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ince 1932 people in Opus Dei have recited Psalm 2 every Tuesday. It is a powerful psalm which speaks of rebellion, broken bonds, yokes cast away, mutinies, and plots among princes to harass the Lord and his Christ. God jeers at his enemies, submits them to his will, breaks them in pieces like a potter’s vessel, and rules them with a rod of iron. It is also a tender psalm, in which this same God declares his love for his Son, whom he begets “today”—every day. The psalm starts off with a challenging question: “Why among peoples this useless murmuring? Why do the people devise vain things?”

Almost all Father Escrivá’s preaching speaks of struggle: a vigorous, constant struggle against oneself, not anyone else. From the beginning he conceived Opus Dei as a militia of Christians who, far from making war, would make peace. They would sow joy and peace in the world—or, more precisely, joy with peace. At the heart of this joy with peace is struggle, effort, self-denial, war. “Man’s life on earth is warfare,” Father Escrivá used to say, echoing Job.

The Prelatic Church of Opus Dei in Rome is several meters underground in Villa Tevere, and is dedicated to Our Lady of Peace. It is not by chance or a mere whim of the decorators that a glass case at the back has swords on display. These swords have never drawn blood: they are ceremonial swords, dress swords, swords of peace. This collection of weapons represents Pax in bello , peace in war. This is the peace that comes of personal struggle, always in battle array and constantly on guard.

For many years the people of the Work have been battling on three fronts simultaneously, waging a canonical battle, an ascetical battle, and a battle for training and development.

The ascetical battle, each individual’s personal battle for holiness, for people of Opus Dei is a struggle not generally focused on evil desires but on virtue. They don’t consider themselves incapable of sinning, but they are intent on finding love.

The “battle for training and development” took up a lot of Father Escrivá’s time and effort. It was a one-to-one affair in which he formed those who would form others. (“You are the bridge. You are the continuity,” he would say to the students of the Roman College in the 1950s.) His aim, which he achieved, was to offer everyone in the Work the chance to make a serious study of philosophy and theology. The classes had to be pitched at the right intellectual and cultural level. This was not about creating a set of intellectuals, but enabling every person in Opus Dei to acquire deep religious devotion with a firm theological base, and enough sound moral criteria to be able to act freely in their own sphere.

The phrase “Opus Dei is a great catechesis” means that everyone in the Work has to be able to give their fellows a sure, attractive, and very clear notion of God. They have to be able to say what their faith is about, whom they love, and why they hope.

People in Opus Dei do not settle for simple faith—even manual workers need to read, study, and develop their understanding of what they believe. They will apply the same skills to their study of the fundamental truths of the Catholic faith as they do to their work. None should have an illiterate piety devoid of sound arguments, a religion of emotional spasms, morality based on blindness.

One of the aspirations Father Escrivá passed on to his children was Deo omnis gloria! —“all the glory to God!” But it would be a gross error to conclude that people in Opus Dei have a relationship with God based on Latin. Father Escrivá taught his children to relate to God naturally. Himself a lover of fine Latin, he enjoyed making free translations, not allowing an adverb or a gerund to stifle the heart’s expression.

On the stone lintel of the door into the sitting room of Villa Vecchia he had engraved the words, Respiciat nos tantum Dominus noster et laeti serviemus . Sometimes, on passing through, he would stop and say aloud, “If Our Lord just casts a glance our way, we will work cheerfully!” 1 He translated well; not with a dictionary but with his heart. With the same freedom of spirit, and because he loved God with all his soul, he treated him with the trust of a son who knew he was loved.

On occasion he recommended, “When you are doing your personal prayer, if you see you are not capable of praying, not even by turning your distractions into prayer, then meditate once again on those splendid prayers we Christians possess: the Our Father, the Creed, the Hail Mary, and the others. They are like an open book! One word—wait a little, another word—wait another while, and so on!”

