Learning Trust with Blessed Alvaro del Portillo

In this meditation, Fr. Peter Armenio reflects on the spirit of filial trust he witnessed in Blessed Alvaro del Portillo, shaped in large part by his closeness to St. Josemaría. Through that relationship, Blessed Alvaro learned to see God truly as Father and to entrust everything to him with serenity and faith. 

Fr. Peter encourages us to deepen our own trust in God, learning from the example of the saints to live with greater confidence and interior peace. 

Listen and reflect on: 

• Lessons from Blessed Álvaro 
• His unity with St. Josemaría 
• Living with peace amid uncertainty  
• Developing a simple and confident prayer life  
• Imitating the virtues of the saints

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins, and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother Saint Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me. Our thanksgiving that we want to offer to our Lord through Jesus Christ and his Immaculate Mother Mary would be incomplete if we didn't make serious reference and reflection on the role of Saint Jose Maria's right hand man for forty years, whose sanctity has been recognized officially by the Catholic Church. Alvaro del Portillo is now Blessed Alvaro del Portillo. Ultimately, we bring saints, and to be technical, the blessed, to our contemplation of the life of Jesus, since the church recognizes that, like St. Paul, a saint and a blessed can say, it is no longer I that live, but Christ who lives in me. Certain individuals, I'm not saying that they are better disciples than others who do not get recognized officially by the church, but those individuals as a way of helping the faithful are declared by the church as role models. I'm grateful to God that he has been declared that. Since a few years before, I was in the same room with him a number of occasions, a good number of occasions, and it's kind of interesting, if you will, to see someone who comes across as very regular, understated, self-deprecating to be in the presence of so many people. Because his words are spirit and life. But there's a bit of a shortcut that we contemplate Christ through his holy followers, especially those followers who are recognized to have followed Jesus to a heroic level. And so that's what we want to do during this time of reflection that ultimately we want to be more identified with Jesus Christ and all his teachings. Let's contemplate on his background. Blessed Alvaro was an engineer who suffered in a very direct way from the horrific persecution of the church that victimized thousands of priests and religious. Thousands were summarily executed. And he witnessed that in his home city of Madrid. In a nation that a few centuries past was responsible for the conversion of a significant part of the world. And he met Saint Jose Maria through his aunt, who Saint Jose Maria knew. And Blessed Alvaro immediately saw that that charism received by Saint Jose Maria on October 2nd, 1928, was very much for him. Not for long, Saint Jose Maria saw that within Opus Day, Alvaro del Portillo would have a singular role as his most faithful assistant, and as an individual who was most faithful to the charism Saint Jose Maria received. In a nutshell, that charism is that one is called to love God, love Jesus Christ totally in every activity that characterizes his or her life. In a get together behind Alvaro del Portillo's back, St. Josemaria said, He's the one to imitate. He's the one who's embraced the spirit of Opuste, that spirit that was divinely inspired. He's the one who embraced it in an exemplary way. And that we would have that spirit or live that spirit to the degree that we tried to replicate his own fidelity to the gospel through his calling to live the charism received by José Maria Scrivan. From the get-go, his spirit of prayer was extraordinary. I read a book in Spanish, a bigger book, that was quite enlightening. And this was during the Spanish Civil War, where he was on the wrongs. He was in the part of Madrid that was controlled by anarchists and communists, and he was drafted in the army, and he miraculously escaped to the other side and enlisted in the National Army, if I get the title right. And he was basically in the Army Corps of Engineers. He was a civil engineer, specialty roads and bridges. And I guess they would go all around places of past battles and fix roads, fix bridges. And he uh wrote to Saint Josemaria lamenting that because of a lack of organization and order, that he was cutting corners on what is called an opest day plan of life, plan of life in Christ, basically, an hour of meditation, recitation of the rosary, mass and communion. Those were part of the plan of life. And in that letter that he lamented, that he was cutting corners, that he has to be more careful, he shared with St. Jose Maria his resolution of being more diligent and take care, taking care of his plan of life. He states he's very busy. He states he's very tired. And he uses every minute to spend time with our Lord, at the same time carrying out his military duties of being part of this Army Corps of Engineers. Going to mass was problematic, and he had to get permission from his commanding officer, and all told I'm not sure the exact distance, but I have a feeling it was something like maybe four to five miles up and back, you know, one way, maybe two and a half, coming back. Um, and he would go every day. And he got permission to do that. And by the time his unit moves to another location, some astronomical numbers, relatively speaking, astronomical number of thirty other soldiers who would accompany him to that daily mass. And just to wrap up that part of his life as a soldier, he was transferred, not as unit, but he was transferred. And I think on the blackboard in his barracks, he was about 22 years old, if that. One of his fellow soldiers wrote on the blackboard, Officer Del Portillo is leaving us. Don't cry, although we lost a father. And that kind of