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Catholic Saints
St. Josemaria Escriva
00:20:51
Join Dr. Christopher Mooney and Mary McGeehan on this episode of Catholic Saints to discuss St. Josemaria: his origin, spirituality, Opus Dei, and how to follow his saintly example. St. Josemaria Escriva centered his ministry around a simple truth: each person can experience the extraordinary grace of holiness even in the ordinary events of day-to-day life.
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Host
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.
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Mary McGhan
Hi. Welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Mary McGhan, and today we are joined with Dr. Chris Mooney, professor of theology here at the Augustine Institute. And today we're going to talk about Catholic St. Jose Maria Escriva, where we want to learn about the saint, look to them for inspiration and see how they are inspirations for us in our daily life today. So thank you for joining us.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Thanks, Mary.
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Mary McGhan
It's great to be here. Yes. I know little about St. Jose Maria Escriva. I know he is the founder of Epistei. I know a friend gave me the book the Furrow and had many short, pippy statements, and that's about it. What can you tell us? Just where did he grow up? Where did he live? What time period? Some of the basics about the saint.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Yeah, I think St. Jose Maria is someone that I wish more Catholics today knew about because he brings forth so many of the best things of the Church today and of the Second Vatican Council. So John Paul II said we could think of St. Jose Maria as the saint of ordinary life. And by that, he means that the sort of center of St. Jose Maria's Ministry and all of his work as a priest and in founding Opus dei, it was the idea, the sort of paradox of we can have the, in some ways, extraordinary grace of holiness in very ordinary things, in our very ordinary everyday lives, as parents, as coworkers, as friends getting a drink, as. As members of a family, all these sorts of things. So that I think is such an important contribution from St. Jose Maria today. So to give you a little background, Saint Jose Maria was born in 1902 in Spain, this little town in the northeast of Spain, and He died in 1975. And he's relatively recently canonized. He was canonized in 2002, but there were 350,000 people at his canonization.
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Mary McGhan
350,000?
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Yeah. So you can tell what an incredible impact he had in his lifetime. And it was when he was a young priest in 1928, that he founded the organization, the Personal Prelature. It's called Opus DEI, that he's most well known for.
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Mary McGhan
Okay, very good. And do we know anything about his family life or his upbringing?
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Yeah.
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Mary McGhan
So did he come from a holy family?
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Yeah, he did. And he was very influenced by the immense political turmoil in Spain in the early 20th century, which I think he saw the deep effects of political divisiveness I mean, families being torn apart, cities being torn apart, that led to the Spanish Civil War early in the 20th century. And I think it was this sort of thing that really had an impact on Saint Honsaria, leading him to think about what is missing for people and what can I do for that? And I think that's part of the reason why he responded at such a young age to the call to the priesthood.
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Mary McGhan
How old did you say he was?
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Dr. Chris Mooney
He was 23, I think. Yeah. When he became a priest, and then he founded Opus De just few years after that.
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Mary McGhan
Okay, interesting. And for people who don't know about Opus dei, what would you say some of the big spirituality components are that also help shed light on St. Jose Maria's spirituality?
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Yes. Yeah. So, unfortunately, Opus Dei sometimes has a kind of bad rap. I think mostly people don't know what it is. Even the name sounds kind of secretive. Anyone who knows this is getting a little old now, but the Da Vinci Code, you know, it was this big sort of the secrecy of Opus dei. None of this really makes sense, though. There are actually a lot of American Catholics, including many bishops, who are members of Opus dei. Scott Hahn wrote a whole book about his gratitude for Opus dei. Scott Hahn's a member of Opus dei. So Opus dei, I think part of the reason for this kind of secrecy is, you know, it was started in Spain and is still fairly young. So people are kind of unfamiliar with it. And there are these terms sometimes they use, like the term Opus dei, which just is Latin for work of God.
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Mary McGhan
Okay.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Really simple name. In fact, it has a really boring origin. When St. Jose Maria was thinking very deeply about what he wanted to. What God was calling him to do, he was having lots of conversations with his spiritual director about it. And his spiritual director said to him, how's that work of God going? And he said, okay, well, that's going to be the name, the work of God. Opus dei.