He himself discovered strands of gold in each Hail Mary of the Rosary. Sometimes he would emphasize one word, reciting “pray for us sinners, now” ; other times, “at the hour of our death .” Or, as he said “the Lord is with you!” he would be enthralled by the discovery of Our Lady’s likeness-unto-God.

One day he was traveling by car with Don Alvaro and two other sons. When they got to Bologna he saw a church’s bell tower. His heart and mind flew toward the distant tabernacle; he spontaneously cupped his hands round his mouth and called out, “Hey, Lord! An affectionate greeting from all of us here in this car!”

This “piety of a child” was not an imitation of children’s silliness but their spontaneity, their candor and openness. It found very natural ways of dealing with supernatural realities. For instance, Father Escrivá cultivated a close friendship with his guardian angel. He was so conscious of his angel’s company that every time he went through a door, no matter how much of a hurry he was in, he made a gesture unnoticeable to anyone who did not know about it: he stopped for a split second, to let his guardian angel go through first. 3

One of Father Escrivá’s concerns was to avoid doctrinal errors or any weakening of moral conscience among people of the Work. He urged them to be vigilant and not “swallow” any book without taking precautions beforehand. Those were times when many Catholics were losing their moral and doctrinal criteria, or letting the foundations of their faith crumble, because they were dazzled by the idea of “progress.”

“Watch out,” he warned them. “This warning comes from a man who knows a lot, not because of his doctorates, but from years of experience. It comes from an old priest. It comes from me, and I’m not one to be overcautious.” He himself always sought advice before reading treatises of high theology. Humbly and straightforwardly, he consulted whoever had the post of spiritual director of the Work at that moment.

Father Carlos Cardona, who studied metaphysics and had an impressive intellectual capacity, clearly recalled the day in September 1961 when Father Escrivá told him he had been appointed spiritual director of Opus Dei throughout the world. It happened in Villa Tevere, in a meeting room known as “Commissions.” Father Cardona’s feelings showed in his face: he was obviously overwhelmed and had a natural fear of not being up to the job. Father Escrivá was gifted in “discerning spirits.” He realized that his son’s sense of panic might result from the mistaken belief that he was to rely on his own strength and talents to carry out the task.

Father Escrivá looked Father Cardona in the eye and said, “I haven’t appointed you for positive reasons, because there aren’t any. I’ve appointed you because the negative reasons, of which there are plenty, aren’t of sufficient weight to impede it.” Father Cardona had been living under the same roof as Father Escrivá for five years and knew how much he loved him, how well he knew him, and how he missed no chance of making demands on him, correcting him, and lovingly hitting him where it hurt—any sign of intellectual arrogance.

There was a moment’s silence. Then Father Escrivá went on. “There are brothers of yours who would do it better than you, but I need them where they are. And on the other hand you couldn’t do their jobs.” Then all at once there was a change of mood, and Father Escrivá smiled. His whole face beamed. He opened his arms wide and, taking his son by both shoulders, he rocked him lovingly to and fro, calling him by name and making light of his troubles. “But Carlos, you’re not to worry. We’ll help you! And between us all, it will work out—with God’s grace.” As he left the room he said half-jokingly, half in earnest, “‘Spiritual Father,’ pray for me to God our Lord! Amen.”

Father Cardona went directly to the oratory of the Holy Apostles. He threw himself on his knees and spoke to our Lord trustingly and daringly. “I’m transferring the appointment. You be the spiritual director. I’ll work for you, at your bidding: I’ll be your clerk.” 4 This was the “piety of a child” Father Escrivá had taught him. Father Cardona could not help feeling amazed when, shortly after, Father Escrivá consulted him about some doctrinal books he was reading and, in all simplicity, asked for a list of theological treatises on the Trinity, adding, “But be careful what you give me! They need to be books of sterling doctrine, sound to the very last letter. By no manner or means would I want to put my faith in danger!” 5

The third “battle” people of Opus Dei had to fight was an external battle, fought with prayer, study, waiting, and keeping quiet. This was the canonical battle. It was a question of opening up an appropriate canonical path through the general law of the Church so that the Work could exist, work, and spread in accordance with its secular nature.