gives us a little inside information of his holiness, his charity. But probably they had the same experience as me. I found him extremely affectionate and kind, and not surprised that the church recognized it. I was again impressed and a bit surprised how they went from his just ordinary life to a beatification in a relatively short time. Let's fast forward to my own immediate experience of Blessed Alvaro, being a naive young American seminarian who hardly knew Spanish and Italian and capacity to read Latin. I arrived in Rome previous to that. I heard about Alvaro Portillo as a very important assistant to Saint Jose Maria. And also someone who received heavy positive endorsement from Saint Jose Maria, who was not St. Jose Maria at that time. And I remember my first day there. I had jet lag. I had an Italian pranzo, which is the main meal midday, around two o'clock in the afternoon. And the food was not to my liking. We had a little some hors d'oeuvres, which consisted, unbeknownst to me, until I asked, breaded cow's brains, with a accompanied by a sweet vermouth that I did not like. A plate of pasta went down well, followed by a symbolic piece of meat, was not to my liking either, and I asked, what was it? And it was cow's tongue. So I don't know if it was psychological or physical, but I was jet-lagged, didn't like the food, and the room immediately filled with cigarette smoke. This is the 70s, with espresso coffee and a little sweet after dinner drink. It was Sunday, so it was a bit festive, and the new school year was beginning. Also, wine accompanied the main meal. That would be every day for the rest of my stay in Rome. And immediately after that dinner, we we played sports. There's a big soccer game. Americans usually were barred from playing soccer with these uh Cracker Jack players from the European countries and South American countries. And um non-soccer players played, would play basketball. Being an American, I played basketball and I felt sick. And so I sat out, and uh someone said, Well, we would we would call the one in charge of Opus Day the the father to make it more family-like. And someone said the father will be driving through the property because there's a quarters in that seminary for the prelate of Opus Day, the father. He played bocce or walk around, so there was a section for him. And anyways, he was being chauffeured through the grounds of the seminary, and I just ran down to the road. I was on an embankment looking down and stopped the car in my basketball attire. And uh he talked to me, he was very happy to see me. Uh, I needed a translator. He asked me if I knew the recipe to be a happy young man. I said, I don't know. And my translator said, say no, so he gives you an answer. I go, no. And he said, Love our Lord a lot. And think about the others. He traced the cross on my forehead and left. And upon entering the Opus Day headquarters, he told the first person he met, it was reported to me, that he met a young American who was starting his tour of duty in Rome. After that, we had gatherings with him, and he was very engineer-esque. We'd ask him questions about the spiritual life, about the life of St. Jose Maria, about the life of the church, and he would elaborate. And I could summarize that my years there, with him with him being at the helm, he would always begin these gatherings inviting us gently. This is a great day to give yourself totally to Jesus Christ. And we knew that's what he was doing in his own prayer with his own sentiments. And he would tell us at the same time, it's like it was an international seminary, so you have a smattering of seminarians from different countries of the world, and you represent, you don't represent your country, but you have that sensation. Well, I'm one of the five Americans there, and Helmuth, or Heinrich is one of the f three or four Germans there. You have a smattering of Irish, English, French. And he would tell us, my sons, I don't want you to be supermen. And when you're young, you're competitive, even when even at the highest level of piety, of pursuit of holiness, and uh I don't know how holy you could be if you compete to be holy, but anyway, he detected that is an occupational hazard of a young man uh studying for the priesthood who's trying to be holy, he may compete with somebody else. And he would say, I don't want supermen here. I want you to be super humble. That's what he would say. And he would invite us to begin again many times to appeal to the mercy of our Lord. Those were great years because they coincided with a friend of Blessed Alvaro, who would eventually become Saint John Paul II. They became friends during the Second Vatican Council. Both of them were heavily involved with the council. I hear that Saint John Paul perhaps did a lot of the work, a lot of the work on the eventual document of Gary and Spaz. Blessed Alvaro worked on the document on the priesthood, Presbyterium Ordinis. I think also just by reading the document, he had a heavy hand in the document on the laity. So they were they were friends from way back. John Paul got elected during my years in Rome. And Blessed Alvarez would periodically meet with John Paul. And he would tell us about the Holy Father, what he could. And when he consecrated the church in Mexico to Our Lady of Guadalupe, we noticed that Blessed Alvaro probably helped compose that consecration. It was a little too close to home. It was teachings that we heard very often, very much the spirit of Opus Day. Holiness, abandonment, counting on Mary's motherly love and intercession. Anyway, I like to tell this often that he was seeing him every day, and I was working with a youth group next door to headquarters. Most of the young men in this youth group were from the city of Rome. And I have my own routine. Part of our plan of life is a half hour of meditation in the evening or late afternoon. And I would go into headquarters because there was a chapel called the crypt where St. Jose Maria was buried. Now