Footprints in the Snow: A Pictorial Biography of the Founder of Opus Dei, Josemaria Escriva

by dennis-m-helming

Book by Dennis M. Helming

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Tim Pendry · Rating 2 out of 5]

'Footprints in the Snow' is a hagiographical account of the life of Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, the Catholic lay order that came out of the Hispanic tradition. It is short in length, positioned as a pictorial biography and was designed very much for the faithful.

Escriva is another of those influential mid-century figures who are generally pigeon-holed as having links to interwar fascism (Heidegger is another) but such an attitude is childish. That was then and this is now and it would be logical for a priest to be sympathetic to the Right in the Spain of the 1930s.

The Spanish Civil War was, like all such wars, a vicious affair. It is an inconvenient truth that the Left engaged in violent anticlerical action and was not averse to murdering in cold blood priests and nuns much as the Right similarly murdered trades unionists and left wing activists.

What is perhaps more interesting is just how dull the story becomes once the Civil War is out of the way. Escriva might be classed as a religious entrepreneur who became a top corporate executive managing a very large 'spiritual' empire with its own vanity projects.

The Church is an amazing creation. Deeply flawed perhaps but complex and, although deeply conservative, quite capable of allowing such entrepreneurs as Escriva with a bright new spiritual idea to emerge and flourish - after all, St. Francis of Assisi and St. Ignatius Loyola were of that stamp.

Opus Dei is an initiatory corporation without democracy and a level of common purpose that most CEOS would kill for. It helps of course that it looks to 'God' and not quarterly figures, has an ancient rule book and the patronage of God's CEO on earth, the Pope.

Personally I am an atheist existentialist but I come from a Catholic background. I understand its language and values (even if my background was the very different, more 'Jesuitical', Irish tradition). The tradition I grew up would have regarded Escriva as on the edge of 'Protestant'.

The ins and outs of Catholic theology and the politics of Opus Dei are not covered in this book nor should one expect to them to be. It is a hagiography, a life of a saint before he was canonised (this happened in 2002 in a rather fast-tracked manner).

My experience of Opus Dei tells me that it has qualities both sinister and admirable (not unlike the Jesuits or the Church's bete noire, the Communist Party). Its deeply conservative communitarianism can, of course, be oppressive to any free spirit wanting to break free of the stranglehold of faith.

On the other hand, it is a community that supports its members (albeit in ways that individualistic liberals may loathe). That means taking care of the elderly and sick and offering (if you accept its faith assumptions) meaning and comfort in a very dark world.

At one end of the spectrum, we have the dark conspiracy literature about the order. At the other, hagiography (this one has a typically pious introduction by Malcolm Muggeridge) but it is probable that, if you strip away the prejudice, the reality comes somewhere in the middle of the two.

Escriva in this context is a 'type'. A man determined on 'meaning' with a persistent idee fixe (in his case, that the Church would be strengthened by bringing ordinary lay people into a life of piety and not separating Church and community) and with the drive to build an empire out of the idea.

Personally, I would be as miserable as sin (so to speak) in an Opus Dei society. Its faith model leaches religion out of its traditional containment within the Church and enters into every facet of the life of the believer in a form of faith-based totalitarianism that must be hell for the trapped free-thinker.

But it has its logic and it is not deliberately cruel. For many people who need faith, tradition and authority, because that is how their brains are wired up, it will give greater comfort than the disorder of the modern world even if the idea of it ruling the world would fill me with horror.

If the Church appears to be less important than at any time in its history, that is only because journalists do not write about it very much. In fact, for good or ill, it is the baseline of experience for a massive proportion of our species so it is as well to understand it if one needs to be protected from it.

[Davis Haguma]

OK

[Nasbly Kalinina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer y Albás nació el 2 de octubre de 1928 en Barbastro, España.

Cuando era niño cayó gravemente enfermo, y los médicos pronosticaron que moriría por lo que su madre le prometió a la Virgen que, si lo curaba, le llevarían en peregrinación al Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Torreciudad. En aquel tiempo la ermita sólo era accesible a pie o a lomos de mulas. El camino era empinado, estrecho y peligroso.

Josemaría estaba por cumplir dieciseis años cuando una intensa nevada cubrió los tejados y las calles de la ciudad de Logroño, donde los Escrivá vivían. Al levantarse por la mañana, muy temprano, vio unas huellas de un carmelita descalzo. Esa imagen se quedaría grabada en su corazón pues si aquel carmelita era capaz de sacrificarse por amor a Dios, ¿qué debía hacer él?.

10 años más tardes, el 2 de octubre de 1928, vio lo que más adelante se llamaría Opus Dei, por medio del cual enseñaría que cualquier persona, de cualquier profesión y condición social, podía y debía aspirar a la plenitud de la vida cristiana, en y a través de sus ocupaciones ordinarias.

Monseñor Escrivá de Balaguer muere al mediodía del 26 de junio de 1975. El 17 de mayo de 1992 recibe el título de Beato y finalmente el 6 de octubre de 2002 se convierte en Santo, canonizado por su Santidad Juan Pablo II.

Este es un libro que vale la pena leer y disfrutar con toda la familia porque nos acerca a la vida de un hombre que fue un ejemplo de amor a Dios.