Opus Dei

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 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 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.

Jesus freely accepted the physical and moral sufferings imposed by the injustice of sinners. The Cross of Christ is, above all, the manifestation of the generous love of the Trinity for mankind, a love that saves us. The mystery of the Cross, present in the sacraments, leads us to a new life. Through the resurrection of Jesus, God inaugurated a new life, the life of the world to come, and made it available to mankind.

Jesus is the only Son of God who became man for our salvation. He is perfect God and perfect man. He took on our material and bodily condition, subject to many needs, in order to save us from our sins. Mary is truly the Mother of God because the One she conceived as man, through the work of the Holy Spirit, is the eternal Son of the Father.

The loss of the sense of sin has led to the loss of the awareness of the need for salvation, and hence to the forgetfulness of God through indifference. But Christ’s triumph on the Cross is an expression of his mercy towards us, an assurance that “love is stronger than sin.” Mercy is the fundamental law that should guide the heart of every person when looking at a brother or sister encountered on life’s journey.

Every human being is a person from the very fact of being human. The equality of persons must be expressed in respect for each individual and for groups. Discrimination, racism or xenophobia are unjust. Marriage is “conjugality,” it is a bond of “co-possession.” The Church requires that people with homosexual tendencies be welcomed with respect, compassion and refinement.

God has given human beings dominion over the world and has commanded them to exercise this authority. Care for the environment is a moral duty for each individual and for all humanity. Ecology is one of the areas in which dialogue between Christians and the followers of other religions is particularly important, so as to bring about mutual cooperation.

In an encounter with people in Chicago in 1988, Blessed Alvaro del Portillo spoke about the founding of Opus Dei on October 2, 1928.

The Church sees freedom as an eminent sign of the divine image in man. Our participation in God’s beatitude is such a great good and so desired by divine Love that God has willed to take the risk of human freedom. In the moral sense, freedom is not so much a natural property of the person as a conquest, the result of education, of the moral virtues possessed and of God’s grace.