The Ordinary Life

 October 6, 2026

Hello!  How is each and every one?  Happy Anniversary!!! Today is the 24^th Anniversary of the Canonization of the ‘Saint of the Ordinary’, St Josemaria, Founder of Opus Dei. Following is a biography from the Daily Roman Missal. 

26 June

St Josemaria Escriva (1902-1975)

“The Lord has a plan for each one of us. Saints cannot even conceive of themselves outside of God's plan: they live only to fulfill it.” So said St John Paul II before a great multitude of people, from all corners of the world, who had gathered in St Peter's Square, in Rome, for the canonisation of the founder of Opus Dei.

Josemaría Escrivá was born in Barbastro, Spain, on January 9, 1902. He had one older sister, three younger sisters who died very young; and a younger brother. His parents, brought up their children with a devout Catholic faith.  In 1915, the family relocated to Logroño, and it was there that Josemaría sensed his vocation for the first time. After seeing some bare footprints left in the snow by a friar who had walked that way a short time earlier, he felt that God wanted something from him, though he did not know exactly what. He thought that he could more easily discover what it was if he became a priest, so he began to prepare for the priesthood. His father died in 1924 and Josemaría was left as head of the family.

Ordained to the priesthood on March 28, 1925, he began his ministry in a rural parish, and afterwards in Saragossa. In 1927, Fr. Josemaría moved to Madrid. There, on October 2, 1928, God showed him clearly the mission he had been hinting to him for several years; and he founded Opus Dei. From that day on he worked with all his energies to develop the foundation that God asked of him, while he continued to fulfill the various priestly responsibilities he had at that time. These brought him into daily contact with sickness and poverty in the hospitals and the poor districts of Madrid.

When the Spanish civil war broke out in 1936, Josemaría was in Madrid. The religious persecution forced him to take refuge in a variety of places. He exercised his priestly ministry in a clandestine fashion until he was finally able to leave Madrid. After escaping across the Pyrenees to southern France, he took up residence in Burgos. At the end of the war in 1939 he returned to Madrid. In the years that followed he gave many retreats to lay people, priests, and members of religious orders.

In 1946 he took up residence in Rome. From there he directed the work of Opus Dei throughout the world. He followed closely the preparations for the Second Vatican Council and its various sessions (1962-1965), keeping in touch with many of the council fathers. From Rome he frequently went to different countries in Europe, including Britain and Ireland, to spur on the apostolic work of Opus Dei. It was with the same objective that, between 1970 and 1975, he made long trips to Mexico, Spain, Portugal, South America, and Guatemala, holding catechetical gatherings which large numbers of men and women attended. He died in Rome on June 26, 1975. 

On May 17, 1992, Pope John Paul II beatified Josemaria Escriva.  He proclaimed him a saint ten years later. In his homily on that occasion, the Pope said: “Following in his footsteps, spread in society the awareness that we are called to holiness, without distinction of race, class, culture or age.” Pope John Paul II also emphasized the importance of every believer following God's will, and referred to the newly canonized as “the Saint of the ordinary (life)”.

St Josemaría had spoken many years earlier about this core message - "old as the Gospel, and as the Gospel new" as he liked to say - that God had entrusted to him: "I assure you, my sons and daughters, that when a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God. That is why I have told you repeatedly, and hammered away once and again on the idea that the Christian vocation consists of making heroic verse out of the prose of each day. Heaven and earth seem to merge, my sons and daughters, on the horizon.  But where they really meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your everyday lives.”

Following are some reflections that we can bring into our prayer today.

 Meditation of the day

Meditations: October 6, Canonization of Saint Josemaria

Some reflections that can assist our prayer on the anniversary of Saint Josemaria's canonization in 2002.

·      - Saint Josemaría let God work through him

·      -Example of the saints

·     -Their closeness and intercession

ON OCTOBER 6, 2002, Saint Josemaría was canonized in Saint Peter’s Square in Rome. John Paul II in his homily highlighted as especially important the founder of Opus Dei's commitment to encouraging Christians to strive for holiness in the midst of ordinary life: “He never stopped inviting his spiritual children to invoke the Holy Spirit to ensure that their interior life, namely, their relationship with God and their family, professional and social life, totally made up of small earthly realities, would not be separated but would form only one life that was ‘holy and full of God’”(Saint John Paul II, Homily, 6 October 2002).

We are all called to always stay close to Jesus, in a relationship that progressively fills us with peace because it leads us to realize, with ever greater clarity, that we are in God’s hands, no matter what happens. ”The ordinary life of a Christian who has faith,” Saint Josemaría stressed, “when he works or rests, when he prays or sleeps, at all times, is a life in which God is always present”(Saint Josemaría, Meditation, 3 March 1954, cit. in Saint John Paul II, Homily, 6 October 2002).

