The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, that a man has taken and sowed in his ground; of all seeds, none is so little, but when it grows up it is greater than any garden herb; it grows into a tree, so that all the birds come and settle in its branches. (Mt 13:31-32)
The whole vision for world change laid out over the past six essays could easily seem a beautiful but fanciful dream. Taking this proposal seriously requires answering a simple but potentially devastating question: why now? If the theological basis is valid, then the dynamics described here should always be at work in history, at least since the death and resurrection of Jesus. Why should we expect a new change at this point in time? And how is that novelty supposed to occur on a large enough scale to affect the course of a globalized society? The final four chapters of Camino implicitly address this question, whose answer hinges on the specifically institutional dimension underlying the first two sections of the book.
We have seen how the figure of Joseph relies on a stable tradition of spiritual paternity, transmitted from generation to generation through a specific set of teachings and customs, while the Marian contribution includes the fabric of relations initiated by Jesus himself and sustained through social practices over which he continues to invisibly preside. Such characteristics may not be the first things that come to mind when we think of an institution. Perhaps we are more primed to imagine rigid bureaucracies, outdated regulations, tedium and corruption. But the essence of any healthy institution is always the network of relations stabilized through shared practices and teachings, which are ontologically prior to any written norms or organizational chart. The first two sections of the book presuppose that such an institution already exists, incarnating the roles of both Joseph and Mary so as to continue unfolding the mystery of Christ.
The institution Escrivá has in mind in the first place is the Catholic Church. The Joseph section highlights the role of priests as the heirs of the tradition of spiritual paternity (points 66-75), while the Mary section points to the Mass as the perennial event where the fabric of relations takes shape. But this still leaves the initial question unanswered, since these aspects of the Church have existed since the first century. Why now? What is new?
This is where the image of the tree from the opening quote comes in. Like a tree, the Church has a self-similar or fractal structure, repeating the same basic dynamics at various levels of organization. This is how she remains young and alive even after two millennia of existence: every so often, a new branch emerges, which renews the essential dynamism on a smaller scale. This in fact is the only way that immortality can manifest itself in history: it is no accident that the only living organisms (possibly) older than the Church are trees, such as the famous olives in Gethsemane. Even a catastrophe that tears off all the branches can actually make the tree healthier and stronger, as long as the root survives.
The first new branches to appear after the establishment of the main trunk of the Church were the monastic communities that sprang up in the Egyptian desert at the beginning of the fourth century. These communities and their successors across the Mediterranean set the standard for the essential elements of the branching process, as their experiences and insights were gathered into canonical documents. For Western Europe, the Rule of Saint Benedict became the primary reference text by which the development of subsequent branches would be guided. This text lays out with exquisite detail how spiritual paternity is to be exercised and how the social fabric of the new branch is to be nurtured and grown, on the solid theological basis of the preceding centuries of debate and experience. It is no surprise, therefore, that so much of the Joseph section of Camino relays the same spiritual teaching as that of the desert Fathers, and that this final “institutional” section repeats some of the central points of Benedict’s Rule.
These branches are the means by which the Church brings about new changes in world history. They partially answer the question “why now?” as well as the “how?” A full answer requires probing deeper into the origin of the branch itself: Catholic theology ultimately attributes this to the divine initiative, the action of the Holy Spirit who continually vivifies the “charismatic structure” of the Church (cf. Vatican II, Lumen Gentium n. 12b). Escrivá’s proposal for world change depends on the recognition that some new branches have recently sprouted, and these final chapters form an invitation to definitive incorporation in one of them.
Today is the 95th anniversary of the sprouting of the branch that has come to be known as Opus Dei. It is a particularly appropriate moment for reflecting on this process and for giving thanks for these continuing divine interventions in the life of the Church and of the world. To this end, I will close this series by commenting on two sets of points from these final chapters: the first dealing with the common characteristics of all the branches, and the second treating the specifically novel characteristics of the branch that celebrates its birthday today.
The basic shape of every new branch, as of the Church as a whole, is that of the Holy Family: the paternity of Joseph, and the network of fraternal bonds nurtured by Mary’s maternity. In several points, Escrivá highlights the centrality of these elements from a negative perspective, describing how the only real threat to the survival of the branch is the collapse of these characteristic bonds:
955: In your apostolic enterprise, have no fear of external enemies, however great may be their power. – This is the enemy that matters: your lack of “filiation” and your lack of “fraternity.”
997: Absence, isolation: trials for perseverance. – Holy Mass, prayer, sacraments, sacrifices: communion of saints!: weapons to conquer in the trial.1
Absence and isolation are “trials,” because the activity of the branch depends on the fraternal and filial bonds, which are harder to experience when the other members are physically distant. But these trials can be overcome thanks to the supernatural dimension of the bonds, which is experienced in the practices already enumerated in the Marian section of the book.
Two concrete manifestations of this general picture are radical obedience and radical commitment. The paternal role can only be fully effective if received in an attitude of humble receptiveness, as modeled by Jesus himself towards Joseph of Nazareth (cf. Lk. 2:51). A profound sensitivity to this reality is central to the whole monastic tradition, and is expressed with particular force in the Rule of Saint Benedict. Some of the points from Camino on this theme sound extreme to modern ears, but are really no more than faithful repetitions of what Benedict received from the Fathers and passed on to all of Western Christianity:
To obey…, a sure way. – To blindly obey one’s superior…, way of sanctity. – To obey in your apostolate…, the only way: because, in a work of God, the spirit has to be obey or leave.2
And the practical advice on implementing such this obedience could have been taken straight from the Rule itself (cf. Chapter III):
Exercise deep respect for your superior when he consults you and you have to contradict his opinions. – And never contradict him in front of those who are subject to him, even when he is wrong.3
Such extreme obedience goes hand in hand with a permanent dedication to one’s mission within the “branch.” Just as the origin of each branch lies in a divine initiative, one’s own participation is the response to a divine calling, which precedes and sustains the free response. This makes the bonds of fraternity permanent and stable, even in the face of personal failures and weaknesses:
Unshakeable: that’s how you have to be. — If other people’s weaknesses or your own make your perseverance waver, I can only form a sad concept of your ideal.
