The website has several new features, including an extremely effective search engine, categorization by topic, texts in over 20 languages, a simple, uncluttered design, increased readability, and minimal loading times, even on slow connections.
The Way, St. Josemaria's most popular work, is available on the new website, along with Furrow, The Forge, and compilations of homilies like Friends of God and Christ is Passing By. Other published works of St. Josemaria, such as his letters and In Dialogue with the Lord, will be added to the website little by little. (They are already available in Spanish.)
Additional texts, including some that have never before been published, will be added following a previously developed publication plan for St. Josemaria's body of work. The "Istituto Storico San Josemaría Escrivá" (Historical Institute of St. Josemaria Escriva) is responsible for preparing the texts for publication and releasing critical editions with context and information about the works. As each is published — first in the original language, then translated — and a waiting period has been observed, they will be added to escriva.org for easy universal access, along with subject indices and references to Sacred Scripture.
Four new features
The changes and new features on escriva.org resolve four key issues on the old escrivaworks.org website: languages available, visual accessibility, connection issues, and compatibility with different devices.
Not all of the 142 translations of The Way have been digitalized, but escriva.org already has translations in 24 languages, and more will be added as they become available.
The website's font, background, and colours have been carefully chosen to make it easy and pleasant for users with vision impairment.
Furthermore, the website has been optimized to function seamlessly in zones with limited internet bandwidth. With these changes, loading times have been significantly reduced in most countries, including on older or simpler mobile devices.
How to make the most of escriva.org
Thousands of pages of St. Josemaria's works have been published on this website, offering a wealth of rich content. Users looking for specific quotes or ideas related to particular topics will appreciate the index that sorts all the texts by topic.
The website also has a powerful search tool that makes it easy to locate keywords and pull quotes. It is easier than ever to find what St. Josemaria has to say about the sanctification of work, love for the Pope, and divine filiation.
Biblical references are organized similarly. Besides the topic index, the new website has an index of references to Sacred Scripture, organized by book. Each of these sections contains the verses cited by St. Josemaria, with links to the paragraphs in which they are mentioned. You can search for quotes for a specific work or access all texts that use that particular source from the general index.
These improvements make it much easier to search for St. Josemaria's commentaries on specific Gospel scenes, like the Annunciation, the story of the rich young man, or the miraculous catch of fish. You can also find passages or points in which he discusses spiritual childhood, mortification, or joy. When a particular work is not yet available in one language, the website notes which other languages it can be found in.
A resource for Christian life
St. Josemaria's writings are a great resource for personal prayer, whether in the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, or meditation on the wide range of topics he explores in his homilies. Anyone who has read the homilies collected in Christ is Passing By, Friends of God, or In Love with the Church can attest to the way they help experience what he describes in point 754 of The Forge:
When you open the Holy Gospel, think that what is written there — the words and deeds of Christ — is something that you should not only know, but live. Everything, every point that is told there, has been gathered, detail by detail, for you to make it come alive in the individual circumstances of your life.
—God has called us Catholics to follow him closely. In that holy Writing you will find the Life of Jesus, but you should also find your own life.
You too, like the Apostle, will learn to ask, full of love, “Lord, what would you have me do?…” And in your soul you will hear the conclusive answer, “The Will of God!”
Take up the Gospel every day, then, and read it and live it as a definite rule. This is what the saints have done.
The gradual publication of new collections of homilies, meditations, and letters allow us to explore the treasure of St. Josemaria's message more deeply. Older texts, such as the book Conversations with Monsignor Escriva de Balaguer, which collects interviews with the founder of Opus Dei and includes the iconic homily "Passionately Loving the World," delivered on the campus of the University of Navarre, reveal the radical freshness of his thought as noted by journalists from Le Figaro, The New York Times, Time, L'Osservatore della Domenica, Telva, Gaceta Universitaria, and Palabra.
The founder of Opus Dei adjusts his style according to each kind of text —academic speeches, points for meditation, homilies, interviews... — but a common thread runs through them all in his interest to help the reader or listener, conveying a message that shines through the rhetoric, and ensuring that the light falls on the content rather than the form: "I assure you, my sons and daughters, that when a Christian carries out with love the most insignificant everyday action, that action overflows with the transcendence of God. That is why I have told you repeatedly, and hammered away once and again on the idea that the Christian vocation consists of making heroic verse out of the prose of each day. Heaven and earth seem to merge, my sons and daughters, on the horizon. But where they really meet is in your hearts, when you sanctify your everyday lives" (Conversations, no. 116).