OPUS.Secular
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Father of Secular Apostles?

Opus Dei founder Monsignor Josemaria Escriva's contribution to modern
lay spirituality

  By Dennis Helming

    The twentieth century was supposed to have been "the century of the
laity."  So at least the Roman Pontiffs started to tell us some 70-80
years ago.  Now as the sand runs down on our century (let alone the
millennium), we might take stock.  Where are all those initiatives?

    The twentieth century, in fact, with its dogmatic and moral
turbulence, has not dealt lightly with many lay organizations and
initiatives.  Gone, or greatly diminished in Europe, are the likes of
Catholic Action, Young Catholic Workers and the Catholic Family
Movement.  In the United States calls for an invigorated laity have been
invariably interpreted by Catholics to mean they should participate more
and more in Church things.  As a result, the call of Vatican II to
"transform the world, so that it more and more conform to the Gospel" is
largely left unheeded.  The Council made the point that this is the
specific role of the laity, while the clergy are to provide the basic
doctrinal and spiritual help the laity need to play their distinctive
role effectively.

    Yet not is all bleak either.  The twentieth century has also
witnessed the birth of some vibrant spiritual leaders and institutions
in the Catholic Church.  One example is Msgr. Josemaria Escriva and Opus
Dei (Work of God), which he founded in 1928.  Early this past April the
Vatican took the first step toward raising him to the altars.  By
declaring Msgr. Escriva "venerable," the Holy See has recognized the
heroism of his life of virtue.  Fifteen years after his death, this
institution of the Church comprises over 75,000 members, well over a
million "cooperators," friends and other beneficiaries, plus some 1,300
of its own priests.

    But given its steady growth and repeated papal favors and approval,
why is Opus Dei not known by more Catholics, and even opposed by some? 
A simple explanation is that Opus Dei is a relatively new institution in
the Church and in the United States.  However, it is clear that the more
people hear and learn about Opus Dei and the distinctive contribution it
can make in their life of faith, the more people want to become
involved.

    Actually, it was the desire to set the record straight on Opus Dei
and Msgr. Escriva that led to my writing the first biographical sketch
in English of this extraordinary man.  And I can claim no little
acquaintance with the founder, whom I first met in 1957.  There can be
little doubt where Msgr. Escriva is coming from, what with his
single-minded pursuit of the "one thing necessary."  But see for
yourself: attend an Opus Dei retreat or day of recollection.  If you
want to hear about prayer and the sacraments, service and virtues,
humility and mortification, I will wager you will go back for more. 
Another clue: his books, nothing if not primers for personal prayer,
have sold millions in dozens of languages.  In my book, Footprints in
the Snow, I recounted a telling story.

    "Many high ecclesiastics came to recognize in Opus Dei's founder a
'precursor' of the essential teachings of Vatican II.  Many of the
Council's teachings or emphases were already established practice in
Opus Dei.  It is no wonder, then, that many conciliar participants sound
out Msgr. Escriva to hear his views.

    "Once a bishop pointed out to him that the Council was coming to see
that the task of lay people is to bring a Christian leaven to secular
structures in order to transform them.  While assenting to the general
formulation, Msgr. Escriva emphatically laid down a condition: 'If they
have a contemplative soul, Your Excellency.  Otherwise, they won't
transform anything; rather they'll be transformed.  Instead of making
the world Christian, they'll just become mundane.'  Another high
churchman mentioned that lay people are charged with the mission of
ordering secular institutions according to the divine Will.  'Yes,
that's right,' interposed the founder, 'but first they have to be well
ordered within: men and women of a profound interior life, souls of
prayer and sacrifice.  If not, instead of ordering family and social
realities, they'll bring to them their own personal disorder.' "

    Ironically, just when droves of committed Catholics were
renouncing the "luxury" or "bother" of prayer, there we find this always
youthful Spanish priest, almost invariably in tete-a-tete, encouraging
now this mother of seven, now that successful businessman, not just to
pray, but to do so 24 hours long -- and to do so every day.  Escriva was
not simply a movement man: For him, there was no religious veneer, no
short-term spiritual solutions, no reactionary band-aids, no obsession
with numbers and statistics, no demagogic public relations.  Quality,
the fruit of painstaking personal attention and coaching ("like a
jeweler working a precious gem," he would say), would be for him the
solution to quantity, the trigger to an apostolic chain reaction.  Help
one person really to know and love God, and he in turn will
spontaneously spread the blaze to his peers.  It is as complicated as
that.  Let those disbelieve who choose not to experience the
transformative power of habitual, intimate conversation with God.