he's in a chapel with the Blessed Sacrament above the crypt, anyway. And Blessed Alvaro is in that former burial place, the crypt of Blessed Alvaro. And so I would go there, I that's probably 7.15 p.m. at night. Supper was late in Europe, in Italy. And I knew that Blessed Alvaro was visiting the Pope every day, and he had a routine. He would come back to headquarters around 7. And I didn't want to run into him because he had bigger fish to fry. Kind of silly, but um and so I arrived at 7:30 just to be on the safe side, because invariably he would stop, he would talk to you, he would, and he was so busy. And he even told me that he was very busy since ever since St. Josemira died, that in a in a good in a good way, but he was very busy, very under pressure. So I wanted to give him a little bit of respite. Anyway, he didn't come in at seven. When I came at 7.30, we both uh he was coming in from one door, my I came through another door in the same lobby. I was gonna go in one direction, he was going another. And then he came in, and I just quickly made a sharp right turn into a small little sitting room, and I hear him saying in Spanish, uh Peter, where are where are you going? Come and talk to me. And he talked to me for, I don't know, it could have been 10 minutes, and he just wanted to know if how I was adapting to the language, if I was eating well, if I was getting enough rest, what was everybody had a a job on the seminary uh property. I was a landscaper, I didn't have too much talent to do anything else. He wanted to know about that, how I was doing. Uh he wanted to know about my family. And um I was kind of a loud dresser, and um I had to, matter of fact, modify my wardrobe because it was just too loud and just didn't fit in the more subdued uh European dresswear, but he told me how much he liked my elegance and uh and it really moved me, not that the conversation make the headlines, but he acted, and I knew it was the opposite because he actually told me in my first encounter that he was busy, buried in work, that he would spend that kind of time. He gave me the sensation he had nothing to do, that I was the most important person in the world. It was against her realistic, I said this person is coming back from Jean Paul II, who would draw thousands and thousands of people, incredible popularity, especially among the young. And nevertheless, he would waste quote-unquote time with me. And I'll never forget that, how he would walk the walk, and charity was not, you know, a nice uh consideration, but he would live it, and in very ordinary ways and extraordinary ways as well. During those years, it was in Opus Day marrying years, where there'd be a special emphasis on the Blessed Mother, and he had a lot of intentions. The more immediate intention was um the beatification of Saint Jose Maria. Also, John Paul recommended that Blessed Alvaro, Alvaro del Portillo start a pontifical university, which took a lot of faith because the enrollment in the other pontifical universities, which had been around for a significant amount of time, significant amount of years, were diminished, decreasing. And so that was one intention, another intention, communism had not collapsed in Eastern Europe, and uh he wanted to start activities of Opus Day, centers of Opus Day in those countries when the time was right, but having a Polish pope from a communist country uh also added the evangelical pressure to do this, the proper canonical configuration of Opus Day, and just to name a few things that were very much on his mind. And what did he do? Well, he invited all of us to put all these intentions in the loving and maternal care of the Blessed Mother. And in spite of being busy, he would go on pilgrimages, which consisted in those days of a part of the rosary heading towards the shrine. There's plenty of them in Rome, the main part at the shrine, and another part coming back. And I marveled about the time he put into prayer. He would encourage us very strongly to fulfill those acts of piety, the contemplation of Jesus, spend an hour a day, half hour in the morning, half hour in the evening, Mass and Thanksgiving after Mass for ten minutes, charity with our friends by witnessing the gospel and also through our words. We don't push, maybe nudge people to come to God through confession, through more prayer, more converting to a more charitable life. I don't know, a whole panoply of possibilities of discipleship. And he would say this it's a play on words in Spanish. Fulfillment of the plan of life is cumplimiento, cumplimiento. And he would tell us, make sure your acts of piety are cumplimiento, fulfillment. And be sensitive to when it is cumplo imiento, which means I do it, but I don't I lie. I do it, but I lie. In other words, I'm cutting corners, I'm checking the boxes, my heart's that in there. And so that was very much emphasized. Well, these are just a few reflections of, in my estimation, well, it's recognized by the church, a great saint, but packaged in the ordinary, even though he had extraordinary gifts. And I would say my immediate experience of Alvaro del Portillo is a lot of love, a lot of joy, and a profound love for our Lord through living his own calling to live the spirit of Opus Day as a right-hand man of St. Jose Maria as the first link to Jose Maria, Saint Jose Maria, to the succeeding years of Opus Day. Many beautiful things have happened with suffering with the cross since uh Blessed Alvaro left this world to intercede for us in heaven. And in imitation of Blessed Alvaro and St. Jose Maria, we turn to the Blessed Mother and ask her to give that desire to want to follow her Son Jesus Christ in a more loving way, a more faithful way, so that we could be lights in the modern world to bring people back to God. Amen. I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations you've communicated to me in this meditation. I ask your help in putting them into effect. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.