English
Documentation
A deeply human book
John F. Coverdale
In late 1932, the founder of Opus Dei, a young Spanish priest named Josemaría Escrivá, ran off on a primitive mimeograph machine a 15-page pamphlet entitled Spiritual Considerations, which he distributed among people to whom he was giving spiritual advice.
It contained 262 numbered considerations. Over the next seven years, he reworked it and added more material. In 1939 he published a much-expanded version with the title The Way. Since then more than 4.5 million copies have been sold in 46 languages. The first English edition was published in Ireland in 1953 and the first American edition a year later. The most recent American edition is being published by Doubleday.
The Way was not so much written as compiled from brief notes Escrivá took of things that struck him in conversation, in letters he received, and in prayer. It is not a systematic treatise or a manual. Rather, as Bishop Echevarría points out in his Introduction to the Doubleday edition, it is made up of bits and pieces of the author’s oral and written conversations with the people who sought his spiritual advice and above all of his conversation with God in prayer. Although it reflects many aspects of the spirit of Opus Dei, which Escrivá had founded in 1928, it was intended for a wider audience than members of Opus Dei, and in fact never even mentions Opus Dei.
Those who open the pages of The Way with a desire to draw closer to God find themselves invited to join Escrivá’s conversations with God and with his friends, and then to continue the conversation on their own, talking with God in their own words and about their own lives.
The Way addresses its readers with the same straightforward vigor and directness that characterized Escrivá’s private conversations with his friends, a vigor and directness that might have been off-putting or even offensive had it not been for the warmth of his affection. He does not hesitate to correct defects, precisely because the person he is speaking to is a friend, and a friend for whom he has very high hopes. Thus he says:
Don’t be so touchy. The least thing offends you. It’s necessary to weigh one’s words well before speaking to you even on the most trivial matter.
Don’t be annoyed if I tell you that you are... unbearable. Unless you change, you will never be of any use. (The Way, 43)
Escrivá’s goal is not to elaborate theoretical insights but to move his readers to put their faith into practice, to seek Jesus Christ and to live in union with him in their daily lives. “I will only stir your memory,” he says in the Preface, “so that some thought will arise and strike you; and so you will better your life…”
Bettering our lives is a many faceted task that requires growth in faith, hope and charity, and in the natural human virtues like justice, prudence, truthfulness, sincerity, fortitude, and concern for others, etc. But Escrivá is not content with his readers’ becoming more virtuous. He wants them to “set out along ways of prayer and of love.” (The Way, Preface.)
The prayer to which Escrivá leads his readers is not rote repetition of formulas but conversation, personal dialogue with God:
You write: ‘To pray is to talk with God. But about what?’ About what? About Him, about yourself: joys, sorrows, successes and failures, noble ambitions, daily worries, weaknesses! And acts of thanksgiving and petitions: and Love and reparation.
In a word: to get to know him and to get to know yourself: ‘to get acquainted!’ (The Way, 91).
Escrivá does not add one more structured method of prayer to the many methods developed over the centuries by Catholic authors. He respects the freedom and autonomy of readers to develop their own approaches to prayer, moved by the Holy Spirit:
You say that you don’t know how to pray? Put yourself in the presence of God, and once you have said, ‘Lord, I don’t know how to pray!’ rest assured that you have begun to do so. (The Way 90).
Although he does not prescribe a particular method, Escrivá’s approach to prayer, (and indeed to life), is permeated by a lively sense of God’s fatherhood and of being a dearly-loved child of God:
We’ve got to be convinced that God is always near us. We live as though he were far away, in the heavens high above, and we forget that he is also continually by our side.
He is there like a loving Father. He loves each one of us more than all the mothers in the world can love their children – helping us, inspiring us, blessing... and forgiving.
How often we have misbehaved and then cleared the frowns from our parents’ brows, telling them: ‘I won’t do it any more!’ –That same day, perhaps, we fall again... –And our father, with feigned harshness in his voice and serious face, reprimands us, while in his heart he is moved, realizing our weakness and thinking: ‘poor child, how hard he tries to behave well!’
We’ve got to be filled, to be imbued with the idea that our Father, and very much our Father, is God who is both near us and in heaven. (The Way 267)
The conviction that God cares for us like a loving father explains the cheerfulness and optimism that characterize The Way:
The cheerfulness you should have is not the kind we might call physiological good spirits - the happiness of a healthy animal. You must seek something more: the supernatural happiness that comes from the abandonment of everything and the abandonment of yourself into the loving arms of our Father-God. (The Way 659)
The Way is an enormously cheerful and uplifting book. It challenges readers and asks them to help Christ to carry his cross, but it overflows with Escrivá’s conviction that “Accepting the will of God wholeheartedly is a sure way of finding joy and peace: happiness in the Cross. Then we realize that Christ’s yoke is sweet and that his burden is not heavy.” (The Way 758).
Escrivá says in the Preface, “I won’t tell you anything new.” It is true that The Way is deeply rooted in the Gospels, and in that sense nothing new. But in the 1930s Escrivá’s message—that all Christians are personally called by God to seek holiness, and that it can be sought and found in ordinary daily life—was startling.
That message about the universal call to holiness was taken up by Vatican Council II and now constitutes part of the standard teaching of the Catholic Church. The Way, however, does not limit itself to announcing this truth. It proposes holiness in daily life as a real-life goal for normal Christians who hold down a job and take care of their families, and it offers them practical ways of progressing toward that goal. In this The Way remains as fresh and even as startling as it was when it first began circulating in the form of mimeographed notes almost 75 years ago.