    More vintage Escriva: If these "modern apostles" did not convert
their everyday walks and haunts into contemplative prayer, they would
not - could not - survive as Christians.  "The more you are in the
world," the founder would tell whoever would listen, "the more you must
be in God."  And vice versa: the more they were in God, the more they
must strive to be in the world, improving all the while, their work,
family, duties, commitments, friendships.  For this Pied Piper of the
laity, the only proof of becoming more godlike is an increasingly
attractive humanity - and that amid exhausting work, rightly seen as
service.

    If in so many ways Msgr. Escriva lived exemplarily, and thus con-
tagiously, there was no one who could best his humanity, his heart and
warmth.  He had to have the winningest of smiles and the twinklingest
of eyes to pull off the Copernican revolution in Christian life that he
did - and does.

    At 73 years of age, Msgr. Escriva died a sudden but holy death in
Rome in 1975.  I had been with this man to whom I never said, nor could
ever say, no three years earlier, for the last time.  Briefly we rode in
an elevator together.  All the while he whispered in my ear: "Being with
my children makes me so happy that it's very difficult to imagine how
heaven could make me happier."  Those were no idle words.  This was a
man more enamored than anyone I had ever seen.  It was almost as if
Jesus were animating his sturdy, energetic frame.

    This self-dubbed "anticlerical" monsignor believed so much in us
weaklings - quite ordinary, mediocre men and women - that he was able to
pull off what no one had ever attempted on such a large scale throughout
the sweep of Christianity.  With him in your comer and God at your
elbow, you no longer had to choose between sacred occupations and
secular pursuits.  After all, had not our Redeemer spent ten times more
years prayerfully working than those devoted to His public life?  Could
not we thus aspire to imitate at least His so-called hidden life?  If
that is the witness our world needs, that is clearly what God wants, and
so He will not stint His help and grace.  The secularization of society
that led others to water down essential elements of Christianity led
Escriva to get himself and others closer to God, convinced the spillover
would generate genuine, creative lay apostles.

    Meanwhile, amid this topsy-turvy identity crisis, Msgr. Escriva was
quietly, patiently egging on John Doe and Mary Smith to aspire to the
closest of friendships with God.  After all, was not that the whole
purpose of the Incarnation and the Church?  In the thick of the world
where they had always been, John and Mary need not change their
circumstances - just their hearts.  (Or rather: God would change their
hearts, if but given an inch.)  Now, is not the viable prospect of
becoming a saint and apostle "on Main Street," as Msgr. Escriva was wont
to say, good news - indeed the Good News for the 20th century and
beyond?

    At least the Holy See seems to think so.  Let us read from the decree
approved by the Pope on April 9, 1990, declaring that Msgr. Escriva
lived faith, hope, and love, plus the cardinal virtues, to a heroic
degree:
  * "prophetically anticipating the Second Vatican Council";
  * "a true pioneer of the 'intrinsic integrity of Christian life' ";
  * "Escriva's program: 'to place Christ at the summit of all human
    activities' ";
  * "laity's role . . . Christianizing the world 'from within'";
  * ". . . passionately loved the Eucharist . . . untiring apostle of
    the Sacrament of Penance...."

    We could do worse than to reproduce the document's summation: "The
prodigious fruitfulness of his apostolate was there for all to see.  Yet
he considered himself a 'deaf and inept instrument,' 'a founder without
foundation,' 'a sinner madly in love with Jesus Christ.' "

    We certainly all qualify as sinners.  But is there any chance we
might also "catch" Msgr. Escriva's madness?

    (Dennis Helming's illustrated biography of Msgr. Escriva, "Footprints
in the Snow", is available at $7.95 from Scepter Press, PO Box 1270,
Princeton, NJ 08542-1270.  Scepter has just brought out in English
another biography, "At God's Pace", written by Francois Gondrand; this
work sells for $10.95.  Scepter also handles all the English editions of
Msgr. Escriva's published works.)

Reprinted with permission by The Catholic Answer, 200 Noll Plaza,
Huntington, IN 46750; February 1991.