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Peter Kopa, 2.10.2023, Prague
A bit of history
Opus Dei in the Catholic Church is a sign of its vitality, introducing a paradigm shift in the imitation of the early Christians only 95 years ago. It is well known that after Christ’s death and ascension to heaven, the twelve apostles faithfully followed his teachings, thus creating a growing group of Jews and Gentiles who learned firsthand how to live the Christian faith. There was everything from humble people to the highest Jewish and Roman dignitaries. There were no episcopal palaces, no monasteries, no clerical structures and none of the splendor that would later become the Roman Curia. That is to say, these Christians of the first hour worked, attended to their families and met wherever they could to celebrate the Holy Eucharist, as the persecutions, first by the Jews and then by the Romans in the Roman Empire, permitted. https://thinktanklatam.org/2022/11/22/el-holocausto-de-cristianos/
The important thing was to inspire their ordinary life with faith, both in the street, in the work in the fields, fishing, etc., seeking only to love God and others, doing all the good possible. This authenticity dragged along friends, relatives and friends, who then as today, led a flat life, without the joys of knowing that they were children of God. And it never occurred to anyone to think that the highest heights of love for God are only possible in the detachment from that world through which, not long ago, Jesus Christ himself had passed.
Persecutions again and again caused blood to be shed and produced martyrs. The strength of this testimony reaches our days, because these sacrifices were the seeds of more and more Christians. When the Christian faith was legalized by Constantine in 313, that people of God could finally begin to structure itself, so that the bishops and priests could better perform the essential service of the Church: to celebrate the Eucharist, administer the sacraments and keep unchanged the faith and the teachings received from the God-Man. And nothing more.
Over the centuries, the Church spread throughout Europe, also through an internal organization inspired by Roman law and thanks to the reception of Greek philosophical wisdom. From the 5th century the first forms of retreat from the world appeared in the form of monasteries and convents, which over the centuries led the Christian people to think that the ideal of personal holiness is only possible in celibacy and isolation from the world. We find this prejudice even today, although the teaching of the Church is very clear on this point.
The new paradigm
On October 2, 1928, St. Josemaría Escrivá received from God the invitation to spread the ideal of the fullness of Christian life in everyday life, in and through one’s own profession or office. This is nothing more and nothing less than a return to the first Christians. Since then there has been a relatively rapid spread of this divine charism, blessed from the beginning by the Bishop of Madrid, and then by so many bishops and Popes. On November 28, 1982, the Vicar of Christ, John Paul II, decided that Opus Dei would be integrated into the Church as a Personal Prelature, and that the Prelate would have the power of order and jurisdiction as its head, without having to be a bishop.
In recent months, Pope Francis has changed this juridical regime of Opus Dei’s anchoring in the Church. This change will not have a major impact on the service provided to the Catholic Church by its 93,000 faithful around the world, for the following reasons:
1.A traditional way of explaining the Church is to see it as a large tree, which has a root, trunk, branches, leaves and fruit. Opus Dei is not a branch, nor leaves, nor flowers, but is part of the trunk and the sap, called to carry, from the root, which is God himself, arterial blood full of oxygen to the trunk and all the branches (ordinary Christians, congregations, orders, dioceses, movements, etc.). This is so because the great majority of the faithful in this Work live in marriage, begetting children who, once born and well educated, can choose to serve the Church in one way or another. That is to say, the people of God and its lay faithful – who are in part the members of Opus Dei – are the prior reality that sustains the Church and that cannot be affected by structural disquisitions of attachment to the clerical structure. La familia y el auge de Occidente
2.This primacy of the people of God, the great majority of whom are lay people, supposes a certain Copernican turn, because, logically, in the Church founded by Christ, neither the clergy nor the religious can reproduce themselves biologically. That is to say, all the 268 Popes, all the saints, all the monks and nuns and so many unknown saints had to have been previously begotten and had to be born and grow up in the warmth of parents who gave them the necessary protection, affection and education in the faith. In other words, the purpose of the Church is to serve her people, and above all the great majority of the lay faithful, as well as all men and women. It is a question, therefore, of a new conception of the function and life of the Church and of her faithful, more in accord with the Gospel and with the secular way of life, in a world that has been created by God, and which, therefore, necessarily offers, in itself, the optimal conditions for the sanctification of man, although at times it may not seem so.
3.Incorporation into the Work does not occur through baptism and the bond of its faithful to the Prelature is of a contractual nature and at the same time is much more: the concrete manifestation of a call from God, addressed to concrete persons in the here and now, to fulfill and consummate a lifelong commitment of love.
4.Opus Dei is the testing ground for what the Church will be like in the near future, because its almost secular experience makes it the model of inspiration in the lives of many of the Christian faithful, especially the laity.