This vision of life heals our internal divisions and opens up an immense horizon for us: “God comes close to us and we can cooperate with his plan of salvation”(Saint John Paul II, Homily, 6 October 2002). Opening ourselves to the action of the Holy Spirit – that is, to holiness – contributes to transforming the world and raising it up to God.

Nevertheless when we reflect on this mission, we may feel that it is not for us, but rather for people who are better prepared. “We can find it helpful, “the prelate of Opus Dei wrote, “to remember that Christ did not call his disciples because they were better than others. He was well aware of their weaknesses and (as is also true of us) of the deepest corners of their heart and their past”(Fernando Ocáriz, Message, 20 July 2020).

Saint Josemaría experienced something similar when he founded Opus Dei. As Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in an article published that day: “When Josemaría Escrivá says that we are all called to be saints, it seems to me that he is in fact referring to his personal experience, because he never did incredible things by himself, but limited himself to letting God work” (Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Osservatore Romano, “Letting God Work,” 6 October 2002).

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WHEN THE CHURCH raises up a saint to the altars, she presents that person as a model for imitating Christ. The saints have lived with Christian hope, and show us by their witness that it is worthwhile following our Lord, who has filled their lives with a joy and peace compatible with the most varied external circumstances.

At the same time, all the saints remind us that living close to God is a goal that is not achieved by our own strength, but is the result of divine grace. It is God who has made them holy, certainly counting on their free choice and often their determined effort. They are not models of unreachable goals, but rather “people who lived with their feet on the ground; they experienced the daily toil of existence with its successes and failures, finding in the Lord the strength to rise again and again, and to continue on their journey” (Francis, Angelus, 1 November 2019). 

Saint Josemaría said that his life involved beginning and beginning again, even several times each day. He referred to this effort as a “sporting spirit.” “Tackling serious matters with a sporting spirit gives very good results. Perhaps I have lost several games? Fine, but – if I persevere – in the end I will win”(Saint Josemaría, Furrow, no. 169).

The path to holiness is not made up only of isolated heroic acts, but of a lot of daily love. We can all love one another with Christ’s concern and refinement. In the lives of the saints we see this “daily love” embodied in specific deeds. From them we learn that in each person we can encounter “the ‘hidden’ God (Is 45:15). Thanks to them, He is revealed, becomes visible, makes himself present in our midst”(Saint John Paul II, Angelus, 1 November 1983).

Each saint, therefore, is “like a ray of light streaming forth from the word of God” (Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini, no. 48). They show us different aspects of Christ’s face and of his teachings. As the Catechism of the Church tells us, the saints “in their rich diversity are refractions of the one pure Light of the Holy Spirit” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2684).

”Holiness means nothing else than union with God,” Saint Josemaría said. “The greater one’s intimacy with God, the greater the sanctity” (Saint Josemaría, In Love with the Church, no. 5).

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THE SAINTS “contemplate God, praise him and constantly care for those whom they have left on earth. When they entered into the joy of their Master, they were ‘put in charge of many things’ (cf. Mt 25:21). Their intercession is their most exalted service to God’s plan” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2683).

The saints not only show us the path to holiness, but also help us to walk along it. Their activity “is not limited to their earthly biographies but also includes their being and working in God after death. In the saints one thing becomes clear: those who draw near to God do not withdraw from men, but rather become truly close to them” (Benedict XVI, Angelus, 1 November 2010). Saint Josemaría, and so many sons and daughters of his in Opus Dei, perhaps even someone we might have known, are living in heaven, close to God, and intercede for us.

In fact, we already see this closeness and intercession in our human relationships. A parent or a teacher strives to accompany their child or student in taking the first steps in life; they themselves experienced this help when they were young, and now they see it as only natural to do the same for the new generations. In a similar way, the saints also had to struggle to live close to God. They experienced difficulties like ours, and remind us that even though we feel the inclination to sin, holiness is much more effective in furthering our happiness. “Each time we join our hands and open our hearts to God, we find ourselves in the company of anonymous saints and recognized saints who pray with us and who intercede for us as older brothers and sisters who have preceded us on this same human adventure”(Francis, General Audience, 7 April 2021).

Our Lady is present in the lives of all the saints. The only thing Saint Josemaría wanted us to take as an example from his own life was his love for Mary. “Lady,” we can pray with words of the founder of Opus Dei, “you can make my soul take off on that glorious and definitive flight which has as its destination the very Heart of God. Trust in her, for she is listening to you”(Saint Josemaría, The Forge, no. 994).

Though happiness is not an easy life but a heart in love, it is possible and in fact it is! Because holiness is ordinary life lived extraordinarily and made holy by love in doing the duties of each and every moment with love for God and love for neighbor.

The following starts the fifth word of Christ, I Thirst ((From The Cries of Jesus from the Cross, A Fulton J. Sheen’s Anthology). 

