries it out, to the growth of charity, which is the essence of holiness, of the human and supernatural perfection of a son or daughter of God. It is a work, therefore, which sanctifies us.

Sanctifying oneself in work means allowing oneself to be sanctified by the Holy Spirit, subsistent intra–Trinitarian Love, who dwells in the soul in grace and infuses it with charity. It means cooperating with him, putting into practice the love which he pours into our hearts as we fulfil our tasks. If we are docile to his action, if we do our work for love, the Paraclete will sanctify us; he will increase our charity, our capacity to love and to have an ever deeper and more continuous contemplative life.

The fact that work is directed towards love, and therefore to our sanctification, means that it also perfects us: it is directed to our identification with Christ, perfectus Deus, perfectus homo.21 To work for love of God, and love of others for God, requires putting into practice the other Christian virtues. Above all, faith and hope, which charity presupposes and vivifies. And also the human virtues, through which charity operates and unfolds, giving them shape. Our professional task has to be the arena where we exercise the whole gamut of human and supernatural virtues: industriousness, order, good use of time, fortitude to finish each task well, care for small things…; and so many small points of service to the others, which are manifestations of a sincere and refined charity.22 The practice of the human virtues is essential if we are to be contemplatives in the middle of the world, and specifically to transform our professional work into prayer and an offering pleasing to God, a means and an occasion of contemplative life.

St. Josemaría remarked on one occasion: “I contemplate because I work; and I work because I contemplate.”23 Loving and knowing God—contemplation—led him to work, and thus he said: “I work because I contemplate.” And work in turn becomes a means of sanctification and contemplation: “I contemplate because I work.”

It is like a circular movement—from contemplation to work, and from work to contemplation—focusing more and more on its center, Christ, who draws us to himself, attracting all things along with us, so that through him, with him, and in him, all honor and glory is given to God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit.24

The reality that the work of God's children is directed towards love, and consequently that it sanctifies them, explains why, from the perspective of holiness (which is what matters in the end), we cannot speak of professions of greater or lesser importance.

The “dignity of work is based on love.”25 “All work can have the same supernatural quality. There are no great or mean tasks. All are great if they are done with love. Those which are considered great become small when the Christian meaning of life is lost sight of.”26

If charity is lacking, work loses its value before God, no matter how outstanding it may appear to human eyes. If I understand all mysteries and all knowledge… but have not love, I am nothing,27 writes St. Paul. What is truly important is the “effort to divinize human things—be they great or small. For love gives a new dimension to everything.”28

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1 Christ is Passing By, no.48

2 St. Josemaría, notes from his preaching, cited by Ernst Burkhart and Javier Lopez, Vida cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de san Josemaría, Madrid 2013, vol. II, p. 295.

3 St. Josemaría ,The Way, no. 279

4 St. Josemaría ,Christ is Passing By, no. 48

5 Cf. St.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, q.23, a.1, c

6 Jn 15:13

7 Rom 5:5

8 Cf. Gen 2:15; 3:23; Mk 6:3; 2 Thess 3:6-12

9 Cf. St. Josemaría, The Way, no. 998.

10 Cf. 1 Cor 10:31

11 John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Laborem Exercens (14 September 1981), 25; Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2460

12 Deut 32:4 (Vg). Cf. Gen 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 302

13 Mk 7:37

14 St. Josemaría, Furrow, no. 527.

15 St. Josemaría, Letter 15 October 1948, no. 26, cited by Ernst Burkhart and Javier Lopez, Vida cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de san Josemaría, Madrid 2013, vol. III, p. 183.

16 Cf. St. Josemaría, Friends of God, no. 65.

17 2 Cor 2:15

18 Mt 24:40-41

19 St. Josemaría, Letter 15 October 1948, no. 18, cited by Ernst Burkhart and Javier Lopez, Vida cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de san Josemaría, Madrid 2013, vol. III, p. 193-4.

20 Cf. Mk 5:13

21 Athanasian Creed

22 Bishop Javier Echevarría, Pastoral Letter, 4 July 2002, no. 13.

23 St. Josemaría, Notes taken in a get–together, 2 November 1964; cited by Ernst Burkhart and Javier Lopez, Vida cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de san Josemaría, Madrid 2013, vol. III, p. 197.

24 Roman Missal, conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer

25 Christ is Passing By, no. 48

26 Conversations, no. 109

27 1 Cor 13:2

28 Christ is Passing By, no. 60

Cross and Resurrection in Work

God granted St. Josemaría the light to grasp the profound meaning of work in the life of Christians, called to identify themselves with Christ in the middle of the world. He saw Jesus' years in Nazareth as filled with meaning. In Christ's hands, “a professional occupation, similar to that carried out by millions of people all over the world, was turned into a divine task. It became a part of our Redemption, a way to salvation.”1

The awareness that a Christian, through baptism, is a child of God and participates in Christ's priesthood, led St. Josemaría to see Jesus as a model for our professional work: a living model who has to take shape within us, and not simply an example to be imitated. More than working like Christ, a Christian is called to work in Christ, intimately united to him.

Therefore we want to contemplate carefully Jesus' work in Nazareth. A superficial glance is not enough. We need to consider how his daily effort is joined to the surrender of his life on the Cross, and to his resurrection and ascension. Only in this way will we be able to discover that his work—and our own, in so far as we are united with him—is redemptive and sanctifying.

In Nazareth and on Calvary

We have been created to love God, and this love is expressed in the fulfilment of the divine will, with the obedience of sons and daughters. But our first parents disobeyed, and through disobedience suffering and death entered the world. The Son of God assumed our nature to make reparation for sin, fully obeying God's will in his own human will. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous.2

The sacrifice of Calvary is the culmination of Christ's obedience to his Father: he became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.3 By freely accepting suffering and death, which are totally opposed to our natural instincts, he manifested in a supreme way that he had not come to do his own will but the will of the one who sent him.4 But our Lord's surrender in his passion and death on the cross is not an isolated act of his loving obedience; rather it is the supreme expression of a full and absolute obedience that was present throughout his entire life, expressed in different ways: Lo, I have come to do your will, O God.5

At twelve years of age, when Mary and Joseph found him among the doctors in the Temple after seeking him for three days, Jesus told them: Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?6 The Gospel doesn't tell us any more about his hidden life, except that he obeyed Joseph and Mary, he was obedient to them,7 and that he worked: he was a carpenter.8

Nevertheless, Jesus' words in the Temple light up the years spent in Nazareth. They make clear that when obeying his parents and when working he was about his Father's business, he was fulfilling the divine will. And just as by remaining in the Temple he accepted the three days of suffering (three, as in the Easter triduum) that knowing his parents were searching for him grief–stricken caused him, so also he accepted the difficulties that came with fulfilling the duties in his work and in daily life.

His obedience in Nazareth was not a lesser obedience, but the same interior disposition that led him to give his life on Calvary. It was an obedience rendered with his whole heart, fully identified with the divine will at every moment. On Calvary, it was shown by shedding his blood; in Nazareth, by giving himself day by day, drop by drop, in his work as an artisan making agricultural implements and household furniture.

“He was the carpenter, the son of Mary. And he was God; he was achieving the redemption of mankind and drawing all things to himself.”9 The redemptive value of Jesus' life in Nazareth cannot be understood if one separates it from the Cross—if one fails to understand that in his daily work he fulfilled his Father's will perfectly, out of love, ready to consummate his obedience in the Passion.10

Therefore, when the supreme moment of the sacrifice on Calvary arrived, our Lord offered his whole life, including his work in Nazareth. The Cross is the “last stone” in his obedience, like the keystone in a cathedral arch that by its “weight” holds the other stones in place. So also the fulfilment of the divine will in Jesus' ordinary life has all the power of the obedience of the Cross. And at the same time it culminates in it, and through it his life in Nazareth is raised up to the Father in a redemptive sacrifice for all mankind.

Fulfilling our duties

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.11 To follow Christ in our daily work is to fulfil there the divine will with the same obedience as Christ: usque as mortem,12 even unto death. This doesn't just mean that a Christian ought to be ready to die rather than sin. The goal is much higher: at every moment we have to strive to die to our own will, renouncing everything personal, so as to make God's will our own.

In his human will Jesus has the good and upright inclinations of our nature, and he offers this to the Father in the garden of Olives when he prays: not my will, but thine, be done.13 In us, our own will includes our selfishness, a disordered love of self. Our Lord did not carry this disorder within himself, but took it upon himself on the Cross to redeem us. Now, with his grace, we can offer God the struggle against selfishness for love. To become identified with the divine will, each of us has to reach the point of being able to say with St. Paul: I have been crucified with Christ.14

“We must give ourselves in everything, we must deny ourselves in everything: the sacrifice must be a holocaust.”15 It is not a question of renouncing noble ideals and ambitions, but of always directing them to the fulfilment of God's will. He wants the talents he has given us to yield a return. Obedience and the sacrifice of our own will in work means using our talents for God's glory and the service of others, not for our vainglory and self–interest.

And how does God want us to use our talents? What must we do to fulfil his will in our work? This question can be answered briefly if one understands well all that is implied in the answer: God wants us to fulfil our duty. “Do you really want to be a saint? Carry out the little duty of each moment: do what you ought and concentrate on what you are doing.”16

God's will is manifested in the duties of daily life. By its nature the fulfilment of duty demands subjecting our will to what has to be done, and this is what constitutes the obedience of a child of God. It means rejecting our personal preferences and inclinations and taking what God wants as the supreme norm—which is that we fulfil our duties.

What are they? Work itself is a duty indicated by God from the beginning, and consequently laziness is the first front on which we have to struggle.Afterwards there is the general duty which crystallises for each person in the specific duties of one's chosen profession—in accord with one's professional vocation, which forms part of the divine vocation.17 Among these are the duties of professional ethics, fundamental to Christian life, and others that stem from one's personal circumstances.

Fulfilling these duties is part of God's will, since he has created human beings to perfect the world through their work,18 and this, in the case of the ordinary faithful, involves carrying out temporal activities as perfectly as possible, in accord with their own proper laws, and for the good of individuals, the family and society. This good is discovered through the use of reason and, in a surer and fuller way, through reason illumined by a living faith, faith working through love.19 At times this may call for heroism, as it certainly does to fulfil God's will unswervingly in the little things of each day. But God rewards this heroism with the divine mark of peace and joy: on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased;20 the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.21

The Christian ideal of fulfilment of duty is not the same as the conscientious person who strictly carries out obligations of justice. A child of God has a much broader and deeper concept of duty, seeing love itself as the first duty, the first commandment of God's will. Consequently we should try to fulfil our professional duties out of love and with love; we strive to be as generous as possible in these duties, without thinking we are going too far, knowing that Christ gave his life for us. And since this love, the charity of the children of God, is the essence of holiness, we can understand why St. Josemaría said that holiness is summed up in fulfilling “the duty of each moment.”

