Chandeliers ( March 2026 )

Chandeliers

Title: Finding Heaven in Traffic and Toddlers

Highlight

Escrivá’s teaching wasn't just a comforting thought for busy people; it was a demanding theological framework. He taught that something divine lay hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each individual to discover it.

Article

Imagine sitting in deadlock traffic. Your knuckles are white on the steering wheel, your blood pressure is rising, and you are already mentally composing the apology email for being late to work again.

If I told you that this was one of those moments where you could make a significant choice – a step towards heaven, or away from it – would you believe it? This is exactly what Saint Josemaría Escrivá taught.

Consider an exhausted evening in a chaotic home with screaming toddlers, toys littered across the floor like landmines. You are dangerously close to just breaking down, and feel a pang of guilt because you haven't set aside a single moment for formal prayer today. You may even be blaming the surrounding discord on your lack of prayer. But Saint Josemaría insists: that chaos itself can be your prayer.

For centuries, common perception was that to become a saint, you needed to withdraw from the world, enter a monastery, or perform extraordinary miracles. St Josemaría Escrivá blew that notion apart. His revolutionary message was that God is not found merely in the incense of a cathedral on Sunday, but amid the dust, noise, and stress of Monday morning.

Sanctifying the Ordinary

Escrivá’s teaching wasn't just a comforting thought for busy people; it was a demanding theological framework. He taught that something divine lay hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each individual to discover it.

The mechanism for this discovery was work. Escrivá argued that any honest human occupation, be it brain surgery, farming, accounting, or sweeping floors, could be sanctified.

How? It was not just about adding a prayer before or after a task. It is about how the task itself is performed. To turn any ordinary work into prayer, Escrivá taught that it must be done with both human perfection and supernatural intent.

You cannot offer God shoddy workmanship. Therefore, the first step to holiness in the workplace is professional competence, honesty, and integrity. A ‘holy’ doctor who misdiagnoses patients, or a ‘pious’ businessman who cuts corners, is a contradiction in terms. By doing our specific duties to the very best of our abilities, out of love for God and a desire to serve our neighbour, work itself becomes an altar.

The Seed of Divine Filiation

What provides the fuel for this kind of sustained, high-quality effort, especially when the work is boring, the boss is ungrateful, or the traffic is jammed? 

It comes from Escrivá's deepest spiritual insight: Divine Filiation.

This is the profound, bone-deep awareness that you are a cherished child of God. For Escrivá, this wasn't just a pleasant theological metaphor to visit occasionally; it was an incessant reminder, the ‘foundation’ of the spiritual life that should govern every waking hour.

When a person truly grasps that their life is held by a loving Father, it changes their perspective on life. A child doesn't fear a loving father; they trust him. When grounded in divine filiation, traffic jams stop being just pointless annoyances and become opportunities for patience sent by Someone who knows exactly what you need to grow. A ruined dinner isn't a disaster, but a chance to offer up a small sacrifice with a smile. The never-fading realisation of a Father’s embrace brings a sense of security and joy that external circumstances cannot shake.

A Precursor to Vatican II

Today, the idea that laypeople – the vast majority of Catholics who are not priests or nuns – are called to sanctity sounds like standard Church teaching. But when Escrivá began preaching this in the 1930s and 40s, it was radical, sometimes viewed with suspicion.

Holiness was largely seen as the exclusive domain of those wearing habits behind cloistered walls. Escrivá was preaching the ‘universal call to holiness’ decades before the Second Vatican Council officially enshrined it as central Church doctrine.

To enshrine this message globally, Escrivá founded Opus Dei (Latin for ‘Work of God’) in 1928. He visualised it not as another religious order withdrawing from the world, but as a mobilised force of ordinary lay people remaining fully immersed in secular society. Opus Dei became the vehicle to provide laypeople with the spiritual formation necessary to turn their professions into paths to God.

The impact of this vision has been profound. Long before Dan Brown wrote The Da Vinci Code and vilified the organisation, Opus Dei was already changing the interior spiritual lives of thousands. The work has continued to spread light in the secular sphere as well. It has inspired countless individuals to integrate their faith and reason (with over 90,000 members in 68 countries), leading to the creation of universities, high-ranked business schools, and vocational training centres in developing nations, all driven by the belief that secular work matters intensely to God.

Biographical Outline

• 1902: Born in Barbastro, Spain. Experienced family financial trouble and the death of three younger sisters.

• 1925: Ordained a Catholic priest. Moved to Madrid to pursue a law doctorate and minister to the poor.

• 1928: On 2 October, experienced the vision of Opus Dei during a retreat.

• 1946: Moved to Rome to seek papal approval for Opus Dei and direct its global expansion.

• 1975: Died suddenly in Rome.

2002: Canonised by Pope John Paul II on October 6. The Pope referred to him as ‘the saint of ordinary life.’