The inscription over the door into the general council’s sitting room in Villa Tevere and described how to win the third battle: In silentio et in spe erit fortitudo vestra . “Your strength shall lie in your silence and in your hope.” They had not come “a century too soon” but more than half a century elapsed, from 1928 until 1982, before Opus Dei obtained a suitable canonical formulation as a personal prelature of universal scope.

On January 13, 1948 Father Escrivá and Don Alvaro were driving from Rome to Milan. It was a cold, dark day with a dense fog. Less than a year earlier, in February 1947, Pius XII had conferred the Decretum Laudis , a preliminary approval, on the Work, and they were waiting for definitive approval to be granted. The car was going slowly with its headlights on. They had got as far as Pavia when Father Escrivá, who had been quiet and absorbed in his thoughts, suddenly exclaimed, “They fit in too!” He had just discovered the canonical solution whereby married people could also join Opus Dei. 6 Quite a few were ready to join, aspiring to be saints in their married lives, their daily work, and their social environment. They were already fulfilling the norms and customs of Opus Dei. They only needed to find a canonical way to join.

Father Escrivá presented his petition to the Holy See on February 2, 1948. 7 The doors were opened to married people without delay. Victor Garcia, Tomas Alvira, and Mariano Navarro were the first three to join. Several more followed a few months later.

Father Escrivá started to feel a growing urgency to help diocesan priests. His conscience was stirred by the absence of spiritual attention or cultural enrichment, and also loneliness, of so very many priests.

The solution would be for those who had a vocation to join Opus Dei. But how they could combine belonging to the Work with their dependence on their own bishops? Father Escrivá reached the point where he honestly thought God was asking him to make the enormous sacrifice of leaving the Work to start a foundation dedicated to diocesan priests.

At that time, not just in Spain but almost everywhere in Western Europe, the clergy in big cities had lost the place formerly theirs in society, and found themselves marginalized. Many country priests were badly cared for and spiritually isolated, without support or incentives. Father Escrivá suffered over the harsh loneliness endured by priests in big city parishes and country priests. Without support their vocation either withered or went soft; or, if they stood firm, it was only by dint of heroic stoicism.

That same year, 1948, on a trip to Spain from Rome, Father Escrivá told his sister Carmen and brother Santiago of an important decision he had made and had already made known unofficially to the Holy See. With the definitive approval of the Work in hand and its publication now imminent, he was going to set about organizing an association concerned exclusively with priests. “After all your help and all you have done for the Work,” he told them, “I think you have the right to know about this new step as soon as possible.” 8

“Our canonical solution is on the point of coming through. I think the Work can go ahead without me. Our Lord is making me feel the loneliness of so many of my brother priests. I am going to give up the post of president general of Opus Dei, to dedicate all my efforts and time to a new foundation exclusively for priests. The spiritual, ascetical, cultural, and even human abandonment in which our priests live, scattered among villages and city parishes, is heartbreaking. They have a very great mission to carry out. A priest never goes to heaven alone or to hell either: for good or for evil, he always drags a long trail of souls with him. But how lonely and neglected they are here on earth!”

Encarnita and Nisa were stunned. Father Escrivá, seeing the shock his news had caused, said, “You have to be very peaceful, very serene, and very secure: more so than ever. I want you to pray! Don’t talk much about this business. But I wanted you to know. You had a right to know!” They did not understand how the Work could continue without the founder. Only he had received the full message of Opus Dei from God. Overwhelmed and crushed, they kept silent, not saying a word even to one another. 9

Around the same time in 1948, Father Escrivá made a strange request of one of his sons who was keen on photography. He asked him to take a special picture. No face was to appear. It was to be an image full of symbolism: a close-up of Don Alvaro del Portillo’s hands, palms outstretched, receiving some wooden donkeys from Father Escrivá’s hand. Father Escrivá considered himself a donkey. Very often, to tell a son in the Work that he was going to entrust him with a new task of forming others or a post in governance, he would say, “My son, I am going to make you a pack donkey.”