Value of effort and fatigue

“In itself work is not a penalty or a curse or a punishment: those who speak of it that way have not understood sacred Scripture properly.”22 God created man to till the earth and care for it,23 and only after our first parents sinned did he say: in the sweat of your face shall you eat bread.24 The punishment for sin is the fatigue that accompanies work, not work itself, and divine wisdom has converted it into an instrument of redemption. To take on work is, for us, an integral part of obedience to God's will, a redemptive obedience in the daily fulfilment of duty. “With a fully lay mentality you exercise this priestly spirit in offering to God your work, your rest, the joys and the difficulties of each day, the holocaust of your bodies worn out by the effort of constant service. All this is a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”25

A Christian doesn't shirk the sacrifice involved in work. We try not to become irritated because of the effort required, or abandon our duty through boredom or tiredness. In difficulties we sees Christ's Cross, which gives a redemptive meaning to our toil, the Cross which “is calling for a pair of shoulders to bear it.”26 The Founder of Opus Dei gives us some well–tested advice: “Before you start working, place a crucifix on your desk or beside your tools. From time to time glance at it… When tiredness creeps in, your eyes will go towards Jesus, and you will find new strength to continue with your task.”27

A son or daughter of God should not be discouraged by failure, nor base all their hope and satisfaction on human success. The redemptive value of work does not depend on earthly success but on the loving fulfilment of God's will. We mustn't forget that in Nazareth Jesus fulfilled the divine will by working actively, whereas on the Cross he completed his obedience by suffering. The high point of not my will but thine be done28 did not consist in accomplishing this or that human project, but in suffering unto death, completely abandoned to his Father's will.29 Thus we have to understand that we co–redeem with Christ not so much through the things we do —our jobs and initiatives—as through the things we suffer, when God permits the easy yoke and the light burden30 of the Cross to become more apparent.

St. Josemaría teaches this lesson of holiness in words that reflect his own experience. “But do not forget that being with Jesus means we shall most certainly come upon his Cross. When we abandon ourselves into God's hands, he frequently permits us to taste sorrow, loneliness, opposition, slander, defamation, ridicule, coming from within and from outside. This is because he wants to mould us into his own image and likeness. He even tolerates that we be called lunatics and be taken for fools. This is the time to love passive mortification… When we undergo periods of passive purgation, that we find painful and hard to bear, periods when we shed sweet and bitter tears, which we do our best to hide, we will feel the need to enter into each one of his most Holy Wounds: to be purified and strengthened, rejoicing in his redeeming Blood. We will go there like the doves which, in the words of Scripture, find shelter from the storm in the crevices in the rocks. We hide in this refuge to find the intimacy of Christ. We find his conversation soothing and his countenance comely.”31

Light of the resurrection

After writing in the letter to the Philippians that Christ made himself obedient unto death, even death on a cross,32 St. Paul continues: therefore God has highly exalted him.33 Our Lord's exaltation, his resurrection and ascension into heaven where he is seated at the right hand of God,34 are inseparable from his obedience on the Cross, and together with it shed a bright light on Jesus' work in Nazareth, and on our own daily toil.

Jesus' life in Nazareth is both human and divine: it is the life of the Son of God made man. Although his life doesn't become glorious and immortal until after the resurrection, already, in the Transfiguration, he manifests for a moment the hidden glory that was his during the years spent in Joseph's workshop. The person we see working as a carpenter, fulfilling his duty with perspiration and fatigue, is the Son of God made man, full of grace and truth,35 who in his sacred Humanity lives a new, supernatural life: life according to the Holy Spirit. He whom we see subject himself to the demands of work, who obeys those with authority, in his family and society, so as thus to obey the divine will, is the same one we see ascend into heaven with power and majesty as King and Lord of the universe. His resurrection and ascension allow us to contemplate how the work, obedience and fatigue of Nazareth, while a demanding sacrifice, are never dark and sad. Rather they are luminous and triumphant, like a new creation.

As Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too walk in newness of life.36 We too can live, in the midst of our daily occupations, “in heaven and on earth,” “divinized,”37 because God, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.38 God exalted the sacred Humanity of Christ because of his obedience, so that we could live this new life, guided by the Love of God, dying to disordered self–love. If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God.39

If in our work we fulfil the divine will out of love, no matter how much it costs, God will exalt us with Christ. Even now he gives us a pledge of glory through the gift of the Holy Spirit.40 Thanks to the Paraclete our work becomes holy, we ourselves are sanctified, and the world begins to be renewed. “In work, thanks to the light that penetrates us from the resurrection of Christ, we always find a glimmer of new life, of the new good, as if it were an announcement of 'the new heavens and the new earth' in which man and the world participate precisely through the toil that goes with work … The Cross which this toil constitutes reveals a new good springing from work itself.”41

Together with the obedience of the Cross and the joy of the resurrection—the new supernatural life—in the loving fulfilment of God's will in our work, the victory of the ascension must be present as well. We have received the world as an inheritance to make God's will a reality in all earthly things. For all things are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.42

This is the tenor of the redemptive love of God's children in all their work. “Go about your professional duties for Love's sake. Do everything for the sake of love and (precisely because you are in love, even though you may taste the bitterness of misunderstanding, of injustice, of ingratitude and even of failure in men's eyes) you will see the result in the wonders that your work produces—rich, abundant fruit, the promise of eternity!”43

In union with the Sacrifice of the Mass

Our Lord's sacrifice on the Cross, his resurrection, and his ascension, constitute the unity of the paschal mystery, the “passage” from time to eternity. His work in Nazareth is redemptive and sanctifying because of its union with this mystery.

This reality is reflected in the lives of the children of God thanks to the Holy Mass, which “makes present not only the mystery of the Savior's passion and death, but also the mystery of the resurrection.”44 “This sacrifice is so decisive for the salvation of the human race that Jesus Christ offered it and returned to the Father only after he has left us a means of sharing in it as if we had been present there.”45

Thanks to the Mass, we can imbue our work with a spirit of obedience unto death, with the new life of the resurrection, and with the dominion we have over all things as a result of Christ's ascension as Lord of heaven and earth. Not only do we offer our work at Mass, but we can turn our work, as it were, into a “Mass.” “All the works of men are done as if on an altar, and each one of you, in that union of contemplative souls which is your day, in some way says 'his Mass,' which lasts twenty–four hours, in expectation of the Mass to follow, which will last another twenty–four hours, and so on until the end of our lives.”46 Thus in our work we are “other Christs, Christ himself.”47

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1 St. Josemaría, Conversations, 55.

2 Rom 5:19.

3 Phil 2:8.

4 Cf. Jn 6:38; Lk 22:42.

5 Heb 10:7; Ps 40[39]:8-9.

6 Lk 2:49.

7 Lk 2:51.

8 Mk 6:3. Cf. Mt 13:55.

9 St. Josemaría, Christ is Passing By, 14 ( Mk 6:3, Jn 12:32).

10 Cf. Mk 10:33-34; Lk 12:49-50.

11 Lk 9:23.

12 Phil 2:8.

13 Lk 22:42.

14 Gal 2:20.

15 St. Josemaría, The Way, 186.

16 Ibid., 815.

17 Cf. “Working for Love” in this series on “Sanctifying our Work.”

18 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 302.

19 Gal 5:6.

20 Lk 2:14.

21 Ps 19[18]:9.

22 Christ is Passing By, 47.

23 Cf. Gen 2:15.

24 Cf. Gen 3:19.

25 St. Josemaría, Letter 6 May 1945, 27 (Rom 12:1); cited in Ernst Burkhart and Javier López, Vida Cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de san Josemaría, vol. III, Rialp, Madrid 2013, p. 109.

26 St. Josemaría, The Way, 277.

27 St. Josemaría, Way of the Cross, XI station, point 5.

28 Lk 22:42.

29 Cf. Lk 23:46; Mt 27:46.

30 Mt 11:30.

31 St. Josemaría, Friends of God, 301-302 (Song 2:14).

32 Phil 2:8.

33 Phil 2:9.

34 1 Pet 3:22. cf. Mt 26:64; Heb 1:13; 10:12.

35 Jn 1:14.

36 Rom 6:4.

37 Cf. Christ is Passing By, no. 8.

38 Eph 2:5-6.

39 Col 3:1-3.

40 Cf. 2 Cor 1:22; 5:5; Eph 1:14.

41 John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Laborem exercens (14 September 1981), 27 ( 2 Pet 3:13, Rev 21:1)

42 1 Cor 3:22-23.

43 St. Josemaría, Friends of God, 68.

44 John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia (17 April 2003), 14.

45 Ibid., 11.

46 St. Josemaría, notes from a meditation, 19 March 1968; cited in Bishop Javier Echevarría, Pastoral Letter, 1 November 2009.

47 St. Josemaría, Christ is Passing By, 106.

Sanctifying with our work

In the history of the Church and mankind, the spirit God entrusted to St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer in 1928 brings with it a teaching as old and as new as the Gospel, with all its power to transform the world and the men and women who live in it.

The sanctification of ordinary work is a living seed, able to yield fruits of holiness in an immense number of souls. “Sanctity, for the vast majority of people, implies sanctifying their work, sanctifying themselves in it, and sanctifying others through it.”1 In this concise sentence, as the Prelate of Opus Dei stated in his homily on October 7, 2002, the day after the Founder's canonization, St. Josemaria “summed up the nucleus of the message which God had entrusted to him, in order to remind Christians of it.”2

The divine Sower has sown this seed in our lives so that it may grow and bear fruit: thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold.3 Calmly considering each of these three aspects in our prayer can frequently form the heart of our dialogue with God: Am I sanctifying my work? Am I sanctifying myself in my work, that is to say, am I being transformed into another Christ through my daily jobs? What apostolic fruit am I producing with my work?

In a living unity

These three aspects in which St. Josemaría summed up the spirit of sanctifying work are as intimately united as the root, stem and grain in a stalk of wheat.

The first aspect, sanctifying one’s work, making holy our work by doing it for love of God, with the greatest possible human perfection, and offering it to God in union with Christ, is the most basic and, as it were, the root of the other two.

The second aspect, sanctifying oneself in one’s work, is, in a certain sense, the result of the first. A person who tries to sanctify his or her work necessarily becomes holy. That is to say, they allow the Holy Spirit to sanctify them, identifying them ever more closely with Christ. Yet just as in the case of a plant it is not sufficient to water the roots (one must also ensure that the stalk grows straight, at times using a stake so that the wind doesn’t bend it, and protecting it against animals and diseases), so too one must have recourse to many means to become identified with Christ: prayer, sacraments and the means of formation through which Christian virtues are developed. These very virtues strengthen the root, and as a result sanctifying one’s work becomes almost second nature.

With the third aspect, sanctifying through one’s work, something similar happens. Undoubtedly it can be deemed to be a result of the other two, for by sanctifying one’s work and becoming identified with Christ, Christians necessarily produce fruit; they sanctify others through their work, in keeping with our Lord’s words: He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.4 But this doesn’t mean that a Christian needn’t worry about producing fruit, as though fruit came spontaneously from the root and the stalk.

In sanctifying work, the three aspects are united in a living way to one another and mutually influence one another. A person who doesn’t seek to sanctify others with his work and is only concerned with sanctifying what is his would not really be sanctifying it. He would be like the barren fig tree which so displeased our Lord since, while having roots and leaves, it produced no fruit.5 Indeed, “a good indicator of an upright intention, which you ought to have in your daily work, is precisely the way in which you take advantage of the social dealings and friendships that your work occasions to bring souls closer to God.”6

We will now consider in greater detail this third aspect of the sanctification of work, for in some way it makes known the other two, just as fruit makes known the plant and the root. In our Lord’s words: You will know them by their fruits.7

‘I chose you and appointed you…’

If we considers our work from a purely human point of view, we could come to the conclusion that it is owing to a number of different circumstances—abilities and interests, obligations and chance occurrences—that we have come to be doing this particular job rather than another. But Christians need to see things with greater depth and perspective, with a supernatural sense that allows them to discern in what they are doing a personal call from God to holiness and apostolate.

