Opus Dei

Our prayer involves every aspect of our life. The Catechism distinguishes between vocal prayer, meditation and contemplative prayer. All three have a fundamental feature in common: the recollection of the heart. Prayer is not optional for the spiritual life, but rather a vital necessity.

The Holy Mass makes present, in the Church’s daily liturgical life, the one sacrifice of our redemption. The Mass is a true and proper sacrifice because it makes sacramentally present the one, perfect and definitive sacrifice of the Cross. The faithful can and should participate in the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice. The desire to receive Holy Communion should always be present in Christians: what food produces in the body for the good of physical life, the Eucharist produces in the soul.

With the prayer of the Our Father, Jesus wants to make his disciples aware of their condition as children of God. An important consequence of the sense of our divine filiation is filial trust and abandonment in God’s hands. The Our Father is the model of all prayer: not only do we ask for everything we can rightly desire, but also according to the order in which it should be desired.

All men and women are called to participate in God’s creative power by perfecting the world through their work. They should also cease working on the seventh day, to dedicate it to divine worship and rest. Sunday is sanctified primarily by participating in Holy Mass. The Church establishes this obligation so that her children do not lack the essential nourishment they need to live as children of God.

The sacraments are efficacious signs of grace. Sanctifying grace is a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul to make it capable of living with God. The seven sacraments correspond to all the stages and important moments of each Christian’s life: the sacraments give birth and increase, healing and mission to the Christian's life of faith. They form an ordered whole, in which the Eucharist is at the centre, since it contains the Author of the sacraments.

The resurrected body will be real and material, but not earthly and mortal. The enigma of death can only be understood in the light of Christ’s resurrection and our own resurrection in Him. Eternal life is what gives ultimate and permanent meaning to human life, to ethical commitment, to generous dedication, to self-sacrificing service, to the effort to communicate Christ’s doctrine and love to all souls.

The Church is inseparably both human and divine. It lives and acts in the world, but its goal and strength are not here on earth but in heaven. The Church seeks only the salvation of mankind, but she is also concerned with temporal affairs. Each Christian faithful participates in the mission of the Church according to his or her condition and vocation, and the gifts received.

The Church is a structured society where some have the mission to guide others. The assistance of the Holy Spirit to the whole Church so that it may not err in believing is also given to the magisterium so that it may faithfully and authentically teach the Word of God. The Church has always called only baptised men to the order of the priesthood; she has felt bound by the will of Christ, who chose only men as Apostles.

Throughout his life, Christ made clear what his Church would be like. The Church is the community of all those who have received the regenerating grace of the Spirit by which they become children of God. All the baptised share in the common priesthood; they are called to bring men and women into a relationship with God. The ecumenical movement is an ecclesial goal that seeks visible unity among Christians in the one Church founded by Christ.

The Holy Spirit acts in the Church through the sacraments. We often say that the Holy Spirit is like the soul of the Church because He performs in it some of the functions that the soul performs in the body. He vivifies it, impels it to carry out its mission, unifies it in love. He is the interior teacher who speaks in our heart, who reveals to us the mysteries of God, who helps us discern what is pleasing to God.