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Mary McGhan
Interesting.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
So very ordinary. Very ordinary. Very ordinary. Yeah, it does. And I think one of the reasons for this is that Opus Dei doesn't want to stand out, reflecting St. Jose Maria's spirituality. It's really about how do you live an ordinary life that you nonetheless elevate with holiness? So, and that's. I think. I think there maybe we could think about, like, three main pillars, which are kind of also takeaways of St. Jose Maria's spirituality that I think you find also in Opus dei. Maybe a first one is what I've mentioned already, this idea of holiness sanctification in your ordinary life. And part of what the reason that St. Jose Maria founded Opus Dei is, he said, we don't know too much about. He had this experience in prayer that he didn't share too much about. But he said that he had this vision, this vision of millions of ordinary Catholics in their ordinary lives as shopkeepers, as members of families, millions of ordinary Catholics imbued with great holiness. And I think John Paul II also says that God gave the church, St. Jose Maria, to pave the way for the Second Vatican Council because of how important the universal call to holiness is in the Second Vatican Council, the idea that holiness is not. And this was so central to Jose Maria's thinking. Holiness is not something for. Only for priests. It's not something only for monks. It's not something only for your neighbor who prays a lot. Anyone can take up the call to holiness and the way St. Jose Maria wanted to do that. There were lots of different ways, but he wanted to take the best of what mead, you know, the sort of great contemplative traditions or monastic traditions, what made them sort of sources of holiness for the church, and figure out how to apply that to ordinary life. And a lot of what that means that Saint Jose Maria talks a lot about is the importance of having a plan. So the first sort of way.
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Mary McGhan
Very practical.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Very practical. Yes. All very practical. Yes.
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Mary McGhan
I like this guy.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Yeah. St. Jose Maria, the first thing that he wants to encourage everyone to do is know that it's possible to develop holiness in the midst of the world. But it requires a plan. A plan to pray, a plan to attend Mass, a plan to read these little concrete things that we can do, you know, even. Even if it's just five minutes a day of prayer, but we can do in order to grow in holiness and then to let that. To sort of let that break down all the barriers we have in our lives that make us think, you know, my piety is over here, sort of hidden away, and it doesn't belong in my work. It doesn't belong in my conversations with my friends. So that's his idea of ordinary holiness.
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Mary McGhan
And two quick questions on this first point. Would you say, was he leaning on the expertise of any saints coming before him? Like, some of what you're saying reminds me of, you know, Saint Therese of Lisu, wherever you can be a missionary, even in, you know, this convent cell for the world? Or do we know if there. If he looked at other saints for inspiration for this, or was it really like the fruit of the graces of Vatican II and that holiness is for everyone, not just excluded for, you know, the monks and the priest.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
That's a good question. I think in. I wish I could. I wish I knew of an example where San Jose Maria was drawing on St. Therese, because they seem like they. They go so well together. You know, Saint Therese. Saint Therese is all about the idea that you can do little works with great love that you don't have to get, you know, in order to be a saint. It doesn't mean you have to do some great work. You can do little works with great love. And I think that's so complementary with the ideas that St. Jose Maria had about the sort of ordinary things that you can do. So I wish I could think of a connection. I wish there was. Not that I know of, but I do know that the saint that St. Jose Maria frequently went to was St. Joseph, because so little is known about the life of St. Joseph. And St. Jose Maria took that in many ways as a sign that he lived out his vocation and his Holiness, his great holiness as the protector of the Holy Family in a kind of silence and obscurity that wasn't incompatible with holiness, because holiness doesn't have to be some great showy thing. You know, holiness can be very ordinary. It can look like being a carpenter in a small town in, you know, in the first century. And so St. Jose Maria often has this great devotion to St. Joseph. And I think you could see the same thing in Mary as well. You know, we know more about Mary in Scripture, but Mary, too, lives a very humble and a very hidden life. And this. But the point is that this is totally compatible with what it means to be. To be holy.