What appears to be merely a chance situation takes on a sense of mission, and one begins to act in a different way in the very place where one is.8 One is no longer there as someone who simply happens to be in that place but as someone who has been sent there by Christ. I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide.9 Our workplace, the professional environment in which we find ourselves, is our apostolic field, the very soil where the good seed of Christ has to be sown and cultivated. Jesus’ promise will not fail: when one tries to sanctify one’s work and oneself in it there is always apostolic fruit.

Nonetheless we should not be deceived by appearances. Jesus warns us that our heavenly Father prunes whoever is producing fruit so that hemay bear more fruit.10 God works in this way because he wishes to bestow still further blessings on his children. He prunes them in order to improve them even though the pruning process may cause suffering. Often the pruning comes from the very difficulties he allows so that the soul may be purified and cleansed of what is superfluous. Sometimes, for example, human enthusiasm for our work dries up and we have to work against the grain, with no joy other than that of doing it for love of God. At other times it may be a serious economic difficulty, which perhaps God allows so that we may continue to employ every human means, but also with more childlike trust in him, as Jesus taught us,11 not letting ourselves be overcome by sadness or worry about the future. At still other times it may involve confronting failure in one’s work, which can completely dishearten those who work with a merely human outlook but which places on the Cross those who desire to co–redeem with Christ. The pruning process often involves a delay in the production of fruit, and can even be the very fact of not seeing the apostolic fruit of our efforts.

In any case it would be wrong to equate this situation with the one described by Jesus in the Gospel parable: A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Lo, these three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down; why should it use up the ground?’12 This is the situation of someone who does not produce fruit because of laziness and love of comfort, which leads to being concerned solely or chiefly about oneself. Then the lack of fruitfulness is not merely apparent; it springs from a lack of generosity, effort and sacrifice. In a word, it comes from a lack of good will.

Jesus himself teaches us to distinguish between these situations by their signs. From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.13 Those pruned by God seem to bear no fruit but they are full of life. Their love for God has other clearly visible signs such as care for their times of prayer, charity with everyone, persevering effort to use all the human and supernatural means in the apostolate.… These signs are as indicative as the tender leaves put forth by the fig tree; they are harbingers of the fruit that will come in due course. Those who have been pruned sanctify other souls through their daily work because “any honourable work can be prayer and all prayerful work is apostolate.”14 Work changed into prayer wins from God a shower of graces bearing fruit in many hearts.

Others, however, neither produce fruit nor are they on the road to doing so. But they are still alive and can change, if they want to. God will listen to the prayers of their friends, like the owner who listened to the vinedresser’s suggestion for the fig tree. The vinedresser answered him, ‘Let it alone, sir, this year also, till I dig about it and put on manure. And if it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’15 One can always overcome a voluntary apostolic barrenness. The time for conversion and bearing much fruit, with God’s grace, is always at hand. “Don’t let your life be barren. Be useful. Make yourself felt. Shine forth with the torch of your faith and your love.”16 Only then does one’s work become fully meaningful; only then does its beauty and attractiveness appear; only then does a new enthusiasm, until then unknown, burst forth. It is like the enthusiasm of St. Peter who obeys Jesus’ command to put out into the deep,17 and who after the miraculous catch of fish hears the promise of greater fruit: Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men.18

In our lives both these situations can crop up; sometimes the first, sometimes the second. From the outside they may look alike in that the apostolic fruit isn’t seen, but it is not difficult to distinguish the one from the other. It is enough to be sincere in our prayer, and answer the following questions: Am I using whatever means I have to sanctify others through my work, or am I negligent and content with doing little, knowing that I really could do much more? Do I love those who work alongside me? Do I endeavour to serve them? And do I allow demands to be made of me in spiritual guidance? This is the path to holiness and apostolic fruitfulness.

Like a burning ember

Transforming work into a means of apostolate is an essential part of sanctifying our work and a sign that it is truly being sanctified. Holiness and apostolate cannot be separated, just as love for God and love for others cannot be divided.

“You have to act like a burning coal, spreading fire wherever it happens to be; or at least, striving to raise the spiritual temperature of the people around you, leading them to live a truly Christian life.”19 It is in our daily work that these words of St. Josemaría should become a reality, as we strive to help those around us receive the warmth of Christ’s love. We need to give them an example of cheerful serenity, listening to them and being understanding, serving them.

Those who work alongside us should notice the good influence of someone who raises the tone of the workplace. A spirit of service, loyalty, friendliness, cheerfulness, a genuine effort to overcome one’s defects—combined with profession competence—will never pass unnoticed.

All this forms part of the “professional prestige” we need so as to attract others to Christ. This prestige does not stem simply from working well from a technical point of view; it is a prestige that is woven of virtues informed by charity. Thus “professional work, whatever it may be, becomes a lamp to bring light to your colleagues and friends.”20 Without charity, however, there is for us no Christian professional prestige, at least not the one God asks of us, “our ‘bait’ as ‘a fisher of men’”21 and an instrument for apostolate. Without charity it is impossible to draw souls to God, for God is love.22 It is worthwhile emphasizing this idea: an effective and competent professional person, if he or she fails to go beyond justice and practise charity, lacks the professional prestige needed by a child of God.

In any case, such prestige is not an end but a means: a means “to draw souls closer to God with the right word at the right time, through an apostolate I have from time to time called an apostolate of friendship and confidence.”23 Together with our divine filiation, we have received in Baptism a sharing in Christ’s priesthood, and thus in the threefold office of sanctifying, teaching and guiding others. Therefore we have every right to enter into others’ lives, reaching through our apostolate of friendship and confidence as many people as possible in the broad spectrum of workplace relationships.

This includes not only those who work alongside us, or who are more or less our own age. We have to reach all the people who, for one reason or another, we come in contact with us through our work. We should look for opportunities to meet them and to speak in a one–to–one conversation, to have a meal with them, or to play some sport with them. It is a question of spending time with others and being available to them, learning to find the right moment to speak. We should never be afraid to speak about God. We have to bring Christ into the lives of those around us: with astuteness, through our prayer and good humor, through little mortifications, through our good example and human attractiveness, through professional prestige and sanctified work.24

Giving direction to society

With our daily work each of us can contribute effectively to imbuing the whole of society with a Christian spirit. Moreover, sanctified work necessarily sanctifies society, for “human work done in this manner, no matter how humble or insignificant it may seem, helps to shape the world in a Christian way.”25

As Saint Josemaria wrote in The Forge: “Struggle to make sure that those human institutions and structures in which you work and move with the full rights of a citizen, are in accordance with the principles which govern a Christian view of life. In this way you can be sure that you are giving people the means to live according to their real worth; and you will enable many souls, with the grace of God, to respond personally to their Christian vocation.”26

Striving to live in accord with the norms of professional ethics is a fundamental requirement in our apostolic work. But we must also aspire to make these norms better known, helping others to know and live by them. We can’t use as an excuse the fact that immoral practices are quite widespread and it’s hard to counteract them. Just as these practices are the result of the accumulation of personal sins, so too will they disappear only through a serious personal effort to practise Christian virtues.27 Frequently we will have to ask for advice. In prayer and in the sacraments we will find the fortitude, when required, to show with deeds that we love the truth above all things, even at the price, if need be, of our own employment.

“Ever since 7th of August 1931, when, during the celebration of holy Mass, the words of Jesus echoed in his soul: And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself (Jn 12:32), Josemaría Escrivá understood more clearly that the mission of the baptised consists in raising the Cross of Christ over all human reality, and felt arise in his soul the exciting call to evangelize all environments.”28 This ideal of shaping society with a Christian spirit “can be fulfilled; it is not an empty dream.”29 St. Josemaría, the Pope went on, “continues to remind us of the need not to allow ourselves to be frightened in face of a materialist culture, which threatens to dissolve the most genuine identity of the disciples of Christ. He liked to reiterate with vigor that the Christian faith is opposed to conformism and interior inertia.”30

Our Lord warned us of a time when, because wickedness is multiplied, most men’s love will grow cold.31 Put on guard by his words, instead of being discouraged by the amount of evil, including our own wretchedness, we should react with humility and trust in God, having recourse to the intercession of our Lady. We know that in everything God works for the good with those who love him.32

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1 Saint Josemaria, Conversations, 55; cf. Christ is Passing By, 45, 122

2 Bishop Javier Echevarria, Homily 7 October, 2002

3 Mk 4:20

4 Jn 15:5

5 Cf. Mt 21:19

6 Saint Josemaria, Letter 15 October 1948, 31

7 Mt 7:16

8 Cf. Saint Thomas Aquinas, S. Th. I, 43, 1c

9 Jn 15:16

10 Jn 15:2

11 Cf. Mt 6:31–34

12 Lk 13:6–7

13 Mt 24:32

14 Saint Josemaria, Christ is Passing By, 10

15 Lk 13:8–9

16 Saint Josemaria, The Way, 1

17 Cf. Lk 5:4

18 Ibid. 5:10

19 Saint Josemaria, The Forge,, no. 570.

20 Saint Josemaria, Friends of God, 61

21 Saint Josemaria, The Way, 372

22 1 Jn 3:8

23 Saint Josemaria,, Letter 24 March 1930, 11

24 Cf. Christ is Passing By, no. 166.

25 Saint Josemaria, Conversations, 10

26 Saint Josemaria, The Forge, no. 718.

27 Cf. John Paul II, Apost. Exhort. Reconciliatio et paenitentia, 2 December 1984, 16; Enc. Letter, Centesimus annus, 1 May 1991, 38.

28 John Paul II, Homily, 6 October, 2002

29 Saint Josemaria, Christ is Passing By, 183

30 John Paul II, Homily, 6 October, 2002

31 Mt 24:12

32 Rom 8:28

Unity of life in Professional Work

“Any honorable work can be prayer and all prayerful work is apostolate. In this way the soul develops a unity of life, which is both simple and strong.”1

Work, prayer, apostolate: three words that perhaps before signified three separate areas for us but are now fused together like the notes of a chord, forming in the end a single harmonious musical score.

Perhaps when we started out in our professional work all we could hear was the isolated and monotonous sound of our own work, lacking in grace. But when we discover how to transform our work into prayer that is raised up to heaven and into apostolate that makes the earth fruitful, the notes combine and begin to acquire rhythm and harmony. If we cease trying to create and compose, we can easily slip back into solo notes. But as soon as we let the Holy Spirit govern our professional life and direct the orchestra, the music flows forth again, producing a wonderful symphony of love for God and mankind—of prayer and apostolate—in our daily work. Every single faculty of our being, our will, intellect and affections, play their part skilfully, resulting in the simple and strong unity of life that pleases God and draws others to him.

In our professional endeavor, three aspects need to be considered carefully in order to attain the harmony of unity of life: a right intention, sound principles and behavior that is consistent with both.

A right intention

Unity of life in our professional work depends first of all on our rectitude of intention, on a clear and firm decision to work for love of God and not out of ambition or other forms of selfishness, seeking the glory of God and not human glory or personal satisfaction.