Later this photograph was reproduced in internal publications of Opus Dei with no commentary other than the brief caption “Photograph taken in 1948. Our Father placing some donkeys in Don Alvaro’s hands.” This photograph was intended to reflect the handing over of responsibilities. Father Escrivá was on the point of leaving his post at the head of the Work, and his successor was clearly Don Alvaro. Not for nothing Father Escrivá since 1939 had called him saxum , “rock.”

A few months later in August, in Molinoviejo, Father Escrivá summoned Encarnita and Nisa again. He knew they were having a rough time. He took them to see the building alterations. They passed through a gallery decorated with painted maps and a bas-relief in wood representing the scene of Achilles being wounded in his heel. When they came to a small grey granite fountain built into the wall in the form of a fish with water gushing out of its mouth, he pointed to red letters engraved around the fountain and read, “Inter medium montium pertransibunt aquae . Through the mountains the waters shall pass.” Taking up the thread of their earlier conversation in Rome, he said again, “You have to be very peaceful, strong, serene, and assured. This—‘through the mountains the waters shall pass’—this is what our Lord has said to me!”

His tone let his emotion show through. They did not ask any questions, nor did he add anything. But right then both Nisa and Encarnita felt a clear conviction that nothing would go wrong. Heaven had pledged its word: “Through the mountains the waters shall pass.” 10

In his notebook, Intimate Notes , there was an entry for December 13, 1931: “I had lunch with the Guevaras. While I was there, not while I was doing the prayer, I found myself saying, as at other times, Inter medium montium pertransibunt aquae (Ps. 103:11). I think these days I have had these words on my lips at other times, for no apparent reason, but that doesn’t matter. Yesterday I said them with such emphasis that I felt forced to write them down: I understood them: they are the promise that the Work of God will overcome the obstacles, the waters of his apostolate passing through all the difficulties that might crop up.” 11

Toward the end of 1949 Father Escrivá was in a room in Villa Tevere filled with builders and their noise. With one of his spiritual sons, an architect, he was studying plans spread out on a desk before them. Suddenly, as if unable to contain something which surged up inside him, he said, “My son, the Work is well under way, and I’m not necessary at all.”

Then he explained that he was only waiting for the Holy See to publish the decree of definitive approval, to set to work immediately on a foundation for priests. 12 He would be back at square one, facing the gossip, the criticism, and the calumnies all over again!

But the definitive approval which Pope Pius XII was to sanction was delayed. Finally, when all the favorable opinions had been presented to the Curia, on April 1, 1950 an unexpected postponement arose. During that spring of enforced waiting, Father Escrivá understood clearly that there was a place in the Work for diocesan priests too. Or, more precisely, he understood how to make the Holy See understand what he himself had understood on October 2, 1928, when he saw the Work, made up of priests and laity.

For married people, the hinge on which their holiness turned was their vocation to marriage, the duties of their state in life, and their work. The same was true of the clergy: the basis for their link with the Work was the fact that they could sanctify themselves by living their vocation to the priesthood to the full and carrying out the ministry itself. There was nothing to invent in the Work.

As for the apparent problem of “double obedience,” it also melted away. The diocesan priests would have only one superior, their bishop. Their dependence on Opus Dei would be in regard to their spiritual director, who clearly had no governing function: to help them to be saints he could advise, but never give orders.

As the building at Villa Tevere progressed, the architectural team kept seeking out places where they had enough light to work and did not disturb anyone else. One cold December morning in 1952, Father Escrivá met two of the architects in the room they were working in at that time. He leaned out of the window and saw below—in what had previously been a garden and was now a clutter of bricks, iron bars, and tools—some old decorative stones: fragments of tablets, brackets, a couple of capitals, and several bits of pillars. He had recommended that they acquire these stones cheaply and keep them until they found a good place for them. Among them he pointed to a statue lying on the ground. It was the robed figure of a Roman nobleman, but the head, arms, and half of one foot were missing.

