Bohemian but not slapdash

Miguel Aranguren is a novelist and father of four. “I learned from St Josemaria that in a bohemian job like mine there is no room for half-finished work.”

December 12, 2011

Tags: Beauty, Youth, Work, job I am an author, novelist, op-ed writer, and married with four children. I have a wonderful job: telling stories. I had the great good fortune to be born into a Christian family which was imbued quite naturally with St Josemaria’s teachings. I say “quite naturally” because the message about holiness in ordinary life was something my parents didn’t just talk about: they practiced it and taught it with their lives.

The job of “pinching the soul awake”
As someone with a bohemian kind of job, one of the things about this message that I really found striking is that God can’t be offered something that’s badly done. You have to recognize the gifts you’ve been given freely from Heaven, and put them to the best use.

When I discovered that my real calling was story-telling on paper, I realized that I couldn’t offer God slapdash work in that field either. I had to put the best of my talent into my novels, as far as I could, so as to turn those pages into a service done to others. I didn’t want a single reader to be left indifferent after reading one of my novels: I wanted the characters, the setting, and the plot to pinch their souls awake, so to speak, and make each of them want to be better as a person.

The possibilities Christians have of connecting our work to God’s will is like offering the sacrifice of Abel and perfuming the heavens, with our desire to give glory to God by finishing things off, doing the most difficult thing first, and serving other people in our work.

I saw that he never got old
I was also struck by the fact that St Josemaria was a young man. I got to know him through the films of get-togethers that took place when he was already getting on in years. But when I saw them I realized that youth is not a matter of years but having a heart that’s in love. In other words, people who find a cause worth staking their lives for are people who never get old.

I have met many quite old people in Opus Dei who are as keen and enthusiastic as the youngest. Or people who, having only just finished university, went off to work in other countries, cold countries for instance, and they went to make all that snow melt by the love they put into their work. Where indifference rules, they offer people the warmth of their friendship.

I have also seen the youthfulness that was St Josemaria’s way of life, in very many family homes. I try and make it shine out in my home too, so that it is a place that’s funny, where what you hear most is laughter, what is valuable is the kids’ games, family time, us time when we can talk things through.

I’ve also seen people who were dying who turned their deathbeds into the antechamber of heaven and died young at heart, understanding the meaning of their suffering. I saw how they went from earth to heaven, how they died of love.

Dream: you too can be a writer
I was lucky enough to publish a novel when I was very young. At 19 I was already doing book-signings and my books got good reviews in the press. That made me think that writing was a gift and that when the time came I should put it at the service of others. Once again, work understood as service.

Then I set up the “Excelencia literaria” (“literary excellence”) project, to nurture in other young people the desire of telling stories on paper, to stir up people to their calling as writers and say to them, “Dream: you too can be a writer.” I have the hope of finding young authors who will raise up the job of writing and redirect it to its origin. A writer is like a beacon who should light up the world by writing things that are entertaining and amusing, and offer solid human values.