No one can serve two masters.2 We cannot compromise, having in our heart “one candle lit to Saint Michael and another to the devil.”3 Our intention has to be transparent. But despite our desire to work for God’s glory, we all find that it is easy to lose the rectitude of our will in specific actions, and that often side by side with an upright intention we can discover other motives that are less noble.4 For that very reason, St. Josemaría advised us to constantly purify our will and rectify our intention. “To rectify. A little each day. This must be your constant concern if you really want to become a saint.”5

Whoever works with a right intention always tries to work well. That person doesn’t work one way when others are watching and another way when no one is around. They know that God is always watching, and therefore try to fulfil their duties perfectly to please Him. They are orderly, hard–working, refined in the way they live poverty, even when nobody notices or when they have to go against the grain. On grey days, when the cloud of monotony looms low, a child of God tries to place the finishing touches out of love, thus converting work into prayer.

Moments of success or failure can test the mettle of our intention, tempting us to fall into vanity or discouragement. St. Josemaría taught us to be prepared for these situations that could turn our thoughts towards ourselves and sully our intention. “You must be careful: don’t let your professional success or failure—which will certainly come—make you forget, even for a moment, what the true aim of your work is: the glory of God!”6

To strengthen our rectitude of intention, the pillar of our unity of life, we need to seek God’s presence in our work. We will offer our work up as we begin it, renew our offering as often as possible, and give thanks when finishing it. And we will try to ensure that the practices of piety, especially the Holy Mass, overflow into a continuous conversation with God throughout the day. “Forgetting about God” in our work is a sign of a weak unity of life and not simply of a tendency to become distracted. When someone is truly in love, they don’t forget the person they love.

Sound principles

Rectitude of intention is essential for unity of life, but we can never forget that our will needs to be guided by reason enlightened by faith. There are people who fail to live in accord with their Christianity on a day to day basis not as a result of bad intention, but because they lack sound knowledge. When people don’t seek to form their conscience, and fail to get to know the moral implications of each profession in depth, they are in danger of accepting as their norm what they see others doing. Thus, acting with seeming “good will,” they can fall into mistaken behavior or commit grave injustices. And because they don’t know how to weigh up matters prudently, they can fail to do the good that ought to be done. The lack of sound principles is an obstacle to achieving unity of life.

A person with principles does the right thing without falling into extremes or settling for mediocrity. At times not knowing what is the right thing to do can cause someone to think that the alternative to a defect is the opposite defect: e.g., to avoid being rigid, it is necessary to be weak, or so as not to be aggressive, one ought to be “soft.” In practice, such people have not understood the nature of virtue properly. The mean—in medio virtus—does not involve doing things by halves or not aspiring to great heights. Rather it is the summit between two defects.7 It is possible to be energetic and gentle at the same time, to be both understanding and demanding in one’s duties, to be truthful and circumspect, cheerful without being naïve. So be wise as serpents and innocent as doves,8 our Lord said.

The principles we need to attain unity of life are Christian principles, not merely human ones. Their guiding light is not just right reason but reason enlightened by a living faith that in turn is informed by charity. Only then do the human virtues become Christian virtues. A child of God has no need to cultivate two types of virtues, some human and others Christian, some informed by charity and others not, since this would lead to double standards. He or she should not be satisfied with practising only human justice in certain areas of work—e.g., fulfilling the letter of the law—and in other areas Christian justice, sweetened by charity. Rather they have to strive to live always and in everything the justice of Christ. “Consider especially the counsels and warnings with which he prepared the handful of men who were to become his Apostles, his messengers from one end of the earth to the other. What is the key to his teaching? Is it not the new commandment of charity? It was Love that enabled them to make their way through that corrupt pagan world … When justice alone is done, don’t be surprised if people are hurt. The dignity of man, who is a son of God, requires much more. Charity must penetrate and accompany justice because it sweetens and deifies everything: ‘God is love’ (1 Jn 4:16)…”.

“Charity, which is like a generous overflowing of justice, demands first of all the fulfilment of one’s duty. The way to start is to be just; the next step is to do what is most equitable…; but in order to love, great refinement is required, and much thoughtfulness, and respect, and kindliness in rich measure. In other words, it involves following the Apostle’s advice: ‘carry one another’s burdens, and thus you will fulfil the law of Christ’ (Gal 6:2)… This requires the integrity of being able to submit our own wills to that of our divine model, working for all men, and fighting for their eternal happiness and well–being. I know of no better way to be just than that of a life of self–surrender and service.”9 This is what it means to have Christian principles, an essential light for unity of life.

All this requires formation, and especially time dedicated to studying doctrine. It would be rash to rely on one’s “intuition,” and fail to put the effort required to attain a sound intellectual grounding. However, theoretical knowledge alone is not enough. Christian unity of life requires doctrine assimilated through prayer.

Daring

As well as knowledge and love, unity of life requires putting these into practice, because “love is deeds and not sweet words.”10 That they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven,11 says our Lord. We should examine ourselves frankly, as St. Josemaría advised: “Is Christianity spreading to those around you? Consider this every day.”12

When there is unity of life, it is only natural that those around us notice it. A person who hides his Christian beliefs out of fear of being “pigeonholed” would lose unity of life. They would fail to be salt or light and their works would be supernaturally sterile. The Lord says to each of us: dabo te in lucem gentium, ut sit salus mea usque ad extremum terrae.13 I will place you as a light before the people, so that my salvation can reach the ends of the earth.

We have to have “the courage always to act in public in accordance with our holy faith.”14 Our Lord warned: For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of man be ashamed when he comes in his glory.15 Jesus also encourages us with a wonderful promise: So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven.16 There is no room for ambiguity. We cannot be afraid to speak of God. We do so both with our words, since Christ himself commanded us to go into all the world and preach the gospel to the whole creation,17 and with our example: faith working through love.18

It is only natural that those alongside us see our faith expressed in deeds. With even greater reason should this be true when materialism and hedonism hold sway around us. If one’s faith takes a long time to be noticed, this would be a sign of double standards rather than naturalness. This unfortunately is what happens to those who relegate their faith to the “private sphere.” This attitude, if not stemming from mere cowardice, could be the result of thinking that one’s faith should not play a role in one’s professional conduct. Thus it would reflect not a lay mentality but a “laicist” one, which tries to eliminate God from society and also often dispenses with the moral law. This is the exact opposite of the ideal of placing Christ at the pinnacle of all human activities. We have been called to this high goal, and it is good that many of those around us know it. Moreover, while our primary apostolate is that of “friendship and trust”19 with our colleagues, one to one, this does not exclude the possibility that at times it will be good or even necessary—an imperative of our unity of life—to speak out in the public forum and defend Christian morality. Obstacles may abound, but faith gives us the strength we need to defend the truth and help those around us to discover it.

In practice, however, we know from experience that even when we avoid extremes, it is easy to allow oneself to be influenced by a laicist mentality and to be convinced, for example, that in some professional spheres it is preferable never to speak of God because it would be “out of place” or could cause surprise, or because others might think that our position on professional issues is “influenced by our religion.” That is when the temptation presents itself to hide our Christian condition, precisely when we need to display it.

“Nonsectarianism. Neutrality. Old myths that always try to seem new. Have you ever stopped to think how absurd it is to leave one's Catholicism aside on entering a university, a professional association, a cultural society, or Parliament, like a man leaving his hat at the door?”20 St. Josemaría is not inviting us to make a show of our Catholicism, or to act in a way that is not compatible with a lay mentality. What he wants is that each of us, in our particular circumstances, consider carefully the external and clear demands of unity of life in our work and social life. “You have to have the courage (which at times will be considerable, given the circumstances of the times) to make your faith present, to make it tangible even. Let others see your good works and the motive behind them, even when at times you may be criticised and attacked, since there will always be some who will misunderstand your motives.”21

Unity of life is a gift from God, and at the same time a conquest that demands personal struggle. This unity is forged in one’s work by dint of specific decisions to act facing God and with apostolic desires. With God’s grace we have to aspire to love God with our whole being: ex toto corde, ex tota anima, ex tota mente, ex tota virtute,22 with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength.

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1 Saint Josemaria, Christ is Passing By, 10

2 Mt 6: 24

3 Saint Josemaria, The Way, 724

4 Cf. The Way, 788

5 The Way, 290

6 Saint Josemaria, The Forge, 704

7 Cf. Saint Josemaria, Friends of God, 83

8 Mt 10: 16

9 Saint Josemaria, Friends of God, 172-173

10 Cf. The Way,933

11 Mt 5: 16

12 Saint Josemaria, The Forge, 856

13 Is 49: 6

14 Saint Josemaria, The Forge, 46

15 Lk 9: 26

16 Mt 10: 32

17 Mk 16: 15

18 Gal 5: 6

19 Saint Josemaria, The Forge, 192

20 Saint Josemaria, The Way, 353

21 Saint Josemaria, Instruction 8 December 1941, 13

22 Mk 12: 30

Sanctifying the world from within

It is easy to discern both the bright and dark features of our times. Human development, alongside the disorders with which it is plagued. Social progress in many areas, combined with barbaric practices in others. Both advance and regression.… Pope John Paul II and his successors have made frequent reference to this reality.1 We are all called to transform the society around us in accord with God's will. However, many people are unaware of this, and think this mission is only for those in government or those who are rich and influential. As for themselves, their role is that of spectators; they can applaud or protest, but they are not players on the field of action.

This attitude can't be ours, since it fails to accord with the reality of our Christian vocation. “We Christians have a supernatural responsibility to cooperate with God's power. For this is his all–merciful plan. He wants us to strive to re–establish the order that has been disrupted, to restore to the temporal structures of all nations their natural function as instruments for the progress of mankind, and their supernatural function as means for reaching God, for the redemption.”2

We are not mere spectators. On the contrary, lay people have the specific mission of sanctifying the world “from within like leaven,”3 “striving to give a Christian direction to work, and to human institutions and structures.”4 In the words of the Second Vatican Council, the laity should “illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are so closely associated that these may come about and grow according to Christ and may be to the glory of the Creator and the Redeemer.”5 In a word: “Christianising the entire world from within, showing that Christ has redeemed all mankind.”6

We have all the power needed to do so, although it is not human power. Ours is the power of prayer, and work converted into prayer. “Prayer is the most powerful weapon a Christian has. Prayer makes us effective. Prayer makes us happy. Prayer gives us all the strength we need to fulfil God's commands.”7 Work converted into prayer is the specific means we have in order to transform society. Not merely work, but sanctified work.

God gave St. Josemaría light to understand this on 7 August 1931, while celebrating Holy Mass. As he raised the Sacred Host, Jesus' words resonated forcefully in his soul: and I when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all men to myself.8 “I understood it perfectly. Our Lord was telling us: if you put me in the heart of all human activities, fulfilling the duty of each moment, being my witness in what seems great and in what seems small… then omnia traham ad meipsum! My kingdom among you will be a reality!”9

Christianizing society

God has entrusted men and women with the task of building up human society in accord with their dignity, in service of their earthly and eternal good.10 This requires a society whose laws, moral customs and institutions foster the integral good of its citizens, a society in which each person grows by seeking the good of others, since man “cannot attain his own fulfilment unless in the sincere giving of self to others.”11 However, the sin of our first parents and the successive profusion of sins has introduced into the world a deep disorder. As the Catechism of the Church teaches, “Thus sin makes men accomplices of one another and causes concupiscence, violence and injustice to reign among them. Sins give rise to social situations and institutions that are contrary to the divine goodness. 'Structures of sin' are the expression and effect of personal sins.”12

Christ our Lord, the Son of God made man, has come into the world to redeem us from sin and its consequences. This is what “christianizing” society means: freeing it from the consequences the Catechism lists for us above. On the one hand, it means freeing it from the structures of sin—for example, from civil laws and customs opposed to the moral law. At a deeper level, it means striving to ensure that human relationships are governed by the love of Christ, delivered from the selfishness of concupiscence, violence and injustice. “Your task as a Christian citizen is to help see Christ's love and freedom preside over all aspects of modern life: culture and the economy, work and rest, family life and social relations.”13

Christianising society does not mean imposing the true faith on anyone. A Christian spirit requires respect for each person's freedom, in the practice of religion, to act in accord with one's conscience, even when in error, so long as the demands of public order and morality are safeguarded.14 Those in error should be led to the truth, found in its fullness only in the Catholic faith, by our example and words, never by coercion. The act of faith is authentic only if it is free.

