English
Documentation
God is my Father!
This tour of some streets in Madrid highlights some events in St Josemaria’s life. A notable aspect was his experience of divine sonship – the fact of having God for his Father – expressed in trust in God’s providence, simplicity in talking to God, a deep sense of human dignity and of fraternity, real Christian love for the world and everything created by God, serenity, and optimism.
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Emperor Charles V Square (“Glorieta de Atocha”)
A profound experience of divine sonship while on a tram.
This Square, popularly known as Glorieta de Atocha, is overlooked by a copy of the “Artichoke Fountain” whose original is located in nearby Retiro Park.
In the 1930s, at the centre of the Square was a Metro station entrance with a huge lantern. What is now the entrance, in the Paseo Infanta Isabel, was a peaceful tree-lined boulevard.
When St Josemaria knew this Square, it looked far quieter than it does today.
On October 16, 1931, St Josemaria, after buying a newspaper in the square, took a Number 48 tram towards General Alvarez de Castro Street. While on the tram, God granted him the gift of experiencing intensely the fact of being a son of God, which led him to keep exclaiming joyfully, for a long time, the words, “Abba! Pater!” – “Father!”
This sense of divine sonship lies at the very heart of the spirit of Opus Dei and made a deep, continuing impact on the founder’s life and spiritual message.
He wrote in his personal notes, “Feast of Saint Hedwig, 1931: I wanted to pray, after Mass, in the quiet of my church. I didn’t succeed. On Atocha Street I bought a newspaper (ABC)and got on the streetcar. Up to this moment, when I’m writing this, I have not been able to read more than one paragraph of the paper. I have felt flowing through me a prayer of copious and ardent feelings of affection. That’s the way it was in the streetcar and all the way home.”
52, St Elizabeth Square
Former General Hospital
“Will you come with me to visit the sick?”
The building at no. 52 St Elizabeth Square now houses the Centre for Contemporary Art (Reina Sofia), but previously it was the General Hospital. Entrance to the Centre is free for those intending to visit the garden or bookshop alone, and a walk through its passages can serve as a reminder of the time when they were filled with stretchers and pallets overflowing from the wards, as they were when St Josemaria used to go there, between December 21, 1931, and December 1934. Herrero Fontana recalls, “One day the Father (St Josemaria) said, ‘Will you come with me to visit the sick?’ I said yes, and one morning we went to the General Hospital. (...) I’ll never forget the impact of what I saw there. It was like something out of Dante’s Inferno: the huge wards were packed with sick people and as there weren’t enough beds they were lying everywhere in confusion: by the stairs, along the passages, on pallets, on stretchers on the floor... people with typhoid fever, pneumonia, or tuberculosis, which was incurable in those days.
On his visits the Father would hear people’s confessions as well as attending to their physical needs (...) he would wash them, cut their fingernails and toenails, brush their hair, shave them, empty the bedpans...
He asked those sick men and women, many of whom had been told by the doctors that their sickness was terminal, to offer up their pains, suffering and loneliness for the apostolate he was doing with young people.”
The General Hospital was the setting for an episode that St Josemaria repeatedly referred to later. A young businessman, Luis Gordon, had to do something extremely unpleasant in the service of a sick person – cleaning the bedpan. He prayed to our Lord that his revulsion might not show on his face. St Josemaria referred to this in The Way, writing: “Isn’t it true, Lord, that you were greatly consoled by the childlike remark of that man who, when he felt the disconcerting effect of obedience in something unpleasant, whispered to you: ‘Jesus, keep me smiling!’?” (The Way, 626).
48, St Elizabeth’s Street
Writing Holy Rosary.
John the milkman.
Next to St Elizabeth’s Convent is St Elizabeth’s Church, built in 1565. The church contained a large number of religious works of art, many of which were destroyed in 1936 (the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War).
One morning after celebrating Mass St Josemaria wrote his little book Holy Rosary, all in one go, in the sacristy. It is not known exactly which day it was, but on the eve of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 7, he was reading it to two young men in St Elizabeth’s to help them to say the Rosary, which was the reason why he wrote it.
A young man used to kneel briefly in the entrance to St Elizabeth’s Church every morning. It was “John the Milkman”. St Josemaria described the scene in some of his writings. The milkman was a lively, cheerful man with a slight speech defect. He had a deep devotion to the Blessed Eucharist, and was very popular in the neighbourhood. He would come from Puente de Vallecas every day with two milk-churns loaded onto his mule and a cloak in case of rain. He went up and down the streets selling milk to the local people. The last point on his round was St Elizabeth’s Street, where he would leave three or four litres of milk at St Elizabeth’s Convent. On his way back, he opened the door of the church and knelt there with his customary greeting of “Jesus, here’s John the Milkman.” St Josemaria was usually in the confessional at that time, and every day could hear the clattering and clanging of the empty milk-cans.