Make up your mind once and for all.4
This last point opens up the central challenge posed by the novel character of the “branch” that is Opus Dei. In practically all of the prior “branches” in the history of the “tree” of the Church, from the first monastic communities through the beginning of the 20th century, permanent incorporation into the branch is a public act that defines one’s role within society as a whole. This is externally manifest in the special clothes that the members wear (the “habit” of monks and nuns), so that their role, with its specific nexus of relations and responsibilities, can be immediately recognized. But such a change of “state” is incompatible with the strategy for world change laid out over the course of the book, especially as described in the previous essay, on the “hiddenness” and “naturalness” of the action of the alma de criterio in society. The point is to transform pre-existing social roles, through their elevation to the supernatural order. To be effective, the alma de criterio needs to remain in the same role that he occupied before, with his public persona still defined by his responsibilities as lawyer, farmer, street-sweeper, etc.. By making these responsibilities and the corresponding relations into manifestations of divine love, he contributes to a real renovation of the way the human world is made.
The challenge, then, is to conceive of a real branch, built of permanent bonds of filiation and fraternity, but without any external effects on the public persona of the members. This is already a tough theoretical problem, whose solution depends on some of the most intricate and technical parts of dogmatic theology.5 But it is an even more difficult problem legally and culturally: since all the prior branches have been linked with specific public roles, the Church’s legislation has naturally assumed that this is an essential feature of a branch. While the Second Vatican Council broke with this precedent on paper, this change has yet to be fully assimilated by theologians and legal experts.
To find a precedent for this proposal, Escrivá has to reach back before the first branching event, to the first centuries of the Church’s history. In those days, there was only one branch, the main trunk, joined through the sacrament of Baptism – and this membership did not signify any change in one’s public persona. An early Christian writing rediscovered in the 16th century puts special stress on this point:
Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. […] With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.
Escrivá thus points the reader to these first Christian communities as the model to follow, drawing a comparison with how the other “branches” naturally look towards their own branching point:
Just as observant religious are eager to know how the first members of their order of congregation lived, in order to adapt themselves to that line of conduct, so too, Christian knight,6 should you try to know and imitate the life of the disciples of Jesus, who dealt with Peter and Paul and John, and were practically eyewitnesses of the Death and Resurrection of the Master.7
It is no coincidence that these first generations were the ones who accomplished the original world transformation, since their radical sense of supernatural belonging to the Church did not interfere with their continued exercise of the public persona they had before. And so the services and relationships that constitute the fabric of Roman society were themselves transformed from the inside. It is impossible (and undesirable) to go back in time, to return to that first sapling. But nothing prevents a similar dynamic from coming to life in a new branch — adapted to the unprecedented historical circumstances of the “mass man” in a globalized technological society. And this is what Escrivá saw that God wished to accomplish through him.
955: En tu empresa de apostolado no temas a los enemigos de fuera, por grande que sea su poder. —Este es el enemigo imponente: tu falta de "filiación" y tu falta de "fraternidad".
997: Ausencia, aislamiento: pruebas para la perseverancia. —Santa Misa, oración, sacramentos, sacrificios: ¡comunión de los santos!: armas para vencer en la prueba.
941: Obedecer..., camino seguro. —Obedecer ciegamente al superior..., camino de santidad. —Obedecer en tu apostolado..., el único camino: porque, en una obra de Dios, el espíritu ha de ser obedecer o marcharse.
954: Extrema el respeto al superior cuando te consulte y hayas de contradecir sus opiniones. —Y nunca le contradigas delante de quienes le estén sujetos, aunque no lleve razón.
995: Inconmovible: así has de ser. —Si hacen vacilar tu perseverancia las miserias ajenas o las propias, formo un triste concepto de tu ideal.
Decídete de una vez para siempre.
Specifically, Christology: the study of how Jesus can be fully divine without compromising his authentic human nature. This assumption of humanity by the divine Person of the Word is the ontological basis for all positive world change according to the theological perspective set forth in these essays. I personally think Maximus the Confessor’s contribution to the Christological debates will prove particularly helpful in this effort.
When this text was written, Escrivá was open to a possible medieval model for the new “branch” in the tradition of Christian knighthood, where the secular duties corresponding to particular roles in feudal society could be deeply infused with a Christian spirit. This was later discarded as a fundamental structuring concept, but some elements remain, such as the recitation of Psalm II in the tradition of the Knights Templar. The allusion to knighthood is not so strong in the Spanish as it comes across in my English translation, however, because the same word serves as the equivalent of the English “gentlemen,” which is how it is rendered within this passage in the official translations.
925: Como los religiosos observantes tienen afán por saber de qué manera vivían los primeros de su orden o congregación, para acomodarse ellos a aquella conducta, así tú —caballero cristiano— procura conocer e imitar la vida de los discípulos de Jesús, que trataron a Pedro y a Pablo y a Juan, y casi fueron testigos de la Muerte y Resurrección del Maestro.