January 1938, from Burgos, Spain: "If you need me, just call me"

Andrés Vázquez de Prada

Tags: Spanish Civil War, Burgos

St Josemaria at the end of the Spanish Civil War

On January 9, 1938, Father Josemaria, who had just arrived in Burgos, celebrated his thirty-sixth birthday. He wrote to all his sons a long letter which began:

“Circular Letter, January 9, 1938
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
+ May Jesus bless my sons and keep them safe.
The Lord also watched over me, safeguarding me from death, which more than once seemed certain. He rescued me from the land of Egypt (...), despite my sins and surely because of your prayers, so that I might continue to be head and father of his chosen ones in this Work of God.
My plan is to visit all of you, one by one. I will try to make this a reality as soon as possible.
Until that moment (which I am so looking forward to), I am sending you, in this circular letter, advice and encouragement and the means that are needed not only to persevere in our spirit but to sanctify yourselves by carrying out our discreet, effective, and courageous apostolate, so similar to that of the first Christians: what a blessed labor of selection and confidence!
With naturalness, as the fruit of your interior life, renew your silent and effective mission for the glory of our God – Deo omnis gloria!
Nothing is impossible. Omnia possum... Could you ever forget our ten years of consoling experience? Let’s go, then! God and daring!”

Looking forward to getting to speak individually with each of his sons, he now reminds them of the fundamental practices of the interior life and gives guidelines for their apostolic work. He also gives useful advice for overcoming wartime obstacles: write to him, study a language, find some kind of professional work, come to Burgos when they get a pass... He puts himself entirely at their disposal, this being his job as their Father: “If you need me, call me. You have the right and duty to call me. And I have the duty to come to you by the quickest means of transportation.”

He concludes with an announcement:

“And now, an important matter:
For some time we have felt the need to include a petition ‘pro Patre’ in the official prayer of the Work. Beginning next February 14 – a day of thanksgiving, like October 2 – we will say in our Preces, after the ‘Oremus pro benefactoribus nostris,’ ‘Oremus pro Patre’, and then, ‘Misericordia Domini ab aeterno et usque in aeternum super eum: custodit enim Dominus omnes diligentes se’ (May the mercy of the Lord always be upon him; for the Lord watches over those who love him).
Know that you are, to use Saint Paul’s expression, my joy and my crown. I’m depending on you. Be faithful!
Your Father sends you his blessing.
Mariano
Burgos St Michael, January 9, 1938.”

Josemaria Escrivá in Burgos. 1938

The founder needed his children’s prayer and mortification. When he wrote “I’m depending on you: be faithful!” it was not just an empty phrase. During the spiritual exercises he did in Pamplona, prayer for all his loved ones had poured from his fatherly heart. Just the thought that some letters from the people still in the Honduran Legation – Alvaro del Portillo and Jose Maria Gonzalez Barredo – might have got lost, robbed him of his peace of mind, as he wrote in his personal notes:

“My God, my God: that peace!
Many times, very many times a day, I remember each of them. And poor Grandmother [his mother] and my sister and brother too; but I never pray for my mother without praying for everyone’s parents and brothers and sisters.”

Although he had already written a second time to the Vicar General, as Rector of St Elizabeth’s he considered it prudent to set out for Bishop Leopoldo Eijo y Garay his submission to his authority and his special dedication to the Work. He wrote:

“Burgos, January 10, 1938.
Your Excellency,
I have escaped from Madrid and come here, and I instantly wrote to Fr. Moran, who has always been like a father to me, to place myself at your Excellency’s orders.
Today, after doing spiritual exercises in the Episcopal Palace at Pamplona, where the holy Prelate put me up for several days out of friendship, on learning of your Excellency’s address – it was the Bishop of Vitoria who gave it to me – I am writing you these lines to reiterate my unconditional offering and tell your Excellency that, in fulfilment of my particular vocation, I am continuing my apostolate with university students and professors. If your Excellency so desires, I will travel to see you with the greatest pleasure, to tell you as my Bishop what I know of the magnificent heroism of your clergy and the Christian courage of our young men, which surpasses that of the early Christians in Rome.
[...] As your humble and obedient son, I ask for your blessing.
Josemaria Escriva
Rector of St Elizabeth’s.
I am living at 51 Santa Clara Street, Burgos.”

That same day, January 10, he went to the residence of the archbishop of Burgos to request ministerial faculties. Outside, he ran into an old acquaintance from Madrid, a priest who knew a number of the priests in the Albas family, and their conversation briefly took his mind off what people had told him about the archbishop’s difficult temperament. Not that he was too worried about this; he had, after all, been well recommended by Bishop Olaechea, and Bishop Lauzurica had taken the trouble to call the archbishop on his behalf. However, when he entered the building, he did notice something strange about the atmosphere there. The place seemed cold and deserted; no one was walking around or waiting to be received.

Burgos cathedral

Then Archbishop Manuel de Castro y Alonso looked out into the corridor, and Father Josemaria heard someone announce, “Escriva is here.”

Father Josemaria entered the visiting room and handed the archbishop the letter from Bishop Olaechea.

“Wait, I’m going to get my glasses,” the archbishop said.

In a moment he returned, not looking very friendly. He became engrossed in reading the letter, and although the bishop had sprinkled it with pleasantries, he never blinked. When he had finished, he looked at Father Josemaria over his glasses and said sharply, “I don’t know this Work.”

Father Josemaria tried to explain briefly what the letter had already said about the aims and activities of the Work.

“There are no university students here; I have more than enough priests; I do not give you faculties,” was the blunt reply.

“If my Lord Archbishop will permit me …”

“Permission granted.”

“It is true that there aren’t any university students here, because all the young men are at the front. But since Burgos is the center for all activities, there are always university students coming through here.”

