On March 19, 2021, the fifth anniversary of the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitiae on the joy and beauty of family love, Pope Francis inaugurated the Year “Amoris Laetitiae Family,” which will conclude on June 26, 2022, the feast of Saint María Escrivá de Balaguer y Albás and date of the 10th World Meeting of Families in Rome. The Pope’s intention was to highlight the practice of Christian life in the family and from the family.
It can be seen as something fortuitous, but it is an opportunity to recall the importance of Saint Josemaría’s preaching on marriage, encompassed within his central message.
The Spanish Saint’s spiritual doctrine on marriage and family life is of immense depth and richness. His message is innovative in several aspects, and one of them is that marriage is a true vocation, a path of sanctity.
An immediate consequence, therefore, is the relevance of Saint Josemaría’s theological-spiritual thought for the pastoral on family life.
From the very foundation of the Opus Dei the Saint focused on the need to spread the universal call to holiness. The nucleus of his message was the sanctification of temporal realities and includes, in a central way, marriage and family life.
Saint John Paul II described Saint Josemaría as “the Saint of the ordinary,” in the homily of October 6, 2002, the day of Escrivá’s canonization. It is a eulogy to the Founder of the Opus Dei, worthy of consideration, as in his own life he showed us the grandeur of ordinary life.
In this connection, we highlight the following ideas.
Saint Josemaría began his preaching almost a century ago. Thanks to analyses of the critical editions of the Saint’s publications and other studies, we can affirm that, from the beginning of his pastoral work he preached on marriage as a vocation to holiness. The clarity of this idea has an indisputable root: October 2, 1928, when Saint Josemaría envisioned the Opus Dei.
Saint Josemaría was distinguished in his day by his daring way of addressing marriage and family life as a rich path to holiness. The Sacrament of Marriage gives the grace to sanctify that state of life. It is a genuine path to holiness because God gives the necessary graces to fulfill the marital vocation. At the same time, it requires the development of the theological and moral virtues in the family home.
The theological foundation of Saint Josemaría’s doctrine, on the holiness proper to marital life lies in the Mystery of the Incarnation of the Word, and the incorporation, though Baptism, of the baptized in Christ.
Saint Josemaría spread a permanently fresh message of holiness, which proposes seeking, knowing, and loving Jesus Christ. For the great majority of people, this holiness develops through the family and work. Each one of us is asked for a personal response in face of this universal call to sanctity and the apostolate recalled by Saint Josemaría from his work’s beginning in 1928.
Translation by Virginia M. Forrester
