In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
My Lord and to 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, St. Joseph, my father and lord, by guardian angel intercede for me.
Today's Gospel, the Lord is in a position of intimacy now, with His disciples. He knows that the passion is coming and He is describing now in detail the effects of His commandments, of what happens when they are truly faithful to Him; to the mission that He has entrusted to them. And this is where He promises a new Spirit.
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments, I shall ask the Father And He will give you another advocate, to be with you forever, the Spirit of Truth, whom the world can never receive, since it neither sees no knows Him, but you know Him, because He is with you. He is in you. I will not leave you orphans, and I will come back to you.”
Beautiful promise of the Holy Spirit and of the advocate, another one that will be together with them. The purpose of their lives now has clearly changed. He will leave them but not leave them orphaned. He will leave them because He has given them a new mission. But it's not a mission that they will accomplish alone. They will not do so in an isolated fashion, without help without a tutor, without guidance. He will give them the spirit of truth.
It's a powerful statement that, that they will receive this Spirit that will guide them in truth, which means that they will have a lot of confidence that, that they will speak the truth not because of themselves, not because they're somehow brilliant, or more courageous. But because the Spirit of Truth will guide them. It will reside in them not just by knowledge, but also in the way they behave, the way they live, the Holy Spirit will guide them; Second Person of the Blessed Trinity.
And that's ultimately what will make them bear fruit. That ultimately, is the reason that the Church will grow, that the number of those becoming Christians will multiply exponentially after the day of Pentecost.
And it's good to make that distinction between what it means to be productive in life, to be successful, and be fruitful in life. It was Henry Noon, a famous Canadian author would become very successful. He had taught at Harvard, he had taught in different universities in the States. He was a very productive author; he had written very much. He had become quite well known, he had a lot of prestige.
But towards the end of his life, he decided to come to back to Toronto and to work with people who were mentally handicapped. To work among people who really had just no real abilities. He worked like 20 years in Harvard the most prestigious university you could think of, practically. And he was kind of like in an ivory tower. And he goes into the humble world of mental illness.
And there, he saw the difference between having lived with people in the productive world, the people of publishing the people of research, in some ways, the people that make our life better today, these are the people who study how to make iPhones. These are people who, you know, in the long run, have an effect on how we live, they are very productive. And they get the salaries, to recognize that productivity.
Is this a bad productivity? No, it's a good one we need we need these things that they produce, with their intellectual endeavors with the research. He saw all those and he was in some ways part of that. But now, he was with what might, one might call the fruitful world. This is what he said, writing about this in the book that he wrote.
He said that, living with handicapped people, I realized how success oriented I am living with men and women who cannot compete in worlds of business, industry, sports, or academics. But for whom dressing, walking, speaking, eating, drinking, and simply playing are the main accomplishments. This is extremely frustrating to me.
I may have come to the theoretical insight that being is more important than doing. But when asked to be just with people, who can do very little, I realized how far I am the realization that insight. Some of us might be productive, others not. But we are called to bear fruit. Truthfulness is a true quality of love. This is what we want to meditate on. The difference between being productive and being fruitful; having bearing fruit in our life.
I mean, God said to the first man to the first woman, when He blessed them, Adam and Eve, to be fruitful, be fruitful, and multiply, fill the Earth and govern it. Rain over the fish, the sea, the birds in the sky, the animals that scurry along the ground, be fruitful. Now, it’s as though the Lord is saying, I'm giving you the Paraclete. I'm giving you the Spirit of Truth. Okay. Just as He said to Adam and Eve, go and do something for yourselves. Make something of yourselves, be fruitful.
God directs us to be fruitful, but we interpret this often to be productive. Naturally, the two are not incompatible, you can be productive, you can be a very successful member of society do many great undertakings. But also, one can be wildly productive, do many great things, humanly speaking, but without being the least bit fruitful, even almost one could describe it as an empty life.
Because fruitfulness is not always visible. It sometimes goes simply unnoticed. But it is far-reaching. Fruitfulness is hidden. It’s like the fruit in a soul that comes from a deep interior life. We saw this in somebody like Don Alvaro the fruitfulness of a life with so much serenity with his peace with his gaudium cum pace. Because he had the deepest conviction in his heart deep down that Opus Dei was from God, and that it would undertake a great good for the Church.
