In the hospitals and poor districts

Salvador Bernal

Tags: Sickness, Opus Dei, Poverty

José Manuel Doménech de Ibarra writes: “Opus Dei was born in the hospitals and poor districts of Madrid and I, albeit in a tiny way, was a witness to this fact.” Much has already been said about the Founder of Opus Dei’s abundant activity in the Patronato de Enfermos (the Foundation for the Sick), in the slums of Madrid and then in the King’s Hospital and the General Hospital in Santa Isabel Street, and the Princesa Hospital in San Bernardo Street.

What is striking is that St Josemaría should have sought his wealth precisely in such poor and wretched places. His “treasures” were the prayers and mortifications of the sick. On St Joseph’s Day in 1975 he opened his heart to members of the Work in Rome:

Time passed by. I went to seek strength in the poorest districts of Madrid. Hours and hours going everywhere, day after day, on foot from one place to another among the shamefully and wretchedly poor, so poor that they had not a thing to their name; among dirty runny-nosed children, but children for all that, which means souls pleasing to God. (…) I spent many hours in that work. I’m only sorry there weren’t more. And in the hospitals and in houses where the sick people were, if those shacks can be called houses… They were sick and forsaken people and some of them had tuberculosis, which was then incurable.

More than a hundred people listened to him in silence. He spoke in a quiet voice, as one who opens his heart in God’s presence:
So I went to all those places to find the means to do the Work of God. Meanwhile I worked and formed the first ones whom I had by me. There were people of almost every kind among them. There were university students, working-men, small tradesmen, artists…

They were very intense years, in which Opus Dei was growing on the inside almost without our realising it. But I have wanted to tell you - some day they will explain this to you in more detail, with documents and papers - that the human strength of the Work has been the sick people in the hospitals of Madrid: the most forsaken ones; those who lived in their houses having lost the last vestige of human hope; the most ignorant in the remotest corners of the city.

On 2 July 1974 in Tabancura School in Santiago de Chile someone asked him to explain why he said that sick people are the treasure of Opus Dei. Slowly, as if he savoured those memories, Msgr. Escrivá de Balaguer spoke of a priest who was twenty-six years of age and had the grace of God, a good sense of humour and nothing else. He had no virtues, nor money. And he had to do Opus Dei… And do you know how he managed? he asked.

In the hospitals. That General Hospital of Madrid, packed with sick and destitute people lying there in the corridors because there just weren’t enough beds. That King’s Hospital, full of consumptives at a time when consumption was incurable… Those were the weapons with which to fight and win! That was the treasure with which to pay! And that was the strength with which to go forward! (…) And the Lord has taken us all over the world, and we are now in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in America and in Oceania thanks to the sick, who are a treasure…

A few months later, on 19 February 1975 in Ciudad Vieja (Guatemala), he once again recalled those years when he relied on all the artillery of many hospitals in Madrid:

I begged them to offer up their sufferings, their hours in bed, their loneliness (some of them were very lonely): to offer all that to the Lord for the apostolate we were doing with young people.

This was his way of teaching them to discover the joy of suffering, because they were sharing in the Cross of Jesus Christ and were serving a great and divine purpose. The Founder of Opus Dei found in them a real pillar of strength and the conviction that the Lord would carry the Work forward in spite of men, in spite of myself, who am a poor man.

From that time on, along with catechism classes in poorer districts, visits to the poor and homeless have been habitual means to develop the apostolate of Opus Dei with young people the world over.

He also spoke about the Christian meaning of suffering in Lisbon in November 1972:

You too will meet up with physical pain and be happy with that suffering. You have spoken to me of The Way. I don’t know it by heart, but there is a point which says: Let us bless pain. Love pain. Sanctify pain… Glorify pain! Do you remember it? I wrote that in a hospital at the bedside of a dying woman to whom I had just administered the Sacrament of Extreme Unction. How I envied her! That woman had had a very good social and economic position in life, and there she was in that wretched hospital bed, alone and dying, with no more company that what I could supply, until she died. And there she was repeating, joyously savouring the words: Let us bless pain - and she had every sort of moral and physical pain - love pain, sanctify pain, glorify pain! Suffering is a proof that one knows how to love, that one has a heart.

In 1930 Jenaro Lázaro found that besides working in hospitals the Father was also teaching catechism in a number of places. He cannot recall their exact names, but he does remember that he went often to Vallecas. On 1 October 1967 Msgr. Escrivá de Balaguer returned once more to Vallecas. It had changed a great deal. In the auditorium of Tajamar, an apostolic work run by Opus Dei, its Founder recalled that when he was twenty-five, I came to these open spaces often, to brush away tears and help those in need, to treat children, the old and the sick with affection, and I received a lot of affection in return… and the occasional stone.

He continued, referring to Tajamar: Today, for me, this is a dream, a blessed dream, that I relive in so many outskirts of great cities, where we treat people with affection, looking at them straight in the eye, because we are all equal. (…) I am a sinner who loves Jesus Christ with all the strength of my soul; I feel very happy, although I have sorrows, because sorrow is with us always in this world. I want you to love Jesus Christ, to get to know him, to be happy as I am; and it isn’t difficult to attain this relationship. Before God, as men, as creatures, we are all equal.

Extracts taken from the book Msgr. Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer: a profile of the Founder of Opus Dei, Salvador Bernal, published by Veritas: Dublin, 1977.