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Mary McGhan
Thank you.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
And I think I sort of missed the point if I didn't mention a second point for St. Jose Maria. A very important thing for him. The term he used for it is called divine filiation, which is just. This is one of those fancy terms, too, but it's not meant to be a fancy term. It just means a recognition that we are genuinely children of God. So filiation, from the Latin term for being a son, so that we are genuinely children of God. There's a story that there was a young Opus Dei priest in the 20th century who was giving a talk for Opus Dei in Rome and was very fired up and was trying to define the essence of Opus dei. And he said, the foundation of Opus DEI is humility. And someone in the back of the room said, no, it isn't. And it turned out it was St. Jose Maria who was in the room. And he said, no, the foundation of Opus DEI is divine affiliation. And what that means. It's not just the sort of natural idea that because God is our creator, we can think of ourselves as children. No, it's the idea much greater than that, that as Christians, having been baptized with faith in Christ, imbued by the Holy Spirit, we are adopted children of God. And this is our great grace and dignity that we have been elevated into this different role. And it means that because of our union with Christ, because Christ has taken us on as his brothers and sisters, that the Father looks at us that way. He doesn't look at us just as servants. He doesn't look at us just as creatures. He looks at us as his children. And so St. Jose Maria's point was we need to adopt the same attitude if we want to live out ordinary holiness. We need to remind ourselves constantly that I am a child of God. And this is not some sort of right that I have, nor is it some kind of default like some, you know, Opal, Oriental, okor. Of course I'm a child of God. No, it's a really. It's the most precious gift that we've been given. Interesting. If I could just add one more thing, Mary. One of the best stories about St. Jose Maria is that he talks about this experience that he had that he found it really hard to define, that he. One day, I think, if I recall correctly, he was reading the newspaper and he just realized he needed to sort of put it down and go for a walk. And he sat down on a streetcar, and as he was riding the streetcar, he was struck, overwhelmed with this sense that he couldn't give words to, but this. Other than that God was truly his Father. And echoing those words, you know, for anyone who hasn't thought about this, go look at Romans 8. You'll see Paul talking about it there. But echoing those same words of Paul in Romans 8, that the Spirit of God makes us cry out, abba, Father. Abba Father. And this experience that Jose Maria had was that he just walked the streets for hours, saying to himself over and over again, abba Father. Abba Father. Overwhelmed with this realization that he was a child of God.
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Mary McGhan
That is beautiful. I didn't know that was a part of the spirituality, because it's the key.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
It's not humility.
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Mary McGhan
It is not humility, as he tells us. Just because as you're sharing, what I think of with Opus DEI is sanctify your work, what you do, how you do the little things, and offer up those little Things, but now understanding more deeply. It's that foundation of our identity in which. That elevates and how we can, what we do be a fruit from that identity of. Of the Father being our Abba. Abba Father.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
These two things go together. If you want to put in the practices, if you want to think about the sanctification of your ordinary life, which is a really great thing, and it's something Opus DEI is really good at. But you've got to start with the identity. Beautiful.
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Mary McGhan
Was there a third or.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
There was a third. Yeah, yeah, tell us. So the other one, the other sort of major point of St. Jose Maria's spirituality, I really see also another kind of fancy term that he likes to use. But if you read St. Jose Maria, you get used to it. It's apostolate. Apostolate is the idea that all of us have some kind of work and call from God in the church. And one of the big points of St. Jose Maria was apostolate. This idea that you can commit a service for the church is not just something that priests and monks and sisters do. It's not just something that's reserved for your pastor. It's something that all of us can contribute to. Everyone has their own apostolate. And that apostolate can be the work that you do in the works of mercy that you perform for strangers, or it can be your work of evangelization to your friends and neighbors. This isn't a work of your apostolate, and it's not optional. It's part of the duty of being a Christian. But of course, it flows out of the joy of knowing our identity. And of course, your apostolate can be very simply doing your work excellently with prayer and caring well for your family. And so to see all the sort of things that you spend so much of your life doing, not just as sort of chores that you got to get over, but actually as opportunities to. Opportunities to serve God. St. Jose Maria loves to talk about the. The line from Paul about taking on the aroma of Christ. We put the aroma. It's like a. He sort of talks about it like a seasoning. We add to everything we do. You know, I've done my work. Did I season it with the aroma of Christ? I cared for my family. Did I season it with the aroma of Christ? And we have to take. Yeah, we have to take all of this on. And that's what it means to live out our apostolate. So those, I think, are the sort of three big things. And you see these very clearly, in St. Jose Maria. And Opus Dei has tried to take on that spirituality as well.