“I have them very well taken care of. I don’t need you.”

Thus the visit ended. Father Josemaria thought it could easily have been a theatrical sketch entitled “Interview of a Sinful Priest with His Reverence the Archbishop of Burgos.” Obviously he would need to consult the bishops of Pamplona and Vitoria again, and try to obtain the faculties by some different approach. Before the month was out, the bishop of Vitoria, en route through Burgos, got the matter taken care of. When Father Josemaria went to see the archbishop again, the prelate was all smiles. “Burgos is the right place for you,” he said. “Stay in Burgos. Go to the office and they will give you full faculties.”

Next he needed to find a suitable confessor. On January 11 he was introduced to a paralyzed priest, Father Saturnino Martinez, and on that very day he asked this priest to be his confessor. “He understands me perfectly,” he says in his journal. It is not hard to see why he hit it off so well with Father Saturnino:

“Our conversation made me very happy because he praised the angels so highly. And he even shares my view that we priests, by reason of our ministry, have not only a guardian angel but also an archangel. I left his house with a deep joy, entrusting myself to the Little Watchmaker and to the archangel. And I felt sure that even if I don’t really have an archangel at my side, Jesus will end up sending me one, so that my prayer to the archangel will not be futile. Out on the street, I became a child again and tried to decide what name I should give him. It sounds a bit ridiculous, but when one is in love with Christ, nothing is ridiculous: I named my archangel ‘Amador’.”

Since he no longer accepted stipends, Father Josemaria was free to offer his Masses for the needs of the Work and for his family. As an exception, on January 17 he offered his Mass for himself and his own intentions:

“I celebrated the holy Sacrifice for myself, a sinful priest. How many acts of love and faith! And in the thanksgiving after Mass, brief and filled with distractions as it was, I saw how much my children’s perseverance (and, now, even their earthly life) depends on my faith and my love, on my penance, my prayer, and my activity. Blessed cross of the Work, that is carried by my Lord Jesus – him! – and me!”

For his penitential practices Father Josemaria needed a modicum of independence and freedom of movement. “I would like to have a room for myself alone,” he reflects in his journal. “Otherwise it’s not possible to live the life that God is asking of me.” That life consisted of sleeping on the floor and for only five hours a night (except for Thursday nights, when he did not sleep at all), going without some meals, and using the disciplines (something hardly possible in the close quarters of a boardinghouse). “By the way,” he notes, “I could tell a very funny story about an adventure I had in Pamplona and Burgos, which could be called, ‘The Hunt for Some Disciplines’.”

On the previous day (January 16) he wrote in his journal: “I made a firm resolution never to visit any religious building out of curiosity, ever! Poor Burgos cathedral!”

St Josemaria and Alvaro del Portillo. Del Portillo was one of the Opus Dei people who stayed in Madrid. Years later he was ordained a priest, and in 1975, after St Josemaria’s death, he became his first successor at the head of Opus Dei.

He needed a place in Burgos where he could receive visitors, put up those who were passing through, and, he hoped, set up an oratory. But, no matter how hard they looked, they could not find such a place. So that impressive-sounding “Burgos St Michael” (see the circular letter above) never came to be anything more than a small room in a boardinghouse or hotel.

Father Josemaria had his plans worked out clearly in his mind for the short term, medium term and long term, although they all meant equally hard work for him right now. The first thing he wanted to do was try and get Juan Jimenez Vargas, Pedro and Paco in Burgos. Then, together with Albareda, they could be a sort of central team for coordinating the apostolate, seeing the people who came to Burgos on visits, and writing and answering letters. He also considered it urgent to speak, as soon as possible, with each and every member of the Work. This journal entry written on January 13 makes clear what he was suffering: “My God, my God! All of them equally loved, through you and in you and with you – and all of them dispersed. You have hit me where it hurts me the most: in my children.”

It was a pain involving many things: the impossibility of sharing closely in their difficulties and sufferings; the lack of a family home; the isolation and loneliness (“How this loneliness weighs on me! My children, Lord!”); and the disturbing thought that in such conditions it was harder for his children to persevere in their commitment.

Now that he was cut off from the Red zone, his love for those he left behind caused him to magnify in his mind the troubles they were going through. When he read in one of Isidoro’s letters, “Grandmother, Uncle and Aunt [St Josemaria’s mother, brother and sister] are in perfect health; they’re getting through the winter very well,” he thought, “How can they be doing well, when for the last eight months they’ve lacked for everything?” While deprivations and other hardships leapt to his imagination, he had no way of getting at the unvarnished truth, which, naturally, they tended to keep from him. The winter of 1938 was extremely harsh in Madrid. The terrible cold was made worse by the shortages of food and fuel. “I have such an abundance of chilblains,” wrote Isidoro to another person in the Red zone, “that I can hardly hold the pencil.”

The Father kept careful track of the correspondence. On February 24 he said to Juan Jimenez Vargas, “We have received seven letters from Madrid, and we have sent them eighteen.” Being able to receive news was a great consolation, but it could also be a source of anxiety. It was very nerve-racking to be awaiting a reply, not knowing if one had not yet been written or if it had perhaps gone astray or aroused the suspicions of the censor. Father Josemaria could hardly be expected not to be upset. In a letter written to Juan on March 27, he wrote: “I hope that some day we’ll be hearing something from my poor sons in Madrid! I sent them one letter, by way of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, on the 18th, and another, via the Marquis of Embid, on the 26th. They are causing me a lot of suffering. You know me better than anyone, and you well know that on this I’m … overboard. The Lord won’t hold it against me.”

Extracts from the book The Founder of Opus Dei: the Life of Josemaria Escriva, vol. II God and Daring, by Andres Vazquez de Prada, Princeton NJ: Scepter, 2003, pp. 181-187.