HomeNewsUniversity of Toronto Congress about Saint Josemaría
News

University of Toronto Congress about Saint Josemaría

December 10, 2004

Tags: Joy, Citizenship, Peace, Solidarity
Inspired by Saint Josemaría’s message, a number of different people who are working to improve the human and spiritual conditions of the poor met for the second year running for a conference called “Sowers of Peace and Joy” held at Brennan Hall, University of Toronto, Canada. Contributors this year came from Kenya, Congo, Peru and the Philippines, and their papers centred on some of the key challenges they are facing in their countries, notably poverty, AIDS, epidemics and education. The founder of Opus Dei often repeated what he wrote in Christ is Passing By: “we Christians should go out into the world to be sowers of peace and joy through everything we say and do.” In an article published in the daily university newspaper The Mike, Ryan Gonzales highlights the testimony presented by Dr Margaret Ogola from Kenya, on the way Saint Josemaría’s message has helped her in her work.

The Virtues of Healing
“Children…the sick…as you write these words don’t you feel tempted to write them with capitals? The reason is that in little children and in the sick, a soul in love sees Him.”
-St. Josemaría Escrivá

Dr. Margaret Ogola is a pediatrician and the medical director of the Cottolengo Hospice for Children Living with AIDS in Nairobi, Kenya. On October 15, 2004, she delivered a talk entitled “Seeing Christ in Children and the Sick” at the Sam Sorbara Auditorium of St. Michael’s College. It was about how the message of St. Josemaría, the founder of Opus Dei, transformed her professional vocation as a doctor treating children whose immune systems have been ravaged by the HIV virus. Most of Dr. Ogola’s patients are also orphans because their parents have previously succumbed to AIDS. Pervasive poverty, the lack of retro-viral drugs, and inadequate medical facilities make it more challenging to sustain their already fragile health. She begins by narrating some poignant episodes about the struggles faced by her patients and their families. Perhaps the most shocking story she narrated was about a mother of nine children, seven of whom have already died from AIDS. Of the two living one is infected. She also has four grand-children who also suffer from the disease. What is inspiring about this woman, Dr. Ogola tells us, is her cheerfulness, her self-forgetfulness and her dedication to keep her remaining loved ones alive in the midst of her destitution.

Dr. Ogola encounters death frequently in her work. Approached from a merely human perspective, what could be a drearier job than watching many of your patients die every day, afflicted by a disease you cannot cure? St. Josemaría’s message has given Dr Ogola the means to view her profession from a supernatural perspective. St. Josemaría believed that Christian laypersons living in the midst of the world, whether they are doctors, carpenters, or students, are called by Christ to become holy through the sanctification of their ordinary work. This means doing one’s work well and as perfectly as possible, taking care of the little details, offering it up as a prayer to God. This means living perpetually in the presence of God, seeing the divine significance of the ordinary events that comprise most of our day and being in continuous conversation through prayer with our Lord. This means becoming alter Christus, other Christs, through the practice of the human and supernatural virtues, the struggle to overcome our personal defects, and the apostolate of friendship, spreading the warmth of Christ’s love to others through our deeds and our words. This means seeing Him in others, treating them with respect, loving and serving them with the heart of Christ. St. Josemaría’s teachings concerning the sanctification of work are convictions held by those who follow the spirit of Opus Dei, which means “the Work of God”.

Dr. Ogola tells us that sanctifying her work enables her to see the merciful providence of God, the incomparable beauty of the gift of life, and her true place in the order of things. She says that she is at her most prayerful when called to the side of a seriously ill patient. She gets the keen eye, the steady hand, and the presence of mind to act quickly and decisively through her prayer. She is convinced that even holding the hand of a dying child with simple kindness has a transcendental meaning. After all, God is present at the threshold between life and death, waiting to embrace this child’s soul.

She now sees sickness as a blessing from God. She believes that for most of us, we are most human when we are sick: the mask slips, hatred slackens and we get as close to innocence as we ever can. She believes that sickness is an opportunity to grow in fortitude, and a space in time for true repentance and the grace of final perseverance. Finally, she says that sickness is an arrangement of divine providence that ensures that we have the strength we need to cross the valley of the shadow of death with confidence in God. It is no doubt why Dr. Ogola never gives up on her patients, using every trick in the book to keep them alive, even though they have only a little time to live. St. Josemaría’s message of sanctifying one’s work has given her the means to convert her ordinary medical occupation into a supernatural Christian vocation.