Destined In Love: The Legacy of St. Josemaria Escriva

In our meditation of the week: in light of the Feast of St. Josemaria on June 26th, Fr. Peter Armenio invites us to reflect on St. Josemaria's legacy and his role as an "evangelical sacramental." The canonization of a saint is an infallible declaration that the person is an actual sacramental, an outward sign of Jesus Christ. Through canonization, the Church acknowledges that person as a faithful reflection of the heart of Our Lord.

St. Josemaria exemplified what it means to radiate Christ's presence in everyday life. Fr. Peter references St. Paul's words to the Ephesians, emphasizing that to be like Christ, we must strive for perfection in love, as Christ has destined us all for Heaven.

By cultivating our devotion to St. Josemaria, we learn that sanctity works. It is through our personal pursuit of holiness that we can change the world, bringing Christ to its center. We are all destined by God in love to be saints. This month, through the intercession of Our Lady and St. Josemaria, let us commit ourselves to more fervently radiate Christ's presence, remembering: "I am called to do what I can to witness the gospel and to contribute to witnessing it to the very ends of the earth."

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With your permission, Lord Jesus Christ, truly present with us in the Blessed Sacrament, because the Feast of St. Josemaria falls on June 26th, every June, if you attend a day of recollection or an evening of recollection, the second topic will be on the legacy of St. Josemaria. Since Opus Dei was founded by St. Josemaria and this is a formative activity of Opus Dei, hence, at least once a year, we specifically pray about his legacy. And I would say that we could consider every saint, but now we're going to consider St. Josemaria an evangelical sacramental. A sacrament is an outward sign, instituted by Christ to give grace. The meaning of the outward sign effectively works, produces its effect within the soul. Sacramental is also a sign of Christ's power of Christ’s intervention. And we garner grace through sacramentals, like holy water, a crucifix, in a certain sense of Catholic priests, especially if he's dressed as one is a sacramental of the high priest of Christ, or better yet a sacrament of the high priesthood of Christ. And a saint is a sacramental of the life of Jesus. That's why saints are so special in the life of the Church. As our Holy Father Pope Francis says that is our “show piece” of the Church. It's the Church's finest hour when it can canonize a saint, because a canonization is an infallible declaration, that someone is an actual sacramental of Jesus Christ. That man or that woman allowed that life of Christ to grow to such a threshold, that the person can be considered a reflection, a faithful reflection of the heart of Our Lord. 

I would say that there's two reasons to cultivate devotion to St. Josemaria. The obvious one is, well he's a saint. So, we're supposed to imitate all the saints. There's always something to imitate. And the reason why the Holy Spirit enlightens the Church to beatify a man or a woman, is for public consumption. That they serve officially. The Church says that man, that woman is an official role model for the whole Church, some more than others because of our personal circumstances. So that's one reason. But I would say, and I say this respectfully towards the saints, I would say that's an important one, but not as important as the secondary is. The second reason is this message he received, kind of a light, of how to transform the world, how to change the world, how to bring Christ into the world. Now this takes a lot of faith now, because we notice that our world is characterized by moral insanity. But last time we checked the gospel, Jesus doesn't say, “Listen, I'm the victory that has overcome the world as long as it's not that bad.” Right? He didn't say that, in fact, he says, “Have peace, I have overcome the world.” And he was considering the world until the end of time but he was also considering the present, pagan Roman world that is very similar to the world we live in now. And so this light he received, and every saint receives a light, every follower of Christ receives a light. And, obviously, I'll have a natural bias because that's my calling. But I think it transcends the natural bias because the message St. Josemaria received was a very similar message that has been transmitted in the past gospel of the Ascension, of Pentecost. One of the best kept secrets even though this is our Lord's last desire, his absolute last words, where now he will never return again until his second coming, and he's going to leave a mandate. But without it, well, it's been forgotten and ignored. I am called to do what I can to witness the gospel and to witness it or contribute to witnessing it to the very ends of the Earth. How we forget that. And until October 2, 1928, obviously that divine commission was not forgotten. But it was the Work - it was designed for specialists, okay, you become a Franciscan and preach to the poor, the Holy Spirit wants this. Or you do it as a Benedictine, or you do it as a Jesuit, or you do it as a Dominican. This is something very much from God. But to get into the nook and cranny of the world, you need the lay person. The kingdom will always expand because the driving force is the Holy Spirit. But from another perspective, now, it's just a question of using the math that the go-to people in our Church, especially now, is the lay woman, the lay man. How much will it expand? It depends on the apostolate of the layperson.