Fifth Word

I Thirst

This is the shortest of the seven cries. Although it stands in our language as two words, in the original, it is one. At the moment when Our Savior resumes His sermon, it is not a curse upon those who crucify Him, not a word of reproach to the timid disciples at the border of the crowd, not a cry of scorn to the Roman soldiers, not a word of hope to Magdalen, not a word of love to John, not a word of farewell to His own Mother. It is not even to God at this moment! Out from the depths of the Sacred Heart there wells through parched lips the awful word: “I thirst!” 

He, the God-Man, who threw the stars in their orbits and spheres into space, who “swung the earth a trinket at his wrist,” (Thompson, “The Hound of Heaven,” line 127) from whose fingertips tumbled planets and worlds, who might have said, “The sea is mine and with it the streams in a thousand valleys and the cataracts in a thousand hills,” now asks man — man, a piece of His own handiwork — to help Him. He asks man for a drink! Not a drink of earthly water — that is not what He meant — but a drink of love. “I thirst” — for love!

The last word was a revelation of the sufferings of a man without God; this word was a revelation of the sufferings of God without man. The Creator cannot live without the creature, the Shepherd without the sheep, the thirst of Christ’s love without the soul-water of Christians.

But what has He done to be entitled to my love? How much has God loved me? Oh, if I would know how much God has loved me, then let me sound the depths of meaning of that word love, a word so often used and so little understood. Love, first of all, means to give and God has given His power to nothingness, His light to darkness, His order to chaos, and this is Creation. Love means to tell secrets to the one loved, and God has told in the Scriptures the secrets of His nature and His high hopes for fallen humanity, and this is revelation. Love means also to suffer for the one loved; that is why we speak of arrows and darts of love — something that wounds — and God is now suffering for us on the Tree of the Cross, for “greater love than this no man hath, than to lay down his life for his friend” (see John 15:13). Love means also to become one with the one loved, not only in the unity of flesh but in the unity of spirit, and God has so loved us as to institute the Eucharist, that we may abide in Him and He in us in the ineffable unity of the Bread of Life. Love wishes also to be eternally united with the one loved, and God has so loved us that He has promised us His Father’s mansions, where a peace and a joy reign that the world cannot give and time cannot take away, and this is heaven.

Certainly, love has exhausted itself. There is nothing more that Christ could do for His vineyard than He has done. Having poured forth all the waters of His everlasting love on our poor parched hearts, it is no wonder that He thirsts for love. If love is reciprocal, then certainly He has a right to our love. Why do we not respond? Why do we let the Divine Heart die of thirst for human hearts? With what justice He might complain:

Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!

Strange, piteous, futile thing!

Wherefore should any set thee love apart?

Seeing none but I makes much of naught (He said),

And human love needs human meriting:

How hast thou merited —

Of all man’s clotted clay the dingiest clot?

Alack, thou knowest not

How little worthy of any love thou art!

Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee, 

Save Me, save only Me? (Thompson, “The Hound of Heaven,” lines 160–170).

Dear Jesus! Thou hast given all for me, and yet I give nothing in return. How often Thou hast come to gather vintage in the vineyard of my soul, and hast found only a few clusters! How often Thou soughtest, and found nothing; knocked, and the door of my soul was closed to Thee! How often Thou didst ask for a drink, and I gave Thee only vinegar and gall!

How often, dear Jesus, I feared lest, having Thee, I must have naught besides. I forget that if I had the flame, I would forget the spark; if I had the sun of Thy love, I could forget the candle of a human heart; if I had the perfect round of Thy happiness, I could forget the broken arc of earth. O Jesus, my story is the sad story of a refusal to return heart for heart, love for love. Give me, above all human gifts, the sweet gift of sympathy for Thee. 

Am I a stone and not a sheep

That I can stand, O Christ, beneath Thy Cross

To number drop by drop Thy Blood’s slow loss,

And yet not weep?

Not so those women loved

Who with exceeding grief lamented Thee;

Not so fallen Peter weeping bitterly;

Not so the thief was moved;

Not so the sun and moon

Which hid their faces in a starless sky,

A horror of great darkness at broad noon

I, only I.

Yet give not o’er,

But seek Thy sheep, true Shepherd of the flock,

Greater than Moses, turn and look once more 

And smite a rock. (Christina Rossetti, “Good Friday).

— The Seven Last Words

I must thank you for your prayers.  I have been working on getting the book into the hands of interested persons.  I must say that I appreciate the support of those who chose to get a copy at least for themselves and then hopefully they get moved to think of others who would truly benefit from it.  My joy was multiplied when I realized that once again my very dear friend and beloved the Great Unknown made it ahead and in tune with the goings on towards the centenary of Opus Dei.  Through the book He asked for one more year and we are starting with the two years preparation for the centenary. But I tell you how He much He challenges me every step of the way. No let up. But always with His help.  He also works double time.

See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us together again.”

Affectionately,                    

Guadalupinky