But when Christians urge respect for human life in the civil law from the moment of conception, the stability of families through recognition of the indissolubility of marriage, the parents' rights in the education of their children, whether in public or private schools, the right to truth of information, public morality, justice in labor relations, etc., they are not attempting to impose their faith on others. Rather they are carrying out their duty as citizens and helping to bring about, as far as they can, a better society in accord with the dignity of the human person. Christians possess a special certitude of the rightfulness of these demands thanks to divine revelation. But they can also be known by human reason, and therefore all men and women, whatever their beliefs, can appreciate the importance and value of these principles for the life of society.

“Struggle to make sure that those institutions and structures in which you work and move with the full rights of a citizen, are in accordance with the principles which govern a Christian view of life. In this way, you can be sure that you are giving people the means to live according to their real worth; and you will enable many souls, with the grace of God, to respond personally to their Christian vocation.”15

This requires “remedying the institutions and conditions of the world… so that they favor rather than hinder the practice of virtue.”16 It belongs to every citizen to aspire to a more just society—an aspiration that is strengthened by a Christian's faith—by seeking the common good of society. This common good is not only a question of economic development, although certainly it includes it, and at times this may be the most pressing need. Above all, it requires the best possible conditions to ensure freedom, justice and rectitude in moral life and peace in society, in accord with the dignity of every human being.

Christians who do all they can to better society in this way are acting in accord with their faith. They are not following a political ideology that is open to opinion. “That is how the first Christians acted. They didn't have any social or human programs to fulfil by reason of their supernatural vocation. But they were filled with a spirit, a view of life and the world that could not fail to have clear consequences on the society in which they lived.”17 “The apostolic task that Christ entrusted to all his disciples leads to specific results in social matters. It is inconceivable that a Christian, in order to fulfil his task, should have to turn his back on the world, and become a defeatist with regard to human nature.”18

We have to bring the healing balm of the Christian spirit to the social structures of the society around us. But that is not enough. Though it may seem a lofty aim, it is simply a basic requirement. Much more is needed. We have to help the people around us to live their Christian faith integrally, so that each from their own place spread the light and love of Christ, the good aroma of Jesus,19 through their daily actions. The goal is not that structures be purified, but rather that persons become holy. It would be a mistake not to care whether social laws and morals conform to the Christian spirit, but it would be equally wrong to think that this is sufficient. Moreover, at that very moment these sound structures would once again be endangered. We must always be starting anew. “A new mankind cannot be found, if men are not renewed in the ever springing waters of baptism and a life lived as the Gospel teaches.”20

By means of work

“Many great things depend—don't forget it—on whether you and I live our lives as God wants.”21 What matters most is personal holiness, our union with God. This is the path that leads to Christianizing society. “We must, each of us, be alter Christus, ipse Christus: another Christ, Christ Himself. Only in this way can we set about this great undertaking, this immense, unending task of sanctifying all temporal structures from within, bringing to them the leaven of redemption.”22 We must never lose the salt, light and fire that God has given us to transform our surroundings. As Pope John Paul II said, “this is a task which demands courage and patience.”23 Courage, because we must not be afraid to clash with the prevailing atmosphere when necessary. And patience, because it takes time to change society from within. In the meantime, we cannot grow accustomed to the evils that flourish around us: growing used to a fatal illness is tantamount to succumbing to it. “A Christian has to be ready, at all times, to sanctify society from within. He is fully present in the world, but without belonging to the world, when it denies God and opposes his lovable will of salvation, not because of its nature, but because of sin.”24

God wants us to infuse a Christian spirit into the society around us through the sanctification of our professional work, since “through work a Christian exercises dominion over creation (cf Gen 1:28), ordering it towards Christ Jesus, the center in whom all things are destined to be re–united (cf Eph 1:10).”25 Professional work is, in practice, “an indispensable means to social progress and to greater justice in the relations between men.”26

Each of us must set about this task of christianizing society through work. First, by striving to bring to God those who work alongside us or who we meet by reason of our work, so that they too will sanctify their work and spread a Christian tone around them. Secondly, and inseparably, by endeavoring to christianize the structures in one's own professional environment, so that they conform to the moral law. A pharmacist, a lawyer, a journalist, a business executive…, must seek to bring a Christian influence to the institutions and labor relations in one's own sphere of work. It is not enough to avoid being “stained” by immoral practices. Rather, we have to strive to purify our own professional environment, bringing it into harmony with human and Christian dignity.

“The formation we receive should awaken in us, as we embark upon our professional work, an instinct, a healthy yearning to make that work conform to the demands of a Christian conscience, to the divine commands that should govern society and human activity. We need to be convinced that not only is there no incompatibility between Christianity and the problems that arise in the wake of temporal progress; but that on the contrary, the true values of man and his personal and social dignity can only be safeguarded if they are grounded on the Christian view of life.”27

Besides the work environment itself, many other possibilities exist to Christianize society through work. Exercising a profession in society brings with it the right to set up or collaborate in various projects together with others who share the same ideals. These could be schools that provide the human and Christian formation so necessary and urgent today. Or social service projects, pro–life organisations, institutes that protect the right to truth in the media or the right to a healthy moral atmosphere. All this needs to be carried out with the professional outlook of God's children, called to sanctify themselves in the world.

“Let us give our lives fully to God our Lord, finishing our work as well as possible, each in our own profession and state. But let us never forget that we have only one aspiration in all our endeavors: to place Christ at the summit of all human activities.”28

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1 Cf. John Paul II, Apostolic Exhoration Ecclesia in Europa (28 June 2003), 1

2 Saint Josemaria, Letter 30 April 1946, 19

3 Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 31

4 Saint Josemaria, Letter 9 January 1959, 17; quoted in E. Burkhart, J. López, Vida cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de San Josemaría, I, Rialp, Madrid 2010.

5 Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 31

6 Saint Josemaria, Conversations, 112

7 Saint Josemaria, The Forge, 439

8 Jn 12:32

9 Saint Josemaria, Notes taken from a meditation, 27 October 1963; quoted in E. Burkhart, J. López, Vida cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de San Josemaría, I, Rialp, Madrid 2010.

10 Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 353, 1929, 1930

11 Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World Gaudium et Spes, 24

12 Catechism of the Catholic Church 1869. Cf. John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et poenitentia (2 December 1984), 16

13 Saint Josemaria, Furrow, 302

14 Cf. Second Vatican Council, Decree on Religious Liberty Dignitatis humanae, 1, 2 and 7

15 Saint Josemaria, The Forge, 718

16 Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, 36

17 Saint Josemaria, Letter 9 January 1959, 22; quoted in E. Burkhart, J. López, Vida cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de San Josemaría, I, Rialp, Madrid 2010.

18 Saint Josemaria, Christ is Passing By, 125

19 Cf. 2 Cor 2:15

20 Paul VI, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii nuntiandi (8 December 1975), 18

21 Saint Josemaria, The Way, no 755.

22 Saint Josemaria, Christ is Passing By, 183

23 John Paul II, Encyclical Centesimus annus (1 May 1991), 38

24 Saint Josemaria, Christ is Passing by, 125

25 Saint Josemaria, Letter 6 May 1945, 14; quoted in E. Burkhart, J. López, Vida cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de San Josemaría, I, Rialp, Madrid 2010.

26 Conversations, 10

27 Saint Josemaria, Letter 6 May 1945, 15; quoted in E. Burkhart, J. López, Vida cotidiana y santidad en la enseñanza de San Josemaría, I, Rialp, Madrid 2010.

28 Saint Josemaria, Letter 15 October 1948, 41; cf The Forge, 68.

Professional prestige

“The Christian vocation by its very nature is also a vocation to the apostolate.”1 As with the first disciples, Christ has called us to follow him and to bring him souls: follow me and I will make you become fishers of men.2

Basing himself on this comparison of our Lord's, St. Josemaría teaches that professional standing has a part to play in God's plan for those who have been called to help sanctify others with their work. It is an important means of apostolate, “your 'bait' as a 'fisher of men'.”3 Therefore he encourages us: “You too have a professional vocation which 'spurs' you on. Well, that 'spur' is the hook to fish for men. Rectify your intention, then, and be sure you acquire all the professional prestige you can for the service of God and of souls. The Lord counts on this too.”4

Prestige and humility

God created all things “to show forth and communicate his glory.”5 By making our work a participation in his creative power, he wanted it to reflect his glory. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.6 The sanctification of our professional work requires that we carry it out as perfectly as possible, for love of God, so that it becomes a light that draws those around us to him.

We should not seek our own glory, but the glory of God, as the Psalm prays: Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tuo da gloriam;7 not to us, Lord, not to us but to your name give glory. How many opportunities we have to repeat these words! “'Deo omnis gloria. All glory to God' … Our vainglory would be just that: vain glory; it would be sacrilegious robbery. There should be no room for that 'I' anywhere.”8

We will often need to rectify our intention. But we cannot be shy in seeking professional prestige because of a fear of vainglory or pride, since it is a quality required by the apostolic mission proper to lay people. The Church's Magisterium reminds us that lay people “will keep the laws proper to each discipline, and labor to equip themselves with a genuine expertise in their various fields.”9 “The lay faithful must accomplish their work with professional competence, with human honesty, and with a Christian spirit, and especially as a way of their own sanctification.”10

It is worthwhile meditating on St. Josemaría's words: "As our sanctity hinges on our work, we will need to achieve prestige in our profession, and each will attain, in their own job and social sphere, the dignity and good name they have won by their merits, gained in honest competition with their professional colleagues.

"Our humility doesn't entail being timid and shy, or lacking in daring in the noble field of human endeavor. With a supernatural spirit and a desire to serve—with a Christian spirit of service—we must strive to be among the first among our peers.

“Some people without a genuine lay outlook on life understand humility as a lack of confidence, a kind of indecision that impedes action, a waiving of rights (sometimes even the rights of truth and justice) in order to avoid friction and disagreements and to be nice to everyone. Thus there will be some who won't understand our way of living a deep—and genuine—humility; they may even call it pride. The Christian concept of this virtue has been much deformed, possibly because of attempting to live it within secular society in ways more suited to convents than to Christians called to be at the crossroads of the world.”11

Out of love for God and souls

A Christian's professional prestige does not necessarily involve success. Certainly, human triumph is like a light that attracts people. But if on drawing close to a person who has triumphed people fail to find an authentic Christian, a humble person in love with God, but rather someone filled with presumption and conceit, then what The Way depicts may happen: “From afar, you attract; you have light. From near by, you repel; you lack warmth. What a pity!”12

The prestige that draws souls to God comes from the Christian virtues enlivened by charity. It is the prestige of a person who is hard–working and competent, just, cheerful, noble and loyal, honest, friendly, sincere, ready to serve… These are virtues that can be accompanied both by success as well as human failure. It is the prestige of a person who develops these qualities day after day out of love for God and others.