And that good was not really the good of productivity of schools, of centers, of universities. When he thought about the good, he didn't think about all those things that Opus Dei didn’t do in the world, however good they would be, however productive they might be. When He thought about the good for the Church, he was thinking really about the good that all those things would do for souls. The fruitfulness that our lives, our undertakings, our work would have for souls.
He himself wasn't really worried whether or not he was liked. The fruitfulness that he cared about, was really the fruitfulness of sanctity. He had that fruitfulness in his life, he had that ability to enter into dialogue with God. You could see it just in the way he would kneel down in front of an image of Our Lady.
And of course, Our Lord promises that, that it is the Holy Spirit who will produce that kind of fruit in our lives, the fruit of love, the fruit of joy, the fruit of peace, the fruits of the Holy Spirit, through the patience, through the kindness, through the goodness and gentleness, of kindness and self-control. And this is what we must ask for.
And if we were like Henry Noon, and working among these handicapped people, maybe we too, would get quite frustrated, because it would seem unproductive. But you can imagine how it required patience, it required kindness, it required warmth. To work with these kinds of people. A perfectionist might be quite focused on human productivity or seeking really to make something of their lives.
And sometimes, we really need that productivity. We don't always see the difference. We want to produce something to prove that we're valuable to crank out widgets. It frees us from the perception that we might somehow be useless unless we produced something, something good, something useful. We are freed from the danger of thinking that somehow our life is useless. We don't want to be perfectionists.
We want to enter into that fruitfulness that the Holy Spirit will grant us if we are docile to his promptings. Indeed, our vocation is like a prompting to enter into that fruitfulness. It's like a dynamic that can only be powered by the love of God, the love of the Holy Spirit. We can say that our fruitfulness comes out of our own vulnerability, not just out of our power, our great abilities.
Think of the ground that Our Lord speaks about when He talks about the sower, who goes and sows the seed. He speaks about certain types of ground in which a seed simply doesn't bear fruit. It doesn't fall it's too hard. It's too I don't know too many stones, or the ground in which there are thorns, maybe it rises first or the ground that is too thin.
So, we understand if the ground for it to be fruitful, we are.. our souls like the ground for it to be fruitful. The seed that God plants in that ground of ours, you have to break it open a little bit. It can’t be hard, hard ground or the seed will just kind of like bounce off. It has to be broken. Hard ground cannot bear fruit. It has to be first raked, you know, the farmer goes and rakes the ground. Breaks it up a little bit.
And the mystery is that our weaknesses or vulnerabilities, sometimes our illness sometimes our weaknesses, our many ways of dying to ourselves are ways for us to get in touch with our own vulnerabilities so that we can bear fruit. After all, our Father, in the early days of the work would go to Madrid, he would go to the most vulnerable people imaginable, the sick, the poor, all those people. He would ask them to pray. It's as though he was planting seeds there, as they prayed.
And you can say that, I think he said that the work was born among the poor, and the sick of Madrid. And you and I have to trust that these vulnerabilities that we may experience within ourselves will indeed allow us to be fruitful. If we, if we live this, our weaknesses, or vulnerabilities, if we live them faithfully.
Precisely when we are at our weakest, and often the most broken, the most needy, there we are opening the ground of our fruitfulness. And that's, I suppose you could say that’s were Don Alvaro was always united to the vine. He was always aware of this. And that's why he was very fruitful. He understood Our Lord’s words, Remain in Me, As I So, remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself, it must remain in the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
And we see that dynamism the first vocations of the work. See, Don Alvaro was fruitful, because he understood that unity we have with the Holy Spirit, as well as the unity with our Father, the docility to what our father wanted. He was the one who spoke to some of the first members of the work. And he himself had received the Spirit of the work directly from our father. He had a deep understanding of the spirit of the work.
One of the first members of the work Jose Muzquiz, who spent many years in the US he was one of the first priests to come here to Canada. And we have old pictures of him with the Father George Kibana, which was there at the Manoir in the early 60s. And he recounts meeting Don Alvaro, and he says that Don Alvaro us an example of self-forgetfulness of Apostolic vibration and fidelity to the indications of our father.
One of them, Florencio Sanchez Bella. He wrote a letter in Valencia 1940. He said, We went for a walk, talking about Don Alvaro, we went for a walk and since it was very hot, he invited me to have an ice cream at the Cafe De La Plage. There were quite a few people, some playing dominoes at the white marble tables. amid the noise of the domino pieces, the shouts and the exclamations. Alvaro told me about the spirit of Opus Dei, which he had learned directly from the founder with whom he lived daily.
