Remembering St. Josemaría Escrivá, Founder of Opus Dei

Today we observe the memorial of St. Josemaría Escrivá, a man who has helped me enormously in my everyday spiritual life. He preached a point the world today most certainly needs to hear, a point brought home and emphasized in the teachings of the Second Vatican Council: that the call to holiness is universal and applicable to every human being, you and me. And it is achievable by way of the unfolding of God's grace in the ordinary work of our everyday lives.

From Passionately Loving the World:

On the contrary, you must understand now, more clearly, that God is calling you to serve Him in and from the ordinary, material and secular activities of human life. He waits for us every day, in the laboratory, in the operating theatre, in the army barracks, in the university chair, in the factory, in the workshop, in the fields, in the home and in all the immense panorama of work. Understand this well: there is something holy, something divine, hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.

St. Josemaría Escrivá taught there is something divine in the ordinary human activities of our day, and in the ordinary human connections we make with each other. And grace helps us to see and to live...

From Christ Is Passing By:

Let's not deceive ourselves: in our life we will find vigor and victory and depression and defeat. This has always been true of the earthly pilgrimage of Christians, even of those we venerate on the altars. Don't you remember Peter, Augustine, and Francis? I have never liked biographies of saints which naively -- but also with a lack of sound doctrine -- present their deeds as if they had been confirmed in grace from birth. No. The true life stories of Christian heroes resemble our own experience: they fought and won; they fought and lost. And then, repentant, they returned to the fray.

Pray for us, St. Josemaría Escrivá.