St. Josemaría wrote: “Work is born of love; it is a manifestation of love and is directed toward love.”13 The same can be said of the prestige attained in work. It is “born of love,” because this must be the reason for seeking it, and not vanity or self–adulation. It is “a manifestation of love,” because a Christian with professional prestige needs to stand out for a spirit of service. And it is “directed toward love,” because prestige must not be made the goal of work, but rather a means to draw souls to God, in specific and daily ways.

Professional achievement that bears no apostolic fruit is a sterile achievement, a light that does not cast light. Our prestige, St. Josemaría insisted, must be a fisherman's hook, and could someone be called a fisherman if he doesn't fish? It is not a jewel to be admired and carefully preserved, like a miser gloating over his treasure, but rather a jewel to be invested fearlessly in God's service.

We are not unaware of the risks. We know that some people may approach us drawn by our professional prestige, but draw back if we speak to them about God, and from then on fail to appreciate us as before. And we also know that certain clubs, groups or influential societies may open their doors to prestigious professionals, offering personal contacts and mutual support, on the condition of not revealing one's own faith. Thus they implicitly accept the viewpoint that religion ought to be confined to the private sphere. These people may try to justify this attitude by appealing to respect for freedom. But by excluding the possibility of truth in religious matters they undermine both truth and freedom, and deny in practice our Lord's words: you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.14 These aggressively secularist organizations, where it is prohibited (the choice of this word reflects the reality of the situation) to speak about God and therefore to do apostolate, seem to be trying to make it impossible for Christians to be present, by obliging them to leave their faith at the door like their hat.

Our reaction can't be to isolate ourselves from others. Rather we need to launch out in a more daring apostolate, with the eagerness and joy of God's children, who have received this world as an inheritance, in order to take possession and restore order to it. We need to undertake a deep apostolate of friendship and trust, capable of creating open and free environments, far removed from fanatical aversion to the faith, where it is possible to dialogue and work in cooperation with all people of good will who are seeking to build a society in accord with the human person's transcendent dignity. Although the goal is a demanding one, it cannot be renounced. We need to use the professional prestige we gain to leaven society with a Christian spirit.

In all ambits of work

During his years in Nazareth, Jesus advanced[in]wisdom and age and favor before God and man.15 The Gospel also tells us that he was known as the carpenter.16 So we can easily deduce that our Lord enjoyed great prestige in his work.

In his daily work as a carpenter, without any extraordinary signs, his fellow citizens saw him grow not only in age, but also in wisdom and in favor. How many small deeds of service these words reflect! In his manner of attending to people, of receiving their requests and carrying them out with professional skill, practicing justice together with charity, working with order and intensity, resting and trying to see that others rested. People perceived, in his serenity, his peace, his cheerfulness, and in all his deeds, something that attracted them, that led them to want to speak with him, to confide in him, to follow his example: the example of someone who was so human and so divine, who radiated love for God and love for men, who made them feel they were both in heaven and on earth, and who encouraged them to be better. How different the world would be, many of them would think, if we tried to be like Jesus in our work! How different life would be in the city or in the fields!

The growth of Jesus in age, wisdom and favor, the progressive manifestation of the fullness of divine life that imbued his human nature from the moment of the Incarnation, took place in work as ordinary as that of a carpenter. “Before God, no occupation is in itself great or small. Everything gains the value of the Love with which it is done.”17 Professional prestige, in the end, comes from making manifest the love with which work is carried out. It is a quality of the person, not of the job that is done. It does not consist in having a “prestigious” profession in the eyes of men, but in carrying out any profession, whether outstanding or not, in a prestigious way.

From a human perspective, certainly some jobs are viewed as more outstanding than others, such as those that involve exercising authority in society, or that have a more direct influence on the culture, or greater repercussion in the media, in the world of sports, etc. Precisely for this reason (because these jobs enjoy greater esteem and have more influence on society), those who carry them out have a greater need for a prestige that is not only “technical” but also moral: a Christian professional prestige. It is of vital importance that the children of God attain this prestige when carrying out these activities, on which in great measure the tone of society depends.

Since normally it is “intellectuals” who carry out these types of jobs, “we have to try to ensure that in all fields of intellectual activity there are upright people, people with a true Christian conscience, who are consistent in their lives, who can use the weapons of knowledge in the service of humanity and of the Church.”18 St. Josemaría had this very much in mind when he wrote, explaining the apostolic work of Opus Dei: “Christ himself has chosen us, so that in the middle of the world (in which he has placed us and from which he hasn't wanted to separate us) each of us may strive for sanctity in our own state. And so that (showing with the testimony of our life and words that the calling to sanctity is universal) we may foster among people of every social condition, and especially among intellectuals, Christian perfection within the very heart of civil society.”19

Our Lady carried out a marvelous work of service to Jesus, doing so with such great humility, wisdom and love that we invoke her as Handmaid of the Lord, Seat of Wisdom, Mother of Fair Love.

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1 Vatican Council II, Decr. Apostolicam actuositatem, no. 2.

2 Mk 1:17.

3 St. Josemaría, The Way, no. 372.

4 St. Josemaría, Furrow, no. 491.

5 Cf. Vatican Council I, Dogm. Const. Dei Filius, canon 5.

6 Mt 5:16.

7 Ps 115 (113 b), 1.

8 The Way, no. 780.

9 Vatican Council II, Past. const. Gaudium et spes, no. 43.

10 John Paul II, Apost. Ex. Christifideles laici, December 30, 1988, no. 43.

11 St. Josemaría, Letter, May 6, 1945, nos. 30-31.

12 The Way, no. 459.

13 Christ Is Passing By, no. 48.

14 Jn 8:32.

15 Lk 2:52.

16 Mk 6:3.

17 Furrow, no. 487.

18 The Forge, no. 636.

19 St. Josemaría, Letter, February 14, 1944, no. 1.

Work and family

“Work is a foundation for the formation of family life, which is a natural right and something that mankind is called to. These two spheres of values—one linked to work and the other consequent on the family nature of human life—must be properly united and must properly permeate each other.”1

Harmonizing the demands of one's family vocation with the professional vocation is not always easy, but it is an integral part of the effort to live a “unity of life.” It is love for God that gives unity to a person; it brings order to our heart and teaches us what the right priorities are. These priorities includes striving to always place the good of persons above other interests, seeing our work as service, as an expression of charity—and living charity in an ordered way, starting with those God has placed most directly in our care.

Family life and professional life mutually support one another. Work, both within and outside the household, “is a condition for making it possible to found a family.” In first place, because the family “requires the means of subsistence which man normally gains through work.”2

Work is fundamental for achieving the aims of the family. “Work and industriousness also influence the whole process of education in the family, for the very reason that everyone 'becomes a human being' through, among other things, work, and becoming a human being is precisely the main purpose of the whole process of education.”3

The Holy Family shows us how to harmonize these two areas in our life. St. Josemaria taught us the lessons he learned from our Lady and St. Joseph. By their work they furnished Jesus with a home in which to grow and mature.

The example of Nazareth deeply marked the soul of the founder of Opus Dei. He saw it as a school of service where “no one reserves anything for himself. There we hear nothing of my reputation, my time, my work, my ideas, my preferences, my money. There everything is placed at the service of God's marvelous adventure with humanity, the Redemption.”4

Imitating St. Joseph

“Notice how Joseph behaves towards Mary and Jesus in order to follow the command of the Father and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He gives up his whole being and places his life as a tradesman at God's service. Joseph, a creature, feeds the Creator; a lowly craftsman, he sanctifies his professional work—something which Christians have forgotten to do for centuries, and which Opus Dei has come to remind them of once more. He gives God his life. He offers him the love in his heart and the tenderness of his care; he places at his service the strength of his arm. He gives all that he is and all he can do: the ordinary everyday work that is part of his station in life.”5

St. Joseph worked in service of the Son of God and his Mother. We don't know exactly what kind of artifacts he produced nor have we found any object bearing his signature. But we do know who were the first beneficiaries of his hours of tiring work: our Lady and our Lord Jesus Christ. The humanity of our Lord, given over to suffering many years later on the Cross to save us, truly had human needs. Jesus grew and developed only with his parents' protection. He “needed” the work of Joseph.

St. Joseph's work is a marvelous example of the divine and human adventure of the Redemption. His effort is placed at the service of the most material needs of the Redeemer's Holy Humanity. Joseph taught the Divine Craftsman his trade; by his work he supported the Lord of all Creation. On returning home after a hard day of work, he didn't let himself be overcome by tiredness, since he didn't want to deprive the Son of God of a human father's care and attention.

St. Joseph attained a place of honor in the History of Salvation by dedicating his life to his Family. The demands that his responsibilities as head of a family imposed upon him (the sudden trips and changes of domicile, with all the dangers and difficulties involved), rather than lessening the importance of his work, infinitely enriched it. St. Joseph's work, like that of our Lady, overflows with transcendence and eternity.

What a great lesson for us who so easily let ourselves be led by the desire for personal affirmation and human glory in our work! Joseph's glory was to see Jesus grow in wisdom and age,6 and to serve our Lady. The holy Patriarch's long hours of hard work were enriched by two faces. His efforts were aimed not at a material product, no matter how well done. Rather his work was for him a channel for growing in love for the Son of God and his Mother.

God has also given us the possibility of discovering and loving him, serving those closest to us, through our varied professional endeavors. Many people place photographs of their loved ones or other human reminders on their desk or workplace; this helps give meaning to their effort, reminding them that their work is worthwhile and that they are not alone. If love is lacking; if one's family, all souls, and in the final analysis, God, fail to give meaning to one's work, the heart seeks substitutes, in the form of vanity and a craving for success or social esteem.

It is sad to see people who are divided interiorly. They suffer a great deal, and uselessly. They try to juggle a multitude of commitments that prove impossible to harmonize in the end. For what they lack is not time, but an ordered and loving heart. Family obligations seem to them an obstacle for professional growth. They would like to be good friends, but they find their head and heart shut to others.

The example of St. Joseph can help all of us here. His care for the Holy Family and his hours of toil in his workshop were not separate lives, but one single reality. He cared for Mary by working and showed his love for Jesus by his daily effort, in a fully coherent life.

An Urgent Apostolate

“It must be remembered and affirmed that the family constitutes one of the most important terms of reference for shaping the social and ethical order of human work … In fact, the family is simultaneously a community made possible by work and the first school of work, within the home, for every person.”7

We are faced with the marvelous challenge of restoring to the family the central role it should have in people's lives and in the world of work. This challenge has many facets. In first place, giving the proper value, both in terms of prestige and practical assistance, to professions most closely tied to the intrinsic aims of the family. These include domestic tasks, the work of education, especially in a child's early years, as well as the various ways to collaborate (which can never be a substitute for family duties) in providing assistance to the sick and elderly.

Another pressing challenge is the need to prevent, insofar as possible, the demands at work from giving rise to serious tensions in the family or becoming obstacles to fulfilling one's obligations at home. Such situations are quite frequent: insufficient salaries that hinder the normal growth and development of families; schedules that greatly restrict the presence of the father or mother in the home; impediments to a generous attitude, open to life, for many women who wish to make dedication to their family compatible with a profession outside the home.

