The way we rise in the morning and settle down at night says a great deal about who we are. These first and last gestures of the day reveal, almost without our meaning them to, what we carry in our hearts. There our deepest desires surface, our most deeply rooted affections, the things we consider worthy of our immediate attention. A mother or father, before going to sleep, will make sure their newborn child is settled; and the moment they wake, they go straight back to the crib. What we do as we go to bed and as we wake, moreover, not only reveals what we love, but also symbolically foreshadows our destiny. Sleep has always been a figure of death, and the opening of our eyes each morning, of birth.
The Gospel shows us how the Lord lived these moments of the day. He would slip away quietly at sunrise to be alone with his Father (cf. Mk 1:35); and we also see Him absorbed in prayer on the night that opens onto his Passion (cf. Mk 14:32). From the earliest centuries, the Church has sought to imitate Jesus: Christians have tried to pray at daybreak, as the sun sets, and even in the depths of the night.
In Opus Dei, too, there is the custom of offering one's work to God the moment one gets up, and of praying three Hail Marys before going to bed. This latter practice, which has its roots in an ancient Christian tradition, took on its own particular form in the history of the Work at one very specific moment.
It happened during the Spanish Civil War, at the premises of the Honduran Consulate. Nearly a hundred people were living together in a house of just a few square metres, among them St Josemaría, his brother Santiago, and four members of Opus Dei. The days went by slowly, with no particular task to fill the hours, but with a constant sense of hunger. In these circumstances, our Father preached to his spiritual children to help nourish their life of prayer. In one of these meditations, he put this to them:
"Remember that in the Work we have three great loves: that of Christ, that of his Mother, and that of the Pope. I would like you, from now on, on the occasion of this talk, to take up a custom — it will be one of our customs — (...). The custom will be this: to pray three Hail Marys to Our Lady every day, kneeling and with your arms outstretched in the form of a cross, whenever possible, so that she may grant the gift of purity to everyone in the Work."[1]
Later, in the circular letter he wrote from Burgos to all the members of the Work in January 1938, St Josemaría refers to this practice as a concrete way of living the communion of saints, watching over one another:
"Some time ago, in the midst of the Communist nightmare, we introduced the custom of praying, at night, immediately before going to bed, the three Hail Marys of purity, asking the Most Blessed Virgin to keep us clean in soul and body. –Whenever you can, say these three Hail Marys kneeling and with your arms outstretched in the form of a cross."[2]
From then on, this prayer became one more element shaping the ordinary day of a person in Opus Dei.
Placing our sleep under Mary's protection
When we turn to Mary in the most familiar of prayers, we ask her to pray for us "now and at the hour of our death." It is a petition that embraces our whole existence: the concrete present – with its struggles and frailties – and the moment of our final passing. Bound up with that final hour are promises as consoling as those attached to the scapular of Carmel.
It is understandable, then, that Christians should also turn to Mary as night falls. Each day that ends evokes, on a small scale, the end of life; and rest, an image of death, thus becomes an occasion for trusting abandonment. The whole Church lives out this gesture daily: the liturgy of the hours concludes with a Marian antiphon at the end of Compline,[3] placing our sleep under Mary's protection in this way.
For Christians, the Virgin is the morning star, heralding the dawn, and also the star of the sea, guiding and sustaining us in the midst of darkness. St. Bernard put it this way: "O you who feel yourself far from firm ground, tossed about by the waves of this world, amid storms and tempests, if you do not want to be shipwrecked, do not turn your eyes away from the light of this Star: call upon Mary!" And he adds: "In danger, in distress, in doubt, think of Mary, call upon Mary. If you follow her, you will not stray. If you pray to her, you will not despair. If you think of her, you will not err. If she holds you, you will not fall. If she protects you, you need not fear. If she is your guide, you will not tire. If she is gracious to you, you will surely reach your destination."[4]
It is significant that it was precisely amid the hardships of wartime that the custom of the night-time three Hail Marys took hold in the Work. It was a concrete expression of confidence in Mary's sure help in every setback, great or small. In the same talk in which he introduced this devotion, St. Josemaría explained: "Abandon yourselves, then, more and more into the hands of our holy Mother Mary; trust more and more in her help. Resolve to turn to her, not only in the great dangers of the spiritual life, but in the everyday struggles with our enemy. I know that, with this resolution, even if in the moment of trial you forget to ask for her help, you will obtain it all the same."[5]
Recourse to Mary was a constant throughout the life of the founder of Opus Dei, as it has been in the lives of those who have followed the same path. Turning to her before we go to sleep can be a way of rediscovering her closeness, and of reminding ourselves that our life is a gift we have received. We close our eyes knowing we need her help, and we can do so with words such as these:
"We are but a poor thing, Lord, yet we love you dearly, and we long to love you much more, for we are your children. We count on all your power, and on all our own wretchedness. Recognising our wretchedness, we will go, like little children, into the arms of our Mother, into the lap of the Mother of God, who is our Mother too, and into the heart of Christ Jesus. We will receive all the strength, all the power, all the daring, all the generosity, all the love that God our Lord holds in store for his faithful creatures. And we will be secure, we will be effective and joyful, and we will have fulfilled – with that divine strength – the holy will of God, with the help of holy Mary."[6]
A heart made one
The context of war makes understandable the concern for those who belonged to the Work, and in particular for the various ways in which their resolve to live the Christian virtue of chastity might be tempted. And it is true that the hedonism that has since spread, and the sexualisation that has permeated our culture in recent decades, have not exactly created a favourable climate either.