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Mary McGhan
Thank you. No, it's very helpful. Someone who's learning about it for the first time. And with the apostolates, is that also a fruit of the spirit of the Vatican ii, too? As Vatican II too. Just that notion that the lady have a vital mission in the church. And just thinking how God's timing is so perfect, how he places these saints in also the times of the church to go hand in hand together to help flesh out what that looks like.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Some of my Favorite passages from St. Jose Maria's writings are when he says things like, I feel like this. You know, this cuts to the core. But when he says things like, you know, your head's up in the clouds, you're dreaming about, oh, what it would be like if I could serve God in some extraordinary way, way out there, you know, oh, if only I had become a priest. If only I had, you know, joined a monastery. If only I did have, you know, the sort of courage and the poverty and the humility of St. Francis, I, too, could start a religious order. But, you know, I'm just a father. I just have a 9 to 5 job. I've just got kids to take care of. And so Jose Maria says this is a trick of the devil to distract you from the fact that you have an opportunity for holiness right in front of you and for your apostolate. So, yeah, this is again why I think John Paul II said so beautifully that God gave the church St. Joseph Maria as a preparation for the universal call to holiness.
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Mary McGhan
Yes.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
So beautiful.
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Mary McGhan
Thank you. No, that's beautiful. And personally, how did you discover Saint Jose Maria Escriva? Do you have a devotion in your daily life of how you enter into what he's taught you?
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Yeah, most. I discovered St. Jose Maria from other people who love St. Jose Maria, you know, who are part of Opus Dei people, because Opus Dei, the term means work of God. Sometimes people just call it the work. But I met a very holy priest who was a member of Opus dei, you know, many years ago, and he introduced me to St. Jose Maria. I'd say most of my devotion to St. Jose Maria has been kind of in the form like a student, as someone who learns from him. And you mentioned his book Furrow. He wrote these books like Furrow and another one called the Way, another one called Forge. These are. He has, as you said, lots of sort of little pithy bits of advice. Sometimes they can be a little harsh or strong, but I think it's it's like a punch. Yeah, exactly. Someone once suggested to me, you have to read it like he's talking to himself, and then you realize he's trying to stir himself up.
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Mary McGhan
Okay.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
The other thing that I've really benefited from from St. Jose Maria are his homilies. He has. There are a number of collections of his homilies. My favorite is one called Christ is Passing By. And if you want a sense of. I mean, his homilies are really easy to read. They're great spiritual reading. But if you want a sense of, you know, to learn from St. Jose Maria, the sort of two best ways are to get to know people who. Who also have a devotion to him and live it out. You know, priests or members of Opus DEI or both, and read his writings. I think his homilies are actually a really great place to start.
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Mary McGhan
That's a great idea. And what was the one homily you read?
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Christ is Passing By. It's the name of the book, actually. The book has lots of different homilies in it, but the book is called Christ is Passing By. Yeah, there are a lot of collections of his homilies, but that's a good one to start with.
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Mary McGhan
Great. I didn't know you could access this one. Yeah, that makes sense. And his feast day is June 26th, is that correct?
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Dr. Chris Mooney
I think so.
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Mary McGhan
I think so. Feast. Feast day is June 26th. Anything else you'd like to share about St. Jose Maria?
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Dr. Chris Mooney
No, just that he's a great saint to get to know, especially for the church today.
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Mary McGhan
Yes, very good. Well, Saint Jose Maria Espiva pray for us.
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Dr. Chris Mooney
Amen.
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Mary McGhan
Thanks for joining.
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Host
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