Redeeming Time

Philippe D., law student, Paris, France

October 5, 2002

Tags: Study, Youth When I first heard about the Founder of Opus Dei’s message, and started trying to put it into practice, I realized more deeply with every week and month that passed, that my hours of study had their own importance in God’s eyes, and that they were the means I had to employ in order to achieve the goals described in the first point of The Way. I could see that the intellectual training I received at school was something that could help me to bring people to God: you don’t have to wait to be “old enough” to “be useful”, “light up”, and lead an “apostolic life”. What I learnt from Saint Josemaria about study enabled me to understand, while still a schoolboy, the importance of being at the top of the class and at the forefront of one’s profession.

The first aspect of Saint Josemaria’s teachings on study that I grasped was about motivation. I had to study for God first of all, because it is God who gives us all our good qualities. Then I had to study for my parents’ sake, because they brought me into the world and gave me my education; and then for everyone else, for them to be open to receive what God gives to each of us for the good of our neighbour… With that programme in front of me, I would say that we shouldn’t just shut ourselves into a church and pray; on the contrary, God is not happy unless we work as hard as we can.

What I learnt from Saint Josemaria enabled me to undertake a daily fight in little things when I was studying. I feel that if we are responsible about the simple little things, we will then be able to be responsible about great ones, as Jesus says in the Gospel (cf. Matthew 25:21). Saint Josemaria, through his life and his teachings, set us an example of the little efforts that can be made, and offered up, even at this early stage of one’s life. When one is a student, it’s often a question of paying attention in class right up to the end, presenting one’s work neatly, taking the time to go over something with a classmate when they haven’t quite understood it, etc.

The effort to sanctify my work is made up, ultimately, of small things. So how could I explain the way all these little things are connected? How can I really manage to imitate Jesus Christ in my work? When he was speaking of work, Saint Josemaria often used to talk about the hidden life of Jesus. For the first thirty years of his life, his Divinity was hidden from the world’s eyes. Jesus worked as a carpenter before he showed himself to the world as God. To look at the boy Jesus, seeing him as an apprentice in Saint Joseph’s workshop, helps younger people to realize that Christ’s example is one that they themselves can follow. They too can put their heart into what they are doing, just as he did, doing it for God and so sanctifying their work. That was how my studying turned into a habitual encounter with God in everyday things.

Saint Josemaria also stressed the need for a sense of responsibility about one’s study. He said: “If you are to serve God with your mind, to study is a grave obligation for you” (The Way, 336). This helped me to learn to be responsible about preparing for the future. After all, sooner or later every young person has to face up to the question “What job am I going to do?” And still more importantly, in view of all these teachings, “What job will enable me to be useful to God and to society?” It’s very clear that Saint Josemaria encouraged young people to prepare as well as they could for adult life; and that means good intellectual and professional training and development, so as to end up being men and women of sound judgment, capable of using their freedom to the full.

In my case, all these ideas really came home to me when I read the homily “Passionately loving the world”, which Saint Josemaria gave on the campus of the University of Navarre in 1967. It clarified lots of things about the direction I should take in my professional life. When I was eighteen I started law at University, and very soon, because of various circumstances, and with God’s help, I could see why the choice of profession or job really does matter, since my work is the place where I find Christ, and so, in order to make a responsible choice, I have to try to find out God’s will for me.

Finally, I have also learnt from Saint Josemaria’s teachings that there is no perfect job. Imitating Christ has never meant that we all had to go and become carpenters. What it does mean is that each individual should study according to his or her capacity, and do it responsibly and in order to please God.