Memorial of St. Josemaría Escrivá 2024

 
Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles
 
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angeles
June 22, 2024

My brothers and sisters in Christ,¹
 
It is always a joy and a special grace for me to gather for the celebration for the Mass in honor of St. Josemaría Escrivá.
 
As we know, the spirituality of St. Josemaría is about the sanctification of ordinary life. You probably remember how St. John Paul II called him the “saint of ordinary life.”
 
And recently I was reading about an event in his life that reminded me about it.
 
It was, I think, in June 1939, after the civil war in Spain. St. Josemaría was in Burjassot, a city a few miles north of Valencia.
 
He was on a campus that had been occupied by the anticlerical republican army during the war. And they had left behind a large banner with the words, in Spanish: ¡Cada caminante siga su camino! 
 
They were the words of a popular leftist poet called Antonio Machado. And they translate: “Let each wayfarer follow his way.”
 
So some of the ones that were with St. Josemaría wanted to tear the banner down because it was associated with the party that was killing priests and nuns during the war.
 
St. Josemaría told them not to do it. Then he just a few days after that, he was preaching a retreat in which he used those words to talk about how all of us, we must follow the path that God sets before us.²

As we know, St. Josemaría was always looking for new opportunities to explain the Gospel, and new ways to bring people to Jesus. In a sense, he was like St. Paul, I was thinking. St. Paul said, “I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.”³
 
Also this story in the life of St. Josemaría always reminds me of St. Paul going to Athens and using quotes from the Greek poets in his preaching to the philosophers and cultural leaders there.⁴
 
So why was St. Josemaría attracted to those words? Because St. Josemaría understood that in our lives we are all on a journey. Each of us is a traveler walking the path that Jesus has set before us; he is the way that we are called to follow.
 
We are here today, my dear brothers and sisters, because we are on a path. Jesus has entered into our lives, just as he entered into the lives of those fishermen in today’s Gospel.
 
He does not come with a host of angels, or loud trumpets and shouting. As we heard, in today’s Gospel, Jesus encounters these fishermen quietly, in the course of their daily work.
 
When the disciples met Jesus it was just another day. They were done fishing and were back onshore washing out their nets. That’s when Jesus approaches and asks Simon-Peter to take him out in his boat.
 
My brothers and sisters, this is how Jesus works. He comes in the midst of our ordinary routine.
 
Like those first disciples, we don’t look much different from the people around us.⁵

We work, we go to school, have families, raise children; we speak the same language, like the same foods as everybody else. And we can also say that sometimes we root for the same sports teams, even if they are the Lakers or the Clippers or any other team.
 
But even as we look like our neighbors, though we share in their occupations, we have to always remember that we have been changed by baptism! We have a mission now, we have a divine vocation!
 
Jesus says to those fishermen today: “From now on you will be catching men and women.”
 
He speaks these same words to each one of us. We make our way through the world living and working alongside others, but we are apostles now.
 
In our work, in our homes, in school, no matter where we find ourselves, we are walking in Jesus’ footsteps; we follow his path. With him, we go out to seek and to save lost.⁶

That’s our Christian vocation and that’s especially the vocation to follow in the example of St. Josemaría Escrivá.
 
Jesus met people where they were at. He visits Zacchaeus in his house, he meets the woman at the well where she’s come to draw water.
 
He taught at dinner tables, on mountainsides, while walking through a field.
 
He spoke about ordinary realities: looking for a lost coin or a lost sheep. He talked about planting seeds and vineyards, about people looking for work in the heat of the day.⁷
 
St. Josemaría’s blessing was to recognize that Jesus was showing us the path for our own lives, that our holiness is found in the middle of the world.
 
He taught us that we are children of God, called to blaze a trail with our lives, to spread the love of Jesus wherever we go. He said, St, Josemaría: “Much depends on us. If we respond, many people will remain in darkness no longer, but will walk instead along paths that lead to eternal life."⁸

It is, indeed, a beautiful vocation, a beautiful call to reach out to the people around us and remind them that we all are children of God and we are called to holiness in our daily life.
 
So today let us especially ask St. Josemaría to intercede for us and to pray for us.
 
And let us ask Holy Mary, Mother of Fair Love, to help us to walk more closely along the path that her Son sets before us. That by our everyday lives, we might lead many others to love Jesus and to walk with him.