Opus Dei

Opus Dei

Lord, help me live from day to day
In such a self-forgetful way
Then even when I kneel to pray
My prayer shall be for OTHERS.

Others, Lord, yes, others --
Let this my motto be;
Help me to live for others
That I may live like Thee.--

Hymn: "Others"

            Opus Dei, "The Work," a Catholic organization founded in 1928, teaches that everyone is called to holiness and that ordinary life is a path to sanctity. It is no mystery to believers or to unbelievers from the "outside looking in," and you certainly can not fool yourself, the spirit of God in you is seen in your living and giving. I will never forget the old country church house (built by both my mother and father's grandparents, 1874) where I was raised as a child. The preacher would often ask my own father to pray at the time of church offering. I remember that he would always say, "Bless those who give and those who want to give and cannot." In this present world with wars on poverty, drugs, terrorism...all of which we are losing, more poor people now than ever before, more drugs and drug activity than ever before, the world wrecked by terrorism. The very simple matter of the daily walk-work with God is a matter of indifference to most people, and I am sorry to say, even to many believers. Both Karl Marx and Joseph Stalin had a form of religion. Joseph Stalin was in a Christian seminary from 1894-1900. His daughter said that on Stalin's death bed, his last actions, shaking his fist upward at God. Marx's most famous quotation, "Religion is an opiate of the people." We are living witnesses that Lennen was right when he said, "You destroy a nation when you destroy its families." Every Christian pastor, patriot, parent should be saddened by what has happened to the American family.

           

            Character determines destiny. You may fool others but don't deceive yourself. You know that the American condition results from the condition of American churches. "For the time [is come] that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if [it] first [begin] at us, what shall the end [be] of them that obey not the gospel of God" (1 Peter 4:17)?  The Catholic's Benedict 16th gave a two week's notice and vacated the chair of Peter, Princes of the Catholic church (115 Cardinals) are now in concave electing a new Pope.  There is 1.2 billion Catholics in the world. Under the ceiling of the 16th chapel, Michael Angelo's last judgment, before secluded, the floors of the Chapel were torn up so interference methods could be installed to keep the princes from using their cell phones, defying the church by calling out. (What a testimony to the faith and practices of the church hierarchy.) I so remember sitting in the 16th Chapel.

            Strength comes through faith and this writer firmly believes that 90% of faith is just raw courage. It takes courage to accept and proclaim the simple message of salvation...that every sin-sickness was laid on Jesus. Paul said, "To know the fellowship of his suffering" (Philippians 3:10) in fellowship with him, he took on himself sin and infirmities which were mine and gave me the perfectness which was his. In the magnificence of creation, God established cycles and seasons. I don't care what the pitiful environmentalist, agriculturist, physicists say, all nature is a matter of cycles and seasons. We know that the earth, climate, seasons are historical in fact...ice age, age of tremendous heat. There was a time when the Mississippi River was solid ice, a time when much of the earth's crust was desert.  Human beings have starved because of these seasons, cycles. Every mammalian species has cycles and seasons. Reproduction, every bovine (cows), every 17-24 days lasting 24 hours- equine (horses), April-September.  Life below the 30th parallel, where the poorest people live, very different for those above the 30th parallel. I still remember my farmer father checking his Celtic astrological calendar to determine planting times, butchery times. Farmers, shippers, commercial enterprises, were profitable before the day of the university professor.  Seasons and cycles extend even to our private lives. Scripture tells us 365 times not to fear. Around 2,000 B.C, King Solomon, son of King David, author of The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes, tells us, "A time to plant, a time to harvest; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; etc" (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).  "The fool hath said in his heart, [There is] no God" (Psalm 14:1). Can one with two purkinje cells still functioning in his brain, believe that the creator of the universe did not design everything as perfectly as he designed the homeostasis of the animal body, the clotting of blood in the animal body, photosynthesis in plant life?

"For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven" (Psalm 119:89).

            Cycles determine the urology of man; always expressed in fear; fear of failure, wanting so desperately to succeed, accomplishment; fear of interruption, just simple things, being bothered-upset in scheduling; fear of business or crop failure. This is part of living, hard times-good times, crops drowning or drying up, business destroyed by weather or fire. Fear of germs, almost every breathe of air has probably come from someone else's lungs-bowels. Traveling in a large plane is like living in a Petri-dish. This writer-doctor will never understand why hospitals will allow visitors. If one is sick enough to be in a hospital, less exposure, not more exposure.

            This list of fears and failures can continue, mostly just common sense.  We worship a God who wants to heal us, wants to protect us, has told us that he will give us everything we need. "Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment" (Matthew 6:25)?

            The thought which should control the day of every believer, "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee (Hebrews 13:5)."  Help us to impress on unbelievers the blessing-responsibility of OUR concern for others.