"In the Light of the Gospel"

A recent book by the Prelate of Opus Dei aims "to help people to pray and invite them to enter into more direct contact with Jesus Christ, who is the light of our lives."

From the Introduction:

“No man ever spoke like this man!” (Jn 7:46).

Today, in very different parts of the world, millions of people are meditating on, listening to, reading and praying about the Gospel. Jesus’ life and preaching were the start of a conversation with the women and men of all times. “Jesus is ready to speak to everyone. And his words heal, console, and enlighten.”[1]

This book is a collection of short pieces starting off from, and sometimes dialoguing with, a verse from the New Testament, almost always the Gospels.

In the Light of the Gospel originated in some of the preaching notes I made from 1977 onwards. As such, the pieces are neither exhaustive nor exegetical. Now, at the publisher’s request, I have put them into publishable shape, but they still have the schematic style of the original notes. The current book also includes other more recent notes used for various letters and pastoral messages.[2]

The purpose of this book, like the notes it originated from, is to help people to pray and invite them to enter into more direct contact with Jesus Christ, who is the light of our lives, and who arouses different aspirations in each person at different times.

In the Gospel, Word and Truth come together and offer a window onto heaven. “The Word was with God" (Jn 1:1), and when the fullness of time came, the Word became man and passed on to us the truth about God and the world. God revealed himself to us as Love. In direct contact with the Gospel we find Christ in his sacred humanity, and if we let him, he dwells in the center of our lives.

Getting to Jesus is a personal experience, but not a solitary one. Together with Our Lord, we get acquainted with the people who met him during his life here on earth and who were transformed by their relationship with him. As we come closer to Christ, we also meet our neighbors, living with us in this present world, the sisters and brothers whom Jesus Christ seeks out in love; he talks to everyone.

May this book renew our desire to meditate on the Gospel with a contemplative, listening attitude. From time to time we will recognize the Teacher’s voice more clearly, maybe asking us for a response. Then, with God’s help, we may be able to say to him, like Our Lady, “let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38).

Fernando Ocáriz

Rome, May 31, 2020

during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Buy In the Light of the Gospel from Scepter

[1] St. Josemaria, Letter dated 24 October 1965, 10.

[2] Some notes from 1992 were afterwards published, with slight modifications, in the booklet God as Father in the Message of Blessed Josemaria Escriva, Scepter, Princeton, NJ, 1994.