People will not by osmosis return to the sacraments without the intervention in the apostolate in the witness of laypersons. God could do anything, but all things considered. And in the wake of the initiation of the culture of death that began with a bang, the Great War, the Bolshevik Revolution, remote persecutions in Mexico and Spain, World War II is on the horizon, this insignificant young priest - now that I'm old, 26 seems like infancy to me. You know, when he said, “When I was younger,” he said, “While I was 26 years of age with a good sense of humor, that's all I had.” I said, it's not bad. You're 26. He's an infant. And it's kind of our Lord’s style. Big events are kind of understated, one of the biggest events in the history of mankind is the is the birth of Jesus. and there mom and dad, some smelly animals and shepherds, and that's it. When the Redemption reached its climax, when Jesus died on the Cross, he didn't have a fan club there, that's for sure, mom, an apostle who tagged along, and a converted prostitute. Anyway, Juan Diego, the children of Fatima, now we're going to focus a little bit on St. Josemaria. At least, socially speaking, this insignificant priest, very young in the priesthood, though, with a very powerful sense that God wanted something of him and he prayed very hard. All-afternooners, all-nighters, lots of penance, lots of pilgrimages to Mary, to get an answer. After 10 years, he gets the answer in a retreat, he gets a vision, miraculous vision, where he sees our Lord in the world in a new way. And he receives it within this light. There is a message that Christ will be brought into the heart of the world. If the Christian, the layman, the lay woman, the priest, commit themselves to being saints, not good, not orthodox, not defending good causes, those are important. 

We could reflect on Jesus’ encounter with the rich young man just to reinforce this whole idea of sanctity and holiness. He lived all the commandments. He was very much with the program. He was a virtuous young man. If he lived today, he would be very much for the right causes. He would probably be president of the right-to-life organization in his university, which is very laudable, very edifying. He'd live chastity according to the gospel. So he'd be one of the few gentlemen on a date. Good, clean-cut kid. And Jesus tells him, essentially, it’s not enough. In this enterprise you need to be a saint and you need to be totally centered on me. You got to get rid of everything, so you're totally focused on me. Which doesn't mean literally that we become homeless. But it does mean that we are detached from everything, so we are attached to Christ. In order to buy Christ, we need to be detached from everything. That's what he says. Sell all that you have. And Jesus said, because if you don't do that, you can’t cut it, you can’t evangelize. And then give to the poor. Well, there’s a lot of poverty here, maybe not material poverty. But there's a vast absence of God, of Christ. And I would venture to say, more or less, through no fault of their own, the many people who qualify as “they”, and it's up to the mustard seed to get the message to the vast colony of lepers. Probably we were all virtually lepers who need conversion and need repentance. We got to bring Christ to those people who don't have him, don't know him. And St. Josemaria says that sanctity works. Because why would Jesus command us to spread the gospel to every corner of the world if we were consigned to failure?