Moreover, we should not forget that the demanding competition in the workplace that is so widespread today particularly affects young professionals, who often have to try to make dedication to their family compatible with the pressing burden of their work. This situation frequently involves work schedules that are very demanding and salaries that are not as generous as one would wish in order to confront peacefully the adventure of forming a family.

The desire to get ahead in one's profession often entails the demand for more dedication, more availability, more trips. Certainly, life is complex and competitive; and the aggressive atmosphere found in the workplace often makes it hard to find a harmony between family and professional life. Denying this would be closing one's eyes to reality; but accepting it as something insoluble would not be the right reaction of a child of God. We need to ask our Lord for the fortitude to know how to say no to certain “demands” at work, and not let ourselves be absorbed by what is no more than a means.

We have all the divine help we need to change the world, the culture, society: to change our own heart. But we should first fill our heart with hope, a divine gift, because our Lord can do all things. If we engrave on our heart the example of service, of self–denial, of authentic and specific self–giving shown by the family in Nazareth, we will learn how to find time for our family, for our dialogue with God, our true treasure. For the secret of a unified life is to have a heart filled with love, a love that illumines every corner of our day, even when it is clouded over and gray.

The challenge is great, and the apostolic task urgent. “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 children have to stand firm and fight with toughness and fairness, for the sake of all mankind.”8

A society that fails to protect the family, perhaps with the false excuse of technical and economic progress, is actually accelerating its own destruction. Without healthy families, civilization declines; the social order begins to fall apart and becomes stagnant, even economically. The Church never tires of reminding us of this. Christian families are called upon to valiantly protect the beauty and truth of the family.

Supporting and fostering all the values contained in family life is today a priority in the Church's mission. The moral quality of a society depends upon the moral well–being of its families. Families that fail to teach children the importance of justice and service to others undermine the true meaning of work. Moreover, children will find it difficult to respond with generosity to a divine call when their personality has not matured in Christian virtues in the family setting.

The generations that will assume responsibility in the future will be dependent upon the spiritual and moral resources they receive today, principally in the heart of their families. The social transcendence of what takes place in the small community of each family is incalculable. The happiness of many people is at stake. It is worthwhile taking very seriously this colossal apostolic task, sparing no effort and beginning with one's own family.

“My children, in the middle of the street, in the middle of the world, we must always be striving to create a pool of clean water around us, so that other fish may come to join us. Then between us we will increase the size of the pool, purifying the river and restoring the quality of the sea's water.”9

That is the way the Church began, and we Christians have to work in the same way, seeking with determination to bring Christ's atmosphere to society around us. My daughters and sons, the effort you make to foster a deeply Christian tone in your homes and in the education of your children, will make your families focal points of Christian life, pools of clean water that will influence many other families, and also help vocations to blossom.10

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1 John Paul II, Enc. Laborem exercens, September 14, 1981, no. 10

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid.

4 Saint Josemaria, Letter, February 14, 1974, no. 3

5 Saint Josemaria, meditation “Saint Joseph our Father and Lord,” March 19, 1968.

6 Cf. Lk 2:52

7 John Paul II, Enc. Laborem exercens, September 14, 1981, no. 10

8 Saint Josemaria, The Forge, no. 104.

9 Saint Josemaria, Notes taken in a get–together, May 20, 1973

10 Bishop Javier Echevarria, Letter, November 28, 2002, nos. 11-12

The Strength of Leaven

Society is like a fabric woven of human relationships. Work, family and other daily circumstances create a web of human bonds whereby our life becomes “interwoven”1 with the lives of many other people. So when we strive to sanctify our specific profession, our particular family situation, and our other daily duties, we are not sanctifying simply an isolated thread, but the whole social fabric.

This sanctifying effectiveness makes Christians a powerful leaven for restoring order to the world, so that it may better reflect the love with which it was created. When charity is present in any human activity, there is a less room for selfishness, the principal factor of disorder in the human heart and in our relationships with one another and with God's creation. Thus, bearers of the Love of the Father in the midst of society, the lay faithful “are called there by God that by exercising their proper function and led by the spirit of the Gospel they may work for the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven.”2

The transforming strength of this Christian leaven in work depends, to a great extent, on each one's trying to achieve an adequate preparation. This effort should not be restricted to the specific knowledge, whether technical or intellectual, required by any job or profession. Other aspects that are indispensable for attaining a true human and Christian “competence” have a very direct influence on workplace and social relations, making of our work a true sowing of Christian charity: the way we listen, understand, get on with the others, forgive and ask for forgiveness, and smile.

Being in the world without being worldly

Christians called to seek sanctity in their work need to be in the world, but without being worldly. They seek to be successful in life, but don't consider it as the supreme good. They are realistic in recognizing the presence of evil in the world but aren't discouraged when they meet it. Rather they try to set it right and struggle with greater effort to purify the world of sin. “You should never lack enthusiasm, either in your work or in your effort to build the temporal city. But at the same time, as disciples of Christ who have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Gal 5:24), you strive to keep alive the sense of sin and of generous reparation, in the face of the false optimism of those who, enemies of the cross of Christ (Phil 3:18), see everything in terms of progress and human effort.”3

Being in the world, in a positive sense, leads us “to have a contemplative spirit in the midst of all human activities … making this aim a reality: the more within the world we are, the more we must be God's.”4 This aspiration, far from holding us back in the face of difficulties in our surroundings, spurs us to a greater daring, the fruit of a more intense and constant presence of God. Because we are in the world and also in God, we cannot shut ourselves off from the world around us: “it is not licit for Christians to abandon their mission in the world, just as the soul cannot separate itself voluntarily from the body.”5 Saint Josemaria specifies the task of Christian citizens when he tells us: “Your task as a Christian is to help see Christ's love and freedom preside over all aspects of modern life: culture and the economy, work and rest, family life and social relations.”6

An important manifestation of Christian spirit, and also of a truly human one, is to recognize that full human happiness is found only in union with God, not in the possession of earthly goods. It is, indeed, exactly the contrary of being worldly. The worldly person puts his whole heart into the goods of this world, without considering that they are meant to lead us towards the Creator. It may sometimes happen, on seeing people distant from God who seem to find happiness from possessing the material goods they desire, that the thought may come that union with God is not the only source of complete joy. But we should not be deceived. Theirs is an unstable happiness, one that is superficial and never free of anxiety. Those very people would be incomparably more happy, both in this world and afterwards fully in heaven, if they were close to God and ordered the use of these goods to his glory. Their happiness would cease being fragile, exposed to all of life's circumstances, and they would lose their fear—a fear that robs them of peace—that they might fail to hold on to their material possessions. Nor would the reality of suffering and death frighten them.

The Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount teach us that the fullness of happiness, of true beatitude, is never found in the goods of this world: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek … those who hunger and thirst for righteousness … those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake…7 It hurt Saint Josemaría to see that often souls are deceived: “One hears talk of a liberation that is not Christ's. The teachings of Jesus, his Sermon on the Mount, those beatitudes that are a poem of divine love, are all ignored. The only thing sought is an earthly happiness, which it is not possible to attain in this world.”8

Nevertheless, our Lord's words do not justify a negative outlook on worldly goods, as though they were evil or an impediment to reaching heaven. They are not an obstacle, but rather the material we are called to sanctify. Jesus didn't ask us to reject them. He said that only one thing is needful9 for sanctity and happiness: to love God. Whoever lacks these goods or who suffers should realize not only that the fullness of joy is found only in heaven, but that also in this life they are “blessed.” They can enjoy here a foretaste of the happiness of heaven, because suffering, and in general, the lack of a material good, has redemptive value if it is accepted out of love for the Will of our Father God, who orders everything to our good.10

To seek material well–being for those around us is very pleasing to God. It is a marvelous way to imbue temporal realities with charity, and is perfectly compatible with the personal attitude of detachment that our Lord has taught us. An example of this can be found in the home: As Saint Josemaria said: “The mother of a family has to try to ensure that in her home there is a minimum of well–being, a well–being in proportion to the family's situation, but without forgetting about the needy. So that among the expenses in your home, you should set aside a certain percentage, which depends upon your generosity and that of your husband, to assist those who have nothing. Do you agree?”

“When you are concerned about the material well–being of your husband, of your children, or your own, you are not offending God. For you have the duty intrinsic to the state of matrimony to try to ensure that your family finds life at home pleasant. The mother of a family who was not concerned about material things in the home and the well–being of her family, would not be pleasing Jesus.”11

Lay mentality, with a priestly soul

A child of God must have a “priestly soul,” because he or she has been made a sharer in Christ's priesthood in order to co–redeem with him. For the faithful of Opus Dei, who are called to seek sanctity in the middle of the world, this characteristic is found intrinsically united to a “lay mentality,” which leads to carrying out one's work and daily duties competently, in accord with their intrinsic laws, willed by God.12

Within the basic framework of the norms of professional morality (which need to be observed with great care as a necessary prerequisite for sanctifying one's work), there are many ways of carrying out human tasks in accord with God's will. Within the laws intrinsic to each activity, and in the broad perspective that Christian morality opens up, many different options exist, all of which can be sanctified. Each person is free to choose among these option with personal responsibility, while respecting the freedom of others. This inalienable freedom makes each person's participation in social life—in the home, at work, in living alongside others—unique and unrepeatable, just as each soul's response to God's love is unrepeatable. We must not deprive the human family of the right exercise of our freedom, source of initiatives in the service of others for God's glory. The Founder taught us that this characteristic is essential to the spirit of Opus Dei. “Freedom, my children, freedom, which is the key to the lay mentality that we all have in Opus Dei.”13

Priestly soul and lay mentality are two inseparable aspects on the path to sanctity taught by Saint Josemaria. “We must have always and in everything—both priests and laity—a truly priestly soul and a fully lay mentality, so that we can understand and exercise in our personal life the freedom we enjoy in the sphere of the Church and in temporal realities, seeing ourselves at the same time as citizens of the city of God (cf. Eph 2:19) and of the city of men.”14

We need this union in our own life in order to be a leaven of Christian spirit in society, so that all our professional work, carried out with a lay mentality, is permeated with a priestly soul.

A clear sign of this union is putting our dialogue with God, piety, in first place, specified in carrying out a daily plan of spiritual life. We need to nourish Love as the vital impulse in our life, since it is impossible to truly work for God without constantly deepening our interior life. Saint Josemaria insisted: “If you did not have interior life, when you applied yourself to your work, instead of divinizing it, there could happen to you what happens to iron, when it glows red hot and is plunged into cold water: it loses its heat and goes cold. You need to have a fire that comes from within, that does not go out, that enkindles all it touches. That's why I have said that I don't want any work, any undertaking, if my children don't improve in it. I measure the effectiveness and value of work by the degree of sanctity acquired by the instruments who carry it out.”

“With the same insistence with which I previously invited you to work, and work well, without fear of growing tired, I now invite you to have interior life. I will never tire of repeating it: our Norms of piety, our prayer, come first. Without ascetical struggle our life would be worth nothing; we would be ineffective, sheep without a shepherd, blind leading the blind (cf. Mt 9:36; 15:4).”15

For the leaven not to lose its effectiveness, it needs God's strength. God is the one who transforms. Only when we stay united to him are we truly a leaven of sanctity. Otherwise we will be present in the mass of society without contributing anything expected of leaven. The effort to care for a daily plan of spiritual life will end up producing the miracle of God's transforming action: first in ourselves, since this plan is a path to union with him, and then, as a consequence, in others, in the whole of society.