I remember his comments clearly exposed patiently, patiently. So, he assimilated them well, thanks to Alvaro, before my eyes appeared a surrender horizon that I didn't even suspect existed. So, he saw something there in Don Alvaro and it led him to give his whole life to God. And so, we need the fruitfulness that comes with authentic humility, authentic transparency in our life.
And you will remember that at the end of the war, our father was invited by many Spanish bishops. They asked him to preach spiritual retreats, to priests, to seminarians in their diocese. Our father had that reputation of being good preacher, diocese like that, bishops would often have recourse to religious priests. Diocesan priests or secular priests never did that, it wasn't their thing. They just didn't do it. But, our father was unique in that sense that he was a secular priest, yet he knew how to do spiritual direction, he knew how to how to give retreats. This was quite unique. That on the one hand, he was on the same footing as his as fellow priests, but he had that ability.
So, that meant that our father had to travel quite frequently. He had to go to different dioceses in the old systems, they didn't have many highways in those days, they had to go by train. Those days, people didn't drive travel by car. Maybe just a little bit here and there but to go from one city to the next. That was just like dirt roads. It wasn't done.
And it says that during the academic year of 1939 1940, our father spent more than 100 days outside of Madrid, and the number rose to 140 the following year. In addition, since June 1940, He multiplied his visits to the Spanish Bishops in order to make them know the work. And yet Don Alvaro didn't decide things on his own by himself, people would consult him. And he was okay. I'll let you know, just let me ask the father. He was very humble.
Plus, he was the administrator of the work, he handled the finances. In 1941, he opened over five centers in Madrid, and then in three other cities. And Don Alvaro had to follow up on all that stuff. He ran out of money. There's no money in the bank. And it's the consequence of that lack of money. The students who lived in the residence got cold, there was no heating. They couldn't fix the furnace. They showed that that aspect of vulnerability.
With time, the centers were gradually furnished. There are others who collaborated with their own decoration. And bit by bit, they went to flea markets, they found cheap furniture, stuff to decorate the center. So, they had their ability to be productive there too. But, Don Alvaro always had a deep sense of optimism, a youthful spirit.
In 1994, which was his last birthday, March 11 1994. It wasn't I don't know if it was his last meditation, but at the same time, since it was his birthday he was kind of in the spirit of Thanksgiving for his life. He didn't know that in a few days, he would pass away.
“Thank you, Lord. Forgive me for all the times I have failed to respond as I should. And help me more. And you my daughters. Pray that I may learn to fill up the gaps in my life by putting a lot of love in everything. Today, in addition to working in myself, a sincere and joyful contrition, I resolve to say with more zest than ever nunc coepi.” Which was our father's model.
“Nunc coepi! Yes, right now, I shall begin again with God's help to travel along the path of holiness. The path which leads me to love with a new liveliness, which liveliness which your prayers will gain for me. Don't leave me alone. I need you all. Each and every one of you. I need your loyalty, your fidelity to your vocation, I need your constant prayer. I need your work, well completed and done with love. I need you to bring me more daughters and more sons more vocations, more perseverance, as a result of your ceaseless apostolate.”
And this is really all about having a fruitful life. He said, at the end of the meditation, he said that, “In conclusion, I say this, in my heart, thanks to God and to the intercession of our father, the fire of love is burning vigorously. For this reason, I feel very young. And I really am. I also feel with a holy pride, very much a child of our founder. And I want all of you to feel the same. A youthfulness in terms of years is something merely psychological and it has no more important than that.
What really matters is interior youthfulness. That's what all daughters and sons of God in Opus Dei, have always and always must have the youthfulness of someone who is in love, in love with God. And who makes an ongoing effort to grow in that love.
And one of his last quotes was from the psalm, Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem maem, to God who gives joy to my youth. That's one of the phrases that the priest used to say, as he went up into the altar at Mass. As he stood at the foot of the altar, the priest in the rubrics, it was said, introibo ad altare dei, I go up to the altar of God. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem maem, to the God who gives joy to my youth.
And that joy is that fruit of the Holy Spirit, that we ask for its goods, gaudium cum pace, and is the fruit that the Holy Spirit will give us, that the Holy Spirit gave to the Apostles, we can say that often as an aspiration, Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem maem. It’s kind of fruit that is distinct from that productivity that we sometimes expect.
I thank you my God for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations you have communicated to me this meditation. I ask you to put them into effect. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel intercede for me.