Download itinerary + map
Download texts to pray on Divine Sonship
Emperor Charles V Square (“Glorieta de Atocha”)
Glorieta de Atocha
This Square, popularly known as Glorieta de Atocha, is overlooked by a copy of the “Artichoke Fountain” whose original is located in nearby Retiro Park.
In the 1930s, at the centre of the Square was a Metro station entrance with a huge lantern. What is now the entrance, in the Paseo Infanta Isabel, was a peaceful tree-lined boulevard.
When St Josemaria knew this Square, it looked far quieter than it does today.
On October 16, 1931, St Josemaria, after buying a newspaper in the square, took a Number 48 tram towards General Alvarez de Castro Street. While on the tram, God granted him the gift of experiencing intensely the fact of being a son of God, which led him to keep exclaiming joyfully, for a long time, the words, “Abba! Pater!” – “Father!”
This sense of divine sonship lies at the very heart of the spirit of Opus Dei and made a deep, continuing impact on the founder’s life and spiritual message.
He wrote in his personal notes, “Feast of Saint Hedwig, 1931: I wanted to pray, after Mass, in the quiet of my church. I didn’t succeed. On Atocha Street I bought a newspaper (ABC)and got on the streetcar. Up to this moment, when I’m writing this, I have not been able to read more than one paragraph of the paper. I have felt flowing through me a prayer of copious and ardent feelings of affection. That’s the way it was in the streetcar and all the way home.”
52, St Elizabeth Square
Former General Hospital
St Elizabeth’s Church today
The building at no. 52 St Elizabeth Square now houses the Centre for Contemporary Art (Reina Sofia), but previously it was the General Hospital. Entrance to the Centre is free for those intending to visit the garden or bookshop alone, and a walk through its passages can serve as a reminder of the time when they were filled with stretchers and pallets overflowing from the wards, as they were when St Josemaria used to go there, between December 21, 1931, and December 1934. Herrero Fontana recalls, “One day the Father (St Josemaria) said, ‘Will you come with me to visit the sick?’ I said yes, and one morning we went to the General Hospital. (...) I’ll never forget the impact of what I saw there. It was like something out of Dante’s Inferno: the huge wards were packed with sick people and as there weren’t enough beds they were lying everywhere in confusion: by the stairs, along the passages, on pallets, on stretchers on the floor... people with typhoid fever, pneumonia, or tuberculosis, which was incurable in those days.
On his visits the Father would hear people’s confessions as well as attending to their physical needs (...) he would wash them, cut their fingernails and toenails, brush their hair, shave them, empty the bedpans...
He asked those sick men and women, many of whom had been told by the doctors that their sickness was terminal, to offer up their pains, suffering and loneliness for the apostolate he was doing with young people.”
The General Hospital was the setting for an episode that St Josemaria repeatedly referred to later. A young businessman, Luis Gordon, had to do something extremely unpleasant in the service of a sick person – cleaning the bedpan. He prayed to our Lord that his revulsion might not show on his face. St Josemaria referred to this in The Way, writing: “Isn’t it true, Lord, that you were greatly consoled by the childlike remark of that man who, when he felt the disconcerting effect of obedience in something unpleasant, whispered to you: ‘Jesus, keep me smiling!’?” (The Way, 626).
48, St Elizabeth’s Street
Writing Holy Rosary.
John the milkman.
John the milkman used to greet Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament every day from the church entrance, with the words “Jesus, here’s John the Milkman.”
One morning after celebrating Mass St Josemaria wrote his little book Holy Rosary, all in one go, in the sacristy. It is not known exactly which day it was, but on the eve of the feast of the Immaculate Conception, December 7, he was reading it to two young men in St Elizabeth’s to help them to say the Rosary, which was the reason why he wrote it.
A young man used to kneel briefly in the entrance to St Elizabeth’s Church every morning. It was “John the Milkman”. St Josemaria described the scene in some of his writings. The milkman was a lively, cheerful man with a slight speech defect. He had a deep devotion to the Blessed Eucharist, and was very popular in the neighbourhood. He would come from Puente de Vallecas every day with two milk-churns loaded onto his mule and a cloak in case of rain. He went up and down the streets selling milk to the local people. The last point on his round was St Elizabeth’s Street, where he would leave three or four litres of milk at St Elizabeth’s Convent. On his way back, he opened the door of the church and knelt there with his customary greeting of “Jesus, here’s John the Milkman.” St Josemaria was usually in the confessional at that time, and every day could hear the clattering and clanging of the empty milk-cans.
Documentation
List of Contents
- Magnanimity, faith, and “madness”
- For a “today” that builds tomorrow
- A real passion for making Jesus Christ known
- God is my Father!
- Opus Dei’s First Steps in Madrid
- St Josemaria Escriva in Madrid: the founding of Opus Dei
- St Josemaria’s final moments
- Saint Josemaría’s love for the Eucharist
- January 1938, from Burgos, Spain: "If you need me, just call me"
- Tracing the history of the Church in the footsteps of St Josemaría
Prayer
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