You Don't Know This Man

Being a hugely emo person, I get carried away by the small difficulties of the day. The past two days have been terrible ones, if we rate days based on the happy-making and sad-making things that happened in those small twenty-four hours. The terrible things are mostly my own fault, and that's what sucks most of all--my own weaknesses and incompetence, my lack of organization and forward-thinking. I get humiliated by my own shortcomings and wish I could quit a position of responsibility that others might take lightly, but which I take truly seriously but can't manage to do well.

And then after dinner my friends and I sat down to watch clips from a movie, There Be Dragons, about the very man I was talking about in my last entry.

I know you've probably heard about it. You might google it and see all of the terrible reviews, most of them bashing either Opus Dei, or the Catholic Church, or the simplicity of the plot.

I don't care. Just go see it. Because if you are honest with yourself--if you have the necessary strength of character--you're going to sit through this movie and allow it to help you to think. To think about what you're doing in this world, where you're headed, what the meaning of your life is. If you have that kind of honesty, you will get rid of any bias you've ever had against the Catholic Church or the Work before you sit down and watch it. If you had any integrity at all, you will acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, this is closer to the truth than the other portrayals of Opus Dei in the media have been, because those attacks have been uninformed and uncharitable.

And what does this have to do with my two bad days as a liaison officer? Everything. Sitting through those clips--watching young Josemaria follow the footprints of a Carmelite walking in the snow in the dead cold of winter--sharing his thoughts of "If that person can give up everything for God... then what am I doing with my own life?"--was a poignant reminder.

We're in the world to sanctify ourselves and the world. To do it silently, hidden in the small difficulties and humiliations of life. Each one of us, made of the precise "stuff" needed to be saints, whatever our defects, whatever things we have done in our past. Anyone in the world--butcher, baker, candlestick maker--anyone, taxi drivers, magtatahos, tricycle drivers, lawyers, doctors, anyone doing good and honest work--becoming a saint, without doing anything extraordinary, maybe even without other people knowing. Each one of us sinners, but each one called for the demanding perfection of being saints.

It's not a new message. It just sounds new because the world has forgotten it, and it took one man--a young priest, kind and gentle while being strong and firm, and always fully Human--to remind the world that when Jesus said that we must be perfect as His heavenly Father is perfect, he didn't just mean priests or the religious or people who leave the world to be in monasteries and convents. He meant everyone, in any corner of the world, doing any honest job. Married people, single people, old people and young people. People of all sorts of backgrounds and temperaments and faults and talents. People... like you, and me.

People like a twenty-two year old medical student with faucets for tear ducts and so much self-consequence that she gets profoundly hurt with even a hint of rebuke, however deserved. Like a medical student who has so many flaws she can't count them. Like a medical student who knows that, no matter how many flaws she has, the only thing that matters is that she struggles, and believes, and knows she's loved as a King loves his daughter the princess.

So forward, always forward, we go. And if we're faithful, we'll get the reward that Josemaria got when he went to his true Home.

Teacher and Father

There was once a man who had nothing except his mother, brother and sister; a handful of friends; a sense of humor; and the grace of God. He had no power and no money, and sometimes he had barely two pesetas to rub together. But within a century he changed the world and changed the lives of thousands (if not millions) of people.

I am one of those many people. I found him and everything changed. Before I met this man I led a dissipated life, without sparkle and without purpose, without true joy and without meaning. My only thoughts were for myself and I didn't stand for anything, and fell for everything.

Now I'm still wildly imperfect, but he taught me never to be discouraged, and to know that whatever changes I need to make in myself and in the world around me are possible, as long as I rely not on myself, but on a higher power.

He taught me how to work with intensity, and he taught me how to struggle to be holy even in an unfavorable environment and with my thousands of defects. He taught me to love others as they are, which may be very different from what I am.

I have to admit that I get hurt when people say things about him that are unflattering or slanderous, because whatever they've said about him is wrong and without basis. I used to have this totally false idea of him, long before I met him, and when I finally came to know his spirit and his life, he totally blew any expectations I had of him out of the water. He is the kindest, most gracious, most refined human being I've ever met with the exception of his Mother and his Brother. The final proof of his kindness is that he has never spoken badly about the people who spread stories and rumors about him; he greets even the worst and dirtiest lies with a peaceful smile and a ready prayer. He is the real thing--a man who walks the talk.

I love him with the love a daughter has for her father, and with the gratitude of a student to a beloved teacher. I wish everyone could meet him and his poor, large, faithful Family.



Happy feastday, Father! I only wish that I could be half as kind, as loving, as obedient, and as faithful as you.