During those Rome years, Father Escrivá spent many nights awake until the small hours in the sleeplessness of prayer, study, work, and suffering. One of those nights he got up and opened a book by St. Bernard of Clairvaux. His attention was drawn to words which he had often read before. Non est vir fortis pro Deo laborans, cui non crescit animus in ipsa rerum difficultate, etiam si aliquando corpus dilanietur . “There is no strong man working for God whose courage does not increase when faced with difficulties, even though his body is sometimes torn apart.”

He took a piece of paper from his pocket diary and copied the words in his bold, vigorous handwriting. Next day, when he passed by the architects’ studio, he gave the paper to one of his sons saying, “Look at this. You might like to have these words engraved on the pedestal where you put ‘the headless man,’ the mutilated Roman.”

The pontifical approval of Opus Dei was published on June 16, 1950, in a decree called Primum Inter . From Father Escrivá’s arrival in Rome up to the time of this approval, he had had to cope with the economic difficulties of procuring Villa Tevere and starting the building alterations there, and at the same time endure fiercely hostile criticism. This originated in Spain and always came from “good people who spoke ill”; they set themselves up in Rome, Milan, and another Italian city, even achieving easy access to the Curia. Their efforts, however, were ineffectual: Opus Dei had grown and spread. In 1946 there were 268 people in the Work (239 men and 29 women). By the early months of 1950 this figure had increased more than tenfold to 2,954 (2,404 men and 550 women). At the beginning of 1946 there had been only three priests besides Father Escrivá; in 1950 there were already 23, and another 46 laymen were preparing for ordination. The priests in the Work had joined the Work as laymen, had been practicing their professions, and had freely accepted Father Escrivá’s invitation to be ordained to the priesthood after obtaining at least a doctorate in an ecclesiastical subject. Many already had a doctorate in a civil subject as well.

When the Work received the pontifical seal of approval, it had already spread to Spain, Portugal, Great Britain, Ireland, France, Mexico, the USA, Chile, and Argentina. People of the Work were packed and ready, so to speak, to go to Colombia, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. Just eight years later came the big leap to Asia, Africa, and Australia. Life was moving faster than legal processes.

In the summer of that same year, 1950, the Holy See informed Father Escrivá that he could publicize the definitive approval. Father Escrivá instructed all the centers of Opus Dei, about 100 by then, to celebrate it with solemn benediction and to sing or recite the Te Deum in thanksgiving.

He himself went to Villa delle Rose, a women’s center in Castelgandolfo, to preside over the ceremony with Don Alvaro and Salvador Canals, who had by now been ordained a priest. Later, one of the women wrote in her notebook: “Just like on February 2, 1947 in the flat in Città Leonina, when we heard the news of the Pope’s first approval of the Work, today the Father looked very cheerful, though very tired: as if every step the Work takes in the Church leaves its mark on him. When he took the monstrance in his hands to give us benediction with the Blessed Sacrament, his hands trembled. He was not agitated. His whole face showed deep serenity. He was very moved, though. Indeed, on singing the Te Deum his voice was less clear and strong than usual, and seemed on the point of breaking.” 13

Now about to start, or rather intensify, was a struggle to prevent man-made law from stifling a spirituality inspired by God. Either this spirituality was totally secular, or it would be of no use either to God or to man.

Pius XII had drawn up the papal document called Provida Mater Ecclesia (Provident Mother Church). No further juridical-pastoral innovation could be hoped for in his pontificate. John XXIII had a huge task in hand: the summoning and setting up of the Second Vatican Council. Besides, plans were being made to update the Code of Canon Law. All that could be done was settle down for a long wait.