Among the various means that foster this virtue, prayer holds a place of privilege. The words of the Hail Mary, echoing as they do the greeting of the archangel Gabriel, set before us the scene of the Annunciation. Mary hears the divine message and asks, simply: "How can this be, since I know not man?" (Lk 1:34). So convinced was she that the gift of her virginity had pleased God that she could not understand how anything else could now be asked of her. "Only when St. Gabriel answers her that it will not come about through man, but through an extraordinary wonder, and that her virginity and her divine motherhood will go together; only then does our Mother, the Queen of purity, she who will always watch over the hearts of my children and my own poor heart – only then does she utter her fiat. My son, consider how utterly pure holy Mary is."[7]
Each night, before the day comes to an end, this custom leads us to ask Mary for purity of heart, the purity that makes us blessed and able to see God (cf. Mt 5:8). What does this purity consist of? It could be summed up as wanting one thing alone, living with a heart made one. Several Gospel scenes highlight the importance of this inner unity. The Lord says to the rich young man: "You lack one thing: go, sell what you have, and give it to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me" (Mk 10:21). Jesus asks of him precisely what occupied his heart. And He warns his disciples: "He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…" (Mt 10:37-38).
Having a clean heart means having no love within it greater than our love for God. Or, better, having no love within it that stands as an obstacle to our love for God. For it is that love – when the Lord truly occupies the centre of the soul – which gives unity to all the desires of the heart, purifying and ordering them; and it thus becomes a kind of radiating centre from which we learn to love everything else rightly.
This purification points to a battle that is fought not outside us, but within each person. To see God – that is, to discern his will and recognise his presence in the sacraments and in others, especially in those who need it most[8] – we must free our hearts from the deceptions and attachments that lead us to desire what, deep down, we do not really want. "This inner purification implies recognition of the part of the heart that is under the influence of evil (…) in order to learn the art of always allowing ourselves to be trained and guided by the Holy Spirit. The journey from a sick heart, from a sinful heart, from a heart that cannot see things well because it is in sin, to the fullness of the light of the heart, is the work of the Holy Spirit. He is the one who guides us to take this journey. And so, through this journey of the heart, we come to 'see God.'"[9]
Contemporary life, marked by an intense pace and constant dispersal, adds a further difficulty. Commitments, projects and setbacks pile up within us. We feel a weariness that sometimes robs us of our serenity: we have run after what is urgent, but neglected what is important. It is then that we realise true peace is not found in a multiplication of stimuli, nor in chasing after the goods of this world, but in the love of God. That is "the secret of the movement of the human heart: returning to the source of its being, delighting in the joy that never fails, that never disappoints. No one can live without a meaning that goes beyond the contingent, beyond what passes away. The human heart cannot live without hope, without knowing that it is made for fullness, not for want."[10]
With the custom of the three Hail Marys, we bring the day to a close by deliberately turning our heart back to its centre. At a moment of particular tiredness, when we carry the weight of the whole day upon us and our heart has perhaps scattered itself among lesser things, we tell Jesus and his Mother plainly what we truly want. Before closing our eyes, when there are no more tasks to do or words to say, we remember the source of our being and the joy that does not disappoint. And this gesture has a singular value precisely because it comes last: like a silent summary of the day, it declares where we wish our life to tend in the end.