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1 Cf. Vatican Council II, Dogm. Const. Lumen gentium, no. 31, and John Paul II, Apost. Ex., Christifideles laici, December 30, 1988, no. 15.

2 Vatican Council II, Dogm. Const. Lumen gentium, no. 31.

3 Saint Josemaria, Letter, January 1, 1959, no. 19.

4 Saint Josemaria, The Forge, no. 740.

5 Epistola ad Diognetum, 6.

6 Saint Josemaria, Furrow, no. 302.

7 Mt 5:3ff.

8 Saint Josemaria, Notes taken in a meditation, December 25, 1972.

9 Lk. 10:42

10 Cf. Rom 8:28.

11 Saint Josemaria, Notes taken in a get–together, Caracas, February 9, 1975.

12 Cf. Vatican Council II, Past. Const. Gaudium et spes, no. 36.

13 Saint Josemaria, Letter, September 29, 1957, no. 55.

14 Saint Josemaria, Letter, February 2, 1945, no. 1.

15 Saint Josemaria, Letter, October 15, 1945, nos. 20-21.

Work at all times

Saint Josemaría wrote that for us wor is “a contagious, incurable and progressive disease.”1 A clear symptom of this disease is not knowing how to be doing nothing. The desire to give glory to God is the ultimate reason for our industriousness, our eagerness to sanctify time, offering God every minute of every hour, every hour of every day… and every stage in life. “A hardworking person makes good use of time, for time is not only money, it is glory, God’s glory! He does as he ought and concentrates on what he is doing, not out of routine nor to while away the passing hours, but as the result of attentive and pondered reflection.”2

The sensible man gives thought to his steps,3 says the Book of Proverbs. Giving thought to our steps in our professional work is part of this “attentive and pondered reflection” that Saint Josemaría speaks about, which leads us to reflect on the goal of our work, and to rectify our intention. A prudent person discerns in every situation the best way to reach the desired goal. And our goal is God. When circumstances change we need to keep our heart attentive to perceive God’s call in and through these changes and new situations.

Let us stop to consider two specific stages in our professional life: the first steps and the final ones. Reflecting on these two specific time periods can help us grasp more clearly some aspects of the sanctification of work. Among others: being vigilant, with the fortitude of faith, to keep a right intention; the relative value of the material aspect of what we are doing; the fleetingness of successes and failures; the need to always have a youthful and sporting attitude, ready to begin anew, out of love for God and others, as often as needed.

Start of professional life

One of the essential marks of the spirit of Opus Dei is unity of life. To live in unity means to direct everything to a single aim: to seek “‘only and in all things’ the glory of God.”4 Those who devote the greater part of the day to professional work need to integrate this into the whole purpose of their life. The start of professional life is one of the most important moments in this learning process. It brings with it changes, new challenges and possibilities, and also difficulties it is wise to be aware of.

In some places, for example, young professionals are asked for an unrestricted dedication to their work schedule and commitments, as though work were the only dimension in their life. These practices, based on motivational techniques and incentives to work harder, also reflect a mentality that makes professional success an absolute good above any other dimension in a person’s existence. Through a variety of means the goal is to foster an attitude in which commitment to one’s company or working team is placed above any other concern. And it is precisely in people with a real love for their professional vocation, who want to carry out their work very well, that these practices can become entrenched. Therefore Saint Josemaria, a wise teacher on how to sanctify work, warned of the danger of putting work in first place. “You really do need to make an effort and put your shoulder to the task… Nevertheless, you should put your professional interests in their place: they are only means to an end; they can never be regarded—in any way—as if they were the first thing. How often ‘professionalitis’ makes union with God difficult!”5

The demand for this exclusive dedication is not usually the result of rigid rules, but rather of making it known that the esteem given to a person and future possibilities depend upon this unconditional availability. Thus one is urged to work the maximum number of hours, including weekends and time usually spent resting with family or friends, even when no real need exists. These and other forms of achieving maximum availability are often accompanied by the incentive of liberal rewards or benefits: first–class hotels on business trips, gifts.… In contrast, any limitation on one’s availability is seen as a dangerous departure from the “team mentality.” The work team or company thus tries to absorb the whole of a person’s energies. Any other external commitment must be subordinated to work. Saint Josemaria warned us against false excuses in this regard. “An impatient and disordered anxiousness to climb up the professional ladder can mask self–love under the appearances of ‘serving souls.’ It is a lie—and I really mean that—when we seek to justify our actions by saying that we must not miss certain opportunities, certain favorable chances.”6

It is not difficult to imagine what effects such a mentality can give rise to in those who may lack a clear hierarchy of values, or the fortitude of faith needed to maintain legitimate professional aims within the order subordinating them to love for God. We can think, for example, of the difficulties encountered in family life when the father or mother have neither the time nor strength needed for their home life; or how they cut corners in their relationship with God when they lack control over their own situation at work.

Those who let themselves be “dragged along” by this pressure at work, or who lose their right intention seduced by human success (very different from the human and professional prestige that becomes the “hook” for apostolic fishing) will never achieve a harmonious life. They will find it impossible to integrate their professional life within the order of charity, which includes attending to other spiritual, family and social duties.

The determined effort to give glory to God and the supernatural fortitude of grace enable us to harmonize the different facets in our life, clarifying priorities and bringing order to our work, with faith that God does not ask the impossible. An order that is not rigidity, but rather an order of love: doing what we ought to do at each moment and refusing to take on what we need to refuse. At times a bit of cunning is enough to know how to say no without directly confronting someone; at other times we will need to speak clearly, bearing friendly witness to a life consistent with our own convictions, a witness backed up by the prestige of one who works like the best. In any case, we should never lose our peace, convinced that God permits difficulties for our own good and that of many other people.

For those who are God’s children, their first concern is to please their Father, to seek and carry out his will, trying to live and work in his loving presence. This is the aim, what gives meaning to everything, what spurs us to work and to rest, to do this thing or another; what gives us strength, peace and joy. Everything else has a relative value. To Christianize any professional environment, human and supernatural maturity is required, along with a lot of human and professional prestige, which goes beyond mere productivity.

Those who are children of God have been freed by Christ on the Cross. We can make this freedom our own or reject it. If we make it our own by our own response, we will live far from the slavery of worrying about the opinions of others, the tyranny of our passions, or pressures that try to bend our will to serve masters other than our Father God.

Those who truly decide to work for love of God will learn to evaluate, in light of God’s will, the importance of the various demands life brings. They will be able to harmonize a demanding professional work with dedication to their family and friends, with the time and energy required by each task.

Frequently they will need a good dose of fortitude, and the interior freedom to say no to demands on their time (perhaps good in themselves) that could separate their heart from God. There are no fixed rules for this. Prudent action in a matter of such importance calls for a clear awareness of the goal—a solid interior life, a firm desire to give glory to God—along with a humble and vigilant attitude, open to receiving advice.

The result will be to keep firm control of one’s life, without letting professional work, while certainly an important aspect, come to occupy a place that belongs only to God. Only He is worthy of giving direction to all that we do, including our work. In the first years of professional life, new situations and relationships usually arise, new challenges to find ways to stay close to God throughout the day. One has to be careful not to give way to a desire for self–affirmation, to proving one’s worth, and other such temptations, while constantly rectifying one’s intention, curbing with a sporting spirit the vain pretension of success at any price.

The end of one stage, the beginning of another

Another stage in life that brings with it specific demands is old age, when the lessening of physical energy impedes working at a profession with the same intensity as before. Or when, while still having the strength to continue working with the same effort, retirement comes, perhaps obligatory. These sudden changes require adapting to many practical aspects, and above all a youthful spirit, ready to undertake a new stage in life.

Then is a good time to once again reflect on the significance of sanctifying our work and the ordinary activities of daily life, when personal limitations can come more clearly to the fore. At times it will require recovering a childlike spirit—with the simplicity of accepting calmly and joyfully the loss of a professional position that possibly made one feel important, with people who were dependent on that work.

The temptation can come then to feel that one is useless, renouncing out of fear of failure or lack of confidence in one’s own capacities the taking on and bringing forward of new activities with a bold spirit. And nevertheless, this new phase in life is a splendid opportunity to find new ways to be useful to God and to our neighbor, with a renewed spirit of service, more serene and upright, in so many small or larger initiatives.

The possibilities are endless. For some it will involve keeping up with part of one’s previous professional activity, preparing people who can continue the work that one is leaving. In other cases, one’s abilities will be directed to other activities, perhaps a social or charitable work: care for sick people, supporting educational or formational initiatives… It could also mean assisting family, cultural or environmental associations; or consumer interest or media “watchdog” groups, or getting involved in political activity. These are all areas that can have a decisive influence on public opinion, and that need people with experience and the possibility of devoting time to them

Naturally, for anyone with children and grandchildren, a big part of their time can be dedicated to assisting the families begun by their own children. For young families, the grandparents’ help is very valuable. Their generous and cheerful availability will often be a strong support and example for the way to raise their own children.

The apostolic possibilities of seniors are quite broad. It is important to confront this new stage in life in an intelligent and active way. The passage from a professional activity that absorbed much of one’s time to a situation with greater freedom in scheduling the use of time should leave no room for comfort–seeking. From cultivating hobbies to dedicating time to social initiatives, everything can be imbued with a strong apostolic content. The opportunities for making contact with other people can often be greater than before, and the wisdom and experience accumulated in life should be put at the service of others, also in so far as possible in the apostolic work with youth. Likewise the apostolate of public opinion offers many opportunities for anyone with the proper preparation, contributing to small or large newspapers, radio or television programs. Some may be able to write books, or initiate a series of lectures, or any other means to make the teachings of the Church more clearly heard in society.

One needs to confront these years with the spirit of the “perennial youth” of a Christian and with the holy daring that should accompany it. “While the human spirit has some part in the process of bodily aging, in some way it remains ever young if it is constantly turned towards eternity.”7 Saint Josemaria, in the latter years of his life, when his physical strength was diminishing, continued to initiate daring projects such as the shrine of Torreciudad. The example of John Paul II was also quite striking, who continued giving vigorous impetus to many daring initiatives despite the great physical restrictions he suffered from.

We could apply to John Paul II these words of his that invite us to greatly esteem this last stage in life “We are all familiar with examples of elderly people who remain amazingly youthful and vigorous in spirit. Those coming into contact with them find their words an inspiration and their example a source of comfort. May society use to their full potential those elderly people who in some parts of the world—I think especially of Africa—are rightly esteemed as ‘living encyclopaedias’ of wisdom, guardians of an inestimable treasure of human and spiritual experiences. While they tend to need physical assistance, it is equally true that in their old age the elderly are able to offer guidance and support to young people as they face the future and prepare to set out along life’s paths.”

“While speaking of older people, I would also say a word to the young, to invite them to remain close to the elderly. Dear young people, I urge you to do this with great love and generosity. Older people can give you much more than you can imagine. The Book of Sirach offers this advice: Do not disregard what older people say, because they too have learnt from their parents (8:9); Attend the meetings with older people. Is there one who is wise? Spend time with him (6:34); for wisdom is becoming to the elderly (25:5).”8

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1 Saint Josemaria, Letter, 15 October 1948, no. 14.

2 Saint Josemaria, Friends of God, no. 81.

3 Prov 14:15.

4 Saint Josemaria, The Forge, no. 921.

5 Saint Josemaria, Furrow, no. 502.

6 Ibid. no. 701.

7 John Paul II, Letter to the Elderly, 1 October 1999, no. 12.

8 Ibid.

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