Introductory transcript:
Welcome to our journey through NYC religions television. I’m Tony Carnes your host.
Today we have a special treat. Brian Finnerty, our producer, occasionally joins us on stage. And it is always a fun experience. Today he’s going to be our host.
Brian is a longtime member of Opus Dei. He is the United States communications director. And he is going to interview John Coverdale, the leading historian in the English-speaking world of Opus Dei. I think you’re going to enjoy the program.
Brian Finnerty
My name is Brian Finnerty, I’m here with John Coverdale historian, the author of several books on histories of individual figures within Opus Dei, and the author of a new book on the institution of the state itself, the history of overstay. And so we’re going to take this as an opportunity to take a look at the new book, but also look at some interesting points about the history of Opus Dei.
So John, thank you very much for being with us. Maybe, we might start by going back to the actual moment of the founding of Opus Dei. And I think, look, for one point related to that, which is so striking to me is, for example, if you look at the document by which, , officially, the church recognized obviously, is a personal project, it refers to that moment in which Opus Dei’s founder Josemaría Escrivá saw this by divine inspiration. So, what was that?
John Coverdale
Well, I think, first of all, we need to go back a little bit. So some 10 years earlier, when he was a teenager, he had a sense that God was asking something special of him, but he didn’t know what that was. He decided that whatever it was, it would be better accomplished if he were a priest.
So he entered the seminary and was eventually ordained. And during all those years, he was praying, Lord, that I may see, Lord, let it be whatever this is that you want. And he said that he had what he called Inklings. But somehow the picture didn’t come together,
I kind of like to think of it as the pieces of a mosaic that little by little, he was discovering, but he couldn’t figure out quite how to put them together.
And then, on the second of October 1928, he was making a retreat in Madrid. And he was always very reluctant to talk about any details of that event, that experience, he pretty much limited himself to saying, I saw Opus Dei. And he was very much convinced that that was something from God, that it wasn’t just that he had finally thought up something but rather that God had revealed to him what it was he wanted him to do. And that I think, is a very important point, both in the history of Opus Dei, but also in the life of Opus Dei, that I think the members of Opus Dei, myself included, are convinced that that was true that it isn’t just a nice thing, or a good thing or a good idea that some holy priest had but is literally, as he often stressed, doing something that God specifically wanted to be done.
Brian Finnerty
He was very protective of the idea that there was some charismatic impulse or some idea that had been given him by God and that he was there to try to help to carry it out.
John Coverdale
That is certainly true. Yes, he was very much convinced. And I worked with him fairly closely for a number of years, and he made a very sharp distinction between those things that he thought were part of what God had revealed to him, asked him to carry out, and other aspects of the undertaking that he had worked out.
Brian Finnerty
Can you explain a little bit more about what’s the core content of this message?
John Coverdale
Well, I think the core content and the core of Opus Dei is basically this message, which is that God calls everyone to holiness. That that’s not a prerogative of those who are called to say, become a priest or a nun or live in some special form, but that everyday Christians, ordinary people with their family, their jobs, or their golf game, all those things are called to be holy. That when our Lord, in the Gospel. said be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, he wasn’t talking to a small set of people, he was talking to a big crowd, and he was saying it to farmers and laborers and housewives and all sorts of people. And that that is possible.