Mary is Mother of Fair Love because she knew how to want one thing alone, because she lived every moment oriented towards pleasing God. She can help us too, today, in those final moments of the day, to unify our interior life and to guard that clean desire which gives unity and meaning to our whole life.
With arms outstretched in the form of a cross
In the circular letter mentioned above, St. Josemaría specified how his spiritual children would live out this custom: "Whenever you can, say these three Hail Marys kneeling and with your arms outstretched in the form of a cross." This is no minor detail, for the posture in which we pray is itself a form of prayer. The body can express respect, attentiveness, adoration, recollection, supplication. Through it, the whole person is placed before God.
Moses had prayed to the Lord with his arms outstretched in the form of a cross when the people of Israel fought against the Amalekites: "Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed. But Moses' hands grew weary; so they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat upon it, while Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the going down of the sun" (Ex 17:11-12).
The early Christians saw in Moses' posture a figure of Christ's self-offering to the Father on the Cross. Moses intercedes for the people; Jesus offers his life as the sole mediator between God and mankind. To pray with our arms outstretched in the form of a cross is, then, a way of uniting ourselves to Christ's prayer, of joining ourselves to his intercession, and of renewing the offering of our own life, asking Him for the grace of a pure heart. "It seems incredible, but that is how it is: God needs the raised hands of his servant! Moses' raised arms are reminiscent of the arms of Jesus on the Cross: the outspread, nailed arms with which the Redeemer won the crucial battle against the infernal enemy. His fight, his arms raised to the Father and wide open for the world, ask for other arms, other hearts that continue to offer themselves with his same love until the end of the world."[11]
At the same time, in recalling Moses' prayer, this gesture shows that our petition extends to the whole People of God, the Church. We do not ask only for our own purity, but for everyone's. In this way we live out a particular communion of saints, and feel united to all those throughout the world who follow Jesus' call and likewise strive to guard a pure heart wholly oriented towards God. It is a concrete way of living compassion and intercession, experiencing that "anxiety for all the churches" of which St. Paul spoke: "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to fall, and I am not indignant?" (2 Cor 11:28-29).
There was no pain, illness or weakness that the Apostle did not feel as his own. In the same way, through this custom we make our own the struggle of our brothers and sisters the world over to live purity; and they, in turn, sustain us in ours. We are thus reminded that, amid whatever trials may come, we are not alone. A single card cannot stand on its own; but propped one against another, "they can form a card-castle that stands firm. God counts on our weaknesses, on our own frailty and that of others; but he also counts on the strength of us all, if charity unites us."[12]
Both the cross of Christ and the posture of Moses show us that the road will not be easy. The language of struggle, even of warfare, has often been used to describe this aspect of the Christian life. Yet it is a battle of a singular kind: "We are fighting a most beautiful war of love and peace: in hoc pulcherrimo caritatis bello! We try to bring Christ's charity to everyone, without any exceptions based on language, nation, or walk of life."[13]
Praying the three Hail Marys at night, with our arms outstretched in the form of a cross, places us within that most beautiful war of love in which the Lord has wanted to count on us. In this way we ask for our own purity of heart, but also for that of all those who follow God's call to set the world ablaze with the fire of his love (cf. Lk 12:49). And the only way to spread that fire is to be aflame with it ourselves, with the resolve of one who wants "one thing alone": to be filled with Love so as to become the presence and communication of that same Love.
[1]. St. Josemaría, Growing on the Inside, no. 141.
[2]. The full text of the letter can be found in A. Méndiz, "Tres cartas circulares del fundador del Opus Dei (Burgos, 1938-1939)," Studia et Documenta 9 (2015), pg. 368-373.
[3]. Compline is the final prayer of the liturgy of the hours, prayed before the night's rest, through which the Church places the day that is ending in God's hands.
[4]. St. Bernard, Homilia super Missus est, II, 17.
[5]. Growing on the Inside, no. 141.
[6]. In Dialogue with the Lord, no. 28.
[7]. St. Josemaría, Meditation, 15 April 1954.
[8]. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2519.
[9]. Francis, General Audience, 1 April 2020.
[10]. Leo XIV, General Audience, 17 December 2025.
[11]. Benedict XVI, Homily, 21 October 2007.
[12]. Letter 2, no. 56.
[13]. St Josemaría, Notes taken from a meditation, 29 February 1964; quoted in While He Spoke to Us on the Way, pg. 243.