I was hearing confessions at St. Mary the Angels and this lady approached me and said, “Can I stay a little longer?” And I did have a sick call. And while I got a sick call I guess it could wait, that sick person is not going anywhere. He's in a hospital. And well she had 40 people for confession, so so much for you know, she kind of, do I have, can I wait, can I stick around a little bit more, but that's a euphemism for two hours. And, and then another priest had to help. And I’ll say this there were a lot of little kids, a lot of young kids seven years old, 11 years old, 12 years old and their parents because she was training kids for First Communion. And I discovered that it was not a parish activity, wasn't part of the CCD program. That this was her own initiative. And she was giving classes to the parents too. Someone who didn't have much formal education and I could say that there, at least I hope, there was a holy jealousy. Wow. You know, I, with all my training I don't know if I came close to bringing 40 kids to First Communion and to confession,
you know. She didn’t have brilliant insights. She's not a theologian. English is not her first language. But there's a glow called charity. And you see the person there early before Mass adoring the Blessed Sacrament. And what can I tell you? There it is. Because Jesus says you have to be my witness. And St. Josemaria, there's a number of quotes he liked, one is the formation the early Christians received. Now when I say early Christians, I don't mean a Synod of Bishops. I'm gonna read from the Ephesians. The Ephesians were, I would estimate 50 families. That was the Church at Ephesus. There was no official building, or parish center or church, Mass was in a bigger house. There were elders, lay people who would train other people in the faith, that-that's where CCD began. And they are training for baptism. It’d take a long time, because you had to know what you're getting into. Because you may not survive. And you'd go through a lot of hardship. And so there was training, and formation, gathering together like we are for prayer, secretly a lot because if you got caught you would be executed because exercising Christianity was a capital offense. And St. Josemaria liked this quote to the Ephesians, “Blessed be the God and the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him, he destined us in love.” And another quote from him, because that's what a saint is, it's a sacramental of these words, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” And St. Luke, that's from St. Matthew, St. Luke adds one more detail to this, comes from Our Lord, “Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful.” St. Thomas Aquinas says that mercy is the salient quality of God. It’s the salient perfection of God. So you need to be perfect on the order of love. And I'd say a saint and we're looking at St. Josemaria, again, is a sacramental of evangelization. And I would always wonder a little bit, I think I got it, the previous prelate, Bishop Javier Echevarria would invite people to contemplate St. Josemaria's canonization. And he says, just reflect on that experience. Oh, one restaurant ran out of bread. That was interesting, that doesn't happen too often in Italy. And maybe one restaurant ran out of pasta. The subways, the trolleys were especially packed, because hundreds of 1000s of people attended the canonization. And I would say the sacramental of evangelization is that it's kind of a testimony from the Holy Spirit, how powerful sanctity is. The great majority of us, it's not God's will for the great majority of us to draw hundreds of 1000s of people to our canonization. It's just not within God's plan. Perhaps the life of the Church would be quite chaotic if every one of us did that. But the message here is okay, what happened, what you see externally, have the faith that it happens unnoticed, but it happens, the impact of holiness, you cannot calculate. And at certain occasions, the Holy Spirit manifests this, especially in the occasional canonization. And more than feathering the cap of St. Josemaria, we feather the cap of the Holy Spirit. We feather the cap of Jesus Christ. Because this promise of the divine commission that “Bring the Gospel to every corner of the Earth” has found expression in St. Josemaria, the vision he had, thank God he was a saint. He lived the vision. What's the vision? You're called to be a saint. And he got in trouble. Before the Vatican Council, he was labeled as a heretic. After the Vatican Council is labeled as turning the clock back or maybe a reactionary. And the reason why he was labeled as a heretic is that he said listen, you don't have to go through great lengths and leave the world. You can be a cab driver, you can be a teacher, you can be a hairdresser, you can be a farmer, you can be auto-mechanic. You're called to love our Lord as much as the great mystics. And you're called to be a great mystic, but within the ordinary. And you have just as much of an obligation as the bishop of your diocese, to evangelize, and maybe even from a certain perspective more, because he hangs out in churches and sacristies, the lay person is the one who gains ground for the Church. And we change the world by changing my little segment of the world and then my little segment of the world is where I live, my family, my workplace, my sporting events, my socializing, my parties I attend to, the gatherings, the meetings, etc. That’s where I have to be an ambulatory Church. Analogously, I have to be, analogously, very, very analogous I have to be almost like the Blessed Sacrament, a presence of our Lord within the ordinary, like our Lord is present with us within those ordinary properties of bread. 

Maybe one resolution we can make is to take to heart and not to give into false humility, the Holy Spirit, yes, can make you a saint, make me a saint. Let's not give into a certain kind of pride, well, my defects are such, my track record is such, my checkered past is such that I can't cut it. I can't cut it, but he can cut it. We can't underestimate the power of God. And St. Josemaria would tell his followers, and we're his followers, whether we're in Opus Dei or not, he says you gotta want to be a saint. And then he would qualify because you know, in Opus Dei you hear the word saint a lot. And so he kind of qualified it saying, you know, in Spanish un santo de altar which is translated loosely in English as a canonizable saint. And so that's that was his mantra, you're called to be a saint. That's the only way to live the gospel. And so he says, in his own personal prayer, which is now for public consumption in The Way and I'm going to read two points and we'll finish with benediction, “Said a prayerful soul, in intention may Jesus be our end, in affections our love, in speech our theme, in actions our model.” That is the sacramental of a saint. And then the sacramental of evangelization is something very similar. As he gazed upon the world, the moral insanity of his time where the culture of death started to become a tsunami. In the 30s, he writes, “I tell you a secret, an open secret. These world crises are crises of saints. God wants a handful of men [and women] of his own in every human activity, then the peace of Christ in the kingdom of Christ.” Mary, you're the one, you're the greatest evangelizer, the greatest sacramental of evangelization, because you brought him into the world. We couldn't have this conversation with your Son unless you brought him in. You brought him in. We thank you for bringing him in through the power of the Holy Spirit. We ask for your prayers of intercession, Queen of All Saints, that we take to heart the message of St. Josemaria and we ourselves, on some level, endeavor to commit ourselves to nothing less than personal sanctity.