Yet people of Opus Dei were persistently compared to members of religious orders. This forced Monsignor Escrivá to attempt to have the canonical status of the Work revised. Between March and June 1960, several conversations and unofficial notes were exchanged between Don Alvaro del Portillo and Monsignor Scapinelli, and between Monsignor Escrivá and the secretary of state, Cardinal Tardini. On June 27, at the end of an audience, Cardinal Tardini made a wide gesture with his arms, expressing pessimism, and said to Monsignor Escrivá, “Siamo ancora molto lontani …! We still have a long way to go!” Monsignor Escrivá replied, “Well, that’s true. But the seed has been sown, and it will not fail to bear fruit.” 14

Opus Dei was asking for a canonical framework which fitted what people in the Work were and how they lived. They were not interested in a “state of perfection”; what they wanted was freedom to seek perfection within their own state in life—their civil status and the practice of their profession or job. However, an application for a revision of the Work’s canonical status, made at the suggestion of a high-ranking figure in the Roman Curia, was destined to gather dust. Cardinal Tardini told Don Alvaro openly, “I won’t even look at it. It would be a waste of time.” 15

Like his predecessor, Pope John XXIII also gave audiences to Monsignor Escrivá. On one occasion he said to his secretary, Monsignor Loris Capovilla, later to become bishop of Loreto: “L’Opus Dei è destinato ad operare nella Chiesa su inattesi orizzonti di universale apostolato” (Opus Dei is destined to open up new horizons of universal apostolate in the Church.) 17

Don Alvaro had meetings with several Vatican authorities, informing them that the institutional question of Opus Dei was not yet settled. One of them was Cardinal Confalonieri; holding the papers in his hand, he said in bureaucratic Church Latin: Reponatur in archivio — “to be filed.” The application for a new status seemed to have been consigned to oblivion. 18

Pope Paul VI himself gave Monsignor Escrivá two very cordial private audiences. At the end of the first, Don Alvaro came in to greet the Pope for a moment. Paul VI received him with a smile, and held out both hands to him, delighted to see him again. “Don Alvaro, Don Alvaro! We have known each other for such a long time.”

Because he had known Opus Dei for twenty years, Paul VI understood that what Monsignor Escrivá was fighting for was his people’s secularity and freedom. They were “ordinary faithful and ordinary citizens,” as he said, and needed to function autonomously in all the honest activities of civil society.

“I want my children to have the same freedom as other Catholics in social, political, and economic affairs: neither more nor less,” 20 Monsignor Escrivá would say. All these civic activities would be obstructed by having to carry the secular institute banner.

On the basis of the faculty granted him by the Holy See to make changes in the constitution, Monsignor Escrivá proposed some modifications to Pius XII. There were thirteen in all, all concerning the women in the Work and aiming to strengthen their self-government at the same time as strengthening the unity of the Work. The Holy See had given its assent immediately. The proposal was made on July 16, 1953 and the go-ahead from the Pope took less than a month, arriving on August 12. This point is worth making because it refutes some published misinformation according to which in 1953 Monsignor Escrivá and Don Alvaro used the small printing press in Villa Tevere “to alter the texts of the constitution without the Pope’s knowledge.” Though he could have used his privilege as founder, Monsignor Escrivá never made changes to the statutes without the Pope’s prior knowledge. In 1953 he asked Pius XII for his permission, and in 1963 he asked Paul VI. 21

The first official reply was “dilata” (delayed). In Vatican diplomacy, this brief, delightfully vague word did not mean no, but not yet. All the same, Paul VI pointed out to Monsignor Escrivá that the developments of Vatican II might open up new routes to the solution of the canonical situation of Opus Dei.

This was in fact what happened. The conciliar document Presbyterorum Ordinis (1965), and the texts which explained its resolutions, Ecclesiae Sanctae (1966) and Regimini Ecclesiae Universae (1967), contained the loom, so to speak, on which the material for Opus Dei’s “new suit” could at last be woven: the canonical institution of personal prelatures. Prelatures, in the plural, because it was not something created exclusively for Opus Dei.

