A Dramatic Letter to Opus Dei
- "I know that the moment you are living is one of Gethsemane, of the Passion".
- "We were told [by Paul VI] that 'through a crack the smoke of Satan has entered the temple of God', and we were told that 50 years ago. Today the smoke has turned into fire, storm and darkness".
- "You have suffered and continue to suffer the attacks of the Evil One and his minions."
- "Those who made themselves your enemies did not know you [...] nor did they want to know you, they branded the unknown as 'problematic' and directed their attacks against you".
- "They told you that the tailor-made suit [= the Personal Prelature] you wore was a privilege that was no longer allowed".
- "They have told you that you do not need a bishop to carry out your mission, and they have turned your shepherd into a shepherd, then into a shepherd, and finally into just another sheep".
- "They have not understood the unique vocation of all your children, so old and so new".
Then the author asks some questions:
- "Dear Opus Dei, did you believe everything you were told [by Francis], did you accept it with resignation, did you make it your own, did you even go further and believe that everything God allowed was really His will?".
- "Was it the will of God, who raised Saint Josemaría through the Blessed Virgin Mary to found his Work, that this should happen and that it should happen in this way?"
He confronts Opus Dei with the new reality:
- "Now they have undone, without any possibility of return, the fulfilment of that special intention for which all your children scattered throughout the world have prayed, the path willed by God since the distant year of 1928".
- "They have erased the necessary and definitive figure of Opus Dei to give your children adequate spiritual assistance to fulfil their specific apostolic mission".
- "They have taken away your Shepherd, the one who knows your sheep, who knows what they need and who can give them adequate spiritual assistance".
- "Now your priestly sons are helpless, forced to live in the conflict of obedience to bishops who support en bloc the 'blessing' of sin, while they see their brothers who raise their voices to defend the truth being expelled."
- "Some say that little or nothing has changed, that you don't need this suit to carry out your mission, that you don't need a shepherd to look after your sheep and that your spirituality is something well known. But if nothing or very little had changed, you would only have had to change a few articles, not rewrite all your statutes".
- "We live the Passion of Christ in His Mystical Body. It is not the time to remain in the workshop, trusting that the members of the Sanhedrin and the High Priest will act under God's guidance".
- "It is time to stand at the foot of the Cross and receive insults and annoyances for the love of the Truth, knowing that the crucifiers are many and that the shepherds have betrayed, rejected and forsaken the Lord."
The anonymous author asks Opus Dei to do four things:
- To remember that "unity is only of value if it is based on consecration to the truth".
- To remember that correcting those who err is a work of mercy, and that fraternal correction is all the more necessary the more the truth is contradicted and the higher the position from which error is spread.
- To remember that obedience can never be blind and that we must obey God rather than men.
- To continue proselytising, because all religions do not lead to God, but Christ is the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.
Picture: Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz © Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk, CC BY-NC-ND, #newsCaxetnyope