John F. Coverdale is a Professor at Seton Hall University School of Law. He has a PhD in history from the University of Wisconsin and a Law degree from the University of Chicago. He resided in Rome from 1961 to 1968 where he was priviliged to work with Josemaría Escrivá. He is the author of several books on Spanish history, and more recently of Uncommon Faith, a history of the early years of Opus Dei.
John F. Coverdale
The Way was not so much written as compiled from brief notes Escrivá took of things that struck him in conversation, in letters he received, and in prayer. It is not a systematic treatise or a manual. Rather, as Bishop Echevarría points out in his Introduction to the Doubleday edition, it is made up of bits and pieces of the author’s oral and written conversations with the people who sought his spiritual advice and above all of his conversation with God in prayer. Although it reflects many aspects of the spirit of Opus Dei, which Escrivá had founded in 1928, it was intended for a wider audience than members of Opus Dei, and in fact never even mentions Opus Dei.
Those who open the pages of The Way with a desire to draw closer to God find themselves invited to join Escrivá’s conversations with God and with his friends, and then to continue the conversation on their own, talking with God in their own words and about their own lives.
The Way addresses its readers with the same straightforward vigor and directness that characterized Escrivá’s private conversations with his friends, a vigor and directness that might have been off-putting or even offensive had it not been for the warmth of his affection. He does not hesitate to correct defects, precisely because the person he is speaking to is a friend, and a friend for whom he has very high hopes. Thus he says:
Don’t be so touchy. The least thing offends you. It’s necessary to weigh one’s words well before speaking to you even on the most trivial matter.
Don’t be annoyed if I tell you that you are... unbearable. Unless you change, you will never be of any use. (The Way, 43)
Escrivá’s goal is not to elaborate theoretical insights but to move his readers to put their faith into practice, to seek Jesus Christ and to live in union with him in their daily lives. “I will only stir your memory,” he says in the Preface, “so that some thought will arise and strike you; and so you will better your life…”
Bettering our lives is a many faceted task that requires growth in faith, hope and charity, and in the natural human virtues like justice, prudence, truthfulness, sincerity, fortitude, and concern for others, etc. But Escrivá is not content with his readers’ becoming more virtuous. He wants them to “set out along ways of prayer and of love.” (The Way, Preface.)
The prayer to which Escrivá leads his readers is not rote repetition of formulas but conversation, personal dialogue with God:
You write: ‘To pray is to talk with God. But about what?’ About what? About Him, about yourself: joys, sorrows, successes and failures, noble ambitions, daily worries, weaknesses! And acts of thanksgiving and petitions: and Love and reparation.
In a word: to get to know him and to get to know yourself: ‘to get acquainted!’ (The Way, 91).
Escrivá does not add one more structured method of prayer to the many methods developed over the centuries by Catholic authors. He respects the freedom and autonomy of readers to develop their own approaches to prayer, moved by the Holy Spirit:
You say that you don’t know how to pray? Put yourself in the presence of God, and once you have said, ‘Lord, I don’t know how to pray!’ rest assured that you have begun to do so. (The Way 90).
Although he does not prescribe a particular method, Escrivá’s approach to prayer, (and indeed to life), is permeated by a lively sense of God’s fatherhood and of being a dearly-loved child of God:
We’ve got to be convinced that God is always near us. We live as though he were far away, in the heavens high above, and we forget that he is also continually by our side.
He is there like a loving Father. He loves each one of us more than all the mothers in the world can love their children – helping us, inspiring us, blessing... and forgiving.
How often we have misbehaved and then cleared the frowns from our parents’ brows, telling them: ‘I won’t do it any more!’ –That same day, perhaps, we fall again... –And our father, with feigned harshness in his voice and serious face, reprimands us, while in his heart he is moved, realizing our weakness and thinking: ‘poor child, how hard he tries to behave well!’
We’ve got to be filled, to be imbued with the idea that our Father, and very much our Father, is God who is both near us and in heaven. (The Way 267)
The conviction that God cares for us like a loving father explains the cheerfulness and optimism that characterize The Way:
The cheerfulness you should have is not the kind we might call physiological good spirits - the happiness of a healthy animal. You must seek something more: the supernatural happiness that comes from the abandonment of everything and the abandonment of yourself into the loving arms of our Father-God. (The Way 659)
The Way is an enormously cheerful and uplifting book. It challenges readers and asks them to help Christ to carry his cross, but it overflows with Escrivá’s conviction that “Accepting the will of God wholeheartedly is a sure way of finding joy and peace: happiness in the Cross. Then we realize that Christ’s yoke is sweet and that his burden is not heavy.” (The Way 758).
Escrivá says in the Preface, “I won’t tell you anything new.” It is true that The Way is deeply rooted in the Gospels, and in that sense nothing new. But in the 1930s Escrivá’s message—that all Christians are personally called by God to seek holiness, and that it can be sought and found in ordinary daily life—was startling.
That message about the universal call to holiness was taken up by Vatican Council II and now constitutes part of the standard teaching of the Catholic Church. The Way, however, does not limit itself to announcing this truth. It proposes holiness in daily life as a real-life goal for normal Christians who hold down a job and take care of their families, and it offers them practical ways of progressing toward that goal. In this The Way remains as fresh and even as startling as it was when it first began circulating in the form of mimeographed notes almost 75 years ago.
John F. Coverdale is a Professor at Seton Hall University School of Law. He has a PhD in history from the University of Wisconsin and a Law degree from the University of Chicago. He resided in Rome from 1961 to 1968 where he was priviliged to work with Josemaría Escrivá. He is the author of several books on Spanish history, and more recently of Uncommon Faith, a history of the early years of Opus Dei.
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