When Paul VI’s Motu Proprio , entitled Ecclesiae Sanctae , was published, Monsignor Escrivá was delighted. He told his sons in the Work, “No sooner had the document come out, than the secretary of the council sent it to Don Alvaro with his congratulations. Anyone with eyes in his head can see that it is a suit made to measure for Opus Dei.” 22

On September 12, 1965, Monsignor Escrivá received a visit in Villa Tevere which he had looked forward to. It was from Father Arrupe, general of the Society of Jesus. Monsignor Escrivá returned the visit on October 10 of the same year, having lunch at the Jesuits’ mother house in Borgo Santo Spiritu. On that occasion Father Arrupe asked for some photographs to be taken of both of them together on the flat roof with a panoramic view over Rome.

There had been numerous incidents of subterfuge, hostile attitudes, contemptuous comments, and malicious gossip on the part of some Jesuits against Opus Dei. These were always people acting in isolation, representing nobody but themselves. Monsignor Escrivá wished to clear things up. It was absurd that the increase of vocations to the Work should provoke jealousy among religious orders. The Work can never invade the terrain of any religious institution, because the call to Opus Dei can only arise among those who do not feel and have never felt the slightest inclination toward the religious state. There was no room for rivalry. On many occasions Monsignor Escrivá himself directed young men and women who had approached the Work on the way toward finding their true vocation in a novitiate or monastery. He did not consider that he was losing a “candidate.” It was simply that for that man or woman Opus Dei was not the right place. “Everyone in their own place, and God everywhere,” was his view.

Father Arrupe came to Villa Tevere again, accompanied by Father Iparraguirre, another Jesuit. The day before, Monsignor Escrivá had gone to Villa Sacchetti and spoken to the cooks, Begoña Mugica and Maria Urrutia. “Father Arrupe is coming for lunch tomorrow. I don’t need to tell you to put a lot of care into it, because you always do. But this time, if possible, I would like you to put your heart and soul into the effort, not just your skills but also your motherly hearts. I would like this man to feel truly how much we love him. Let’s see what you come up with!” 23

In the little guest dining room in Bruno Buozzi, Monsignor Escrivá told Father Arrupe, “Some years ago, some representatives from B.A.C., the Catholic publishers in Spain, came to see me. They told me they had published the constitution of the Society of Jesus, and wanted my consent to publish the ius peculiare , the particular law, of the Work. I replied that I could understand them publishing your constitution because it had been written 400 years ago, and so it was something settled and firmly established. But on the other hand, our particular law is still very recent. I assured them that, in time, it would also be published. And I added, ‘I can safely say that we won’t make you wait as long as the Jesuits did!’”

Monsignor Escrivá, a fiery and impetuous man by nature, had developed a huge capacity for patience, schooled by life’s hard knocks. He was filled with a sense of urgency, but he knew that what was urgent could wait, and that if the urgent matter was also something important, it needed to wait. He said to his children one day in October 1966, “I have to tell you that the question of our canonical path has already been solved. But for the present, we are not going to put on the suit. When the right time comes, we will put the suit on, both jacket and trousers.” 25 He was not interested in a resounding triumph; he was prudent.

Both in conversations with a few people and in large gatherings, he explained that the “motorway” was ready, but that it was up to him to “decide when it should be opened to traffic.” 26 “We are waiting for the time to be right,” he said. “We want to live Christian lives and commit ourselves with a commitment of love, based on our honor. This is how we have already lived for many years.” 27 On another occasion, reaffirming the same idea which he had always seen clearly in his mind’s eye, he said, “I am longing to be able to come full circle! We will get back to being what we were at the beginning. No vows at all. We will make a contract, which is what I always wanted.” 28

In the early 1930s, while still living in Madrid, Father Escrivá had noted some tombstones on the floor of the Church of St. Elizabeth’s Foundation, where he was rector. One day in 1936, before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, he pointed them out to his spiritual son Pedro Casciaro, and said, “There, that is the future canonical solution for the Work.” Casciaro did not understand. He did not know what the two tombstones meant. They belonged to two Spanish prelates who had both been chaplains to the king and vicars-general of the army. By virtue of their army posts, they had possessed a special personal jurisdiction, wide in scope and not based on territory. Here, in outline, was the configuration Father Escrivá saw clearly for Opus Dei: prelatic in character and universal in scope.

At different times, Fernando Valenciano and Rafael Caamaño both heard Monsignor Escrivá relate a curious event. One day in 1929 he had received a rather strange letter. It was strange because it was written by a Salesian nun, from France, not known to him, who signed her name Sulanitis. She was engaged in spreading devotion to the Merciful Love as Margaret Mary Alacoque had propagated devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It was also strange, because this nun could not even have known about the existence of Opus Dei, which at that time was only “what God wants,” “what God is asking me,” “God’s affair.” The Work, which Father Escrivá had seen for the first time a few months earlier, had neither structure nor base, neither name nor address. Strangest of all, the letter said this: the final solution for the Work would come, exactly as God wished, but after much searching.

Normally it is taken for granted that Monsignor Escrivá belonged to the Work simply because he was its founder; or that, precisely as founder, he was exempt from having to join the Work. However, this was not so. Monsignor Escrivá hated exemptions, exceptions, or privileges and was very much in favor of legality. He joined Opus Dei just like everybody else.

He talked about this one day in September 1967, during a short stay in Elorrio, a village in the province of Vizcaya in northern Spain, speaking to a group of his spiritual sons who were directors of the Work in Spain. It was an informal family conversation, punctuated with anecdotes and jokes. At a particular point, someone inquired how the “special intention” was coming along. Father Escrivá talked about the difficulties and risks “when you have to leave the side road and come onto the highway.” And he gave them to understand that Opus Dei, despite so many delays and canonical problems, “had always followed a straight track.” 30

“In these past few days,” he said, “Our Lord has reminded me of something I had almost forgotten. When I joined the Work…why, what did you think? That I never actually joined it? Well, I did. I made a formal commitment to the Work in October 1943, in front of Bishop Leopoldo Eijo y Garay, who was the bishop of Madrid. He was the bishop who gave us our first approval. And I did it just like any of you, by reciting the formula for the fidelity: Domine Iesu, suscipe me tibi —‘Lord Jesus, accept me for yourself.’ A simple, heartfelt prayer with no vows of any kind. Bishop Leopoldo just loved it, it was so natural.” 31

But the delay before “joining the high road” would last for several years more. Monsignor Escrivá guessed this might happen. Perhaps he offered God the sacrifice of not seeing the “last stone” of the edifice of the Work. He said, “I may leave this life without seeing the Work finished. But Our Lord has let me see things he doesn’t usually let people see. It’s most unusual for anyone who has started up an enterprise—and I didn’t intend to do it, it had never occurred to me to found anything!—to be allowed by God to see so many of its fruits here on earth.” 32

There had been an abundant harvest of vocations on every continent. At that point, in 1967, Monsignor Escrivá knew that to speak about Opus Dei was to speak of tens of thousands of people working in about seventy countries. The Work was a field rich with crops. Psalm 2 had again been fulfilled: “Ask of me, and I will give thee the gentiles for thy inheritance, and the utmost parts of the earth for thy possession.”

On one of those delightful Roman evenings, at sunset, when the slanting sunlight was striking on the ochre and reddish stucco walls of Villa Tevere, Monsignor Escrivá was looking out a window toward the terrace of the Fiume building. It was there that his sons in Opus Dei had placed the statue of the noble senator, which was headless and armless. The stony folds of the tunic, falling smoothly and harmoniously, gave the figure an air of elegant serenity. Monsignor Escrivá read the Latin words engraved on the marble pedestal: “Non est vir fortis pro Deo laborans, cui non crescit animus …” He translated rapidly: “There is no strong man working for God, whose spirit is not lifted, whose courage is not fortified, even in the midst of difficulties, even though now and again his body is torn apart.”

It was as if he were recounting to himself the story of his own life. A vigorous, courageous journey, requiring a similar kind of fortitude. And a fight without weapons, in which he had suffered difficulties with the patient fortitude needed to endure them. That had been his life: pax in bello , peace in war.