I remember, as if it were yesterday, waking up one winter morning to a cry that I didn’t know where it came from and that I only heard inside me: “The harvest is plentiful, the laborers are few…” (Mt 9:37).

It was a light that erased all shadows of doubt and that still resonates today as a primary call, an impulse that spans decades and remains intact.

I also vividly remember my first communion in a small chapel: just my mother, my brother, and me. The memento I still have bears the date June 5, 1958. That day was a gift of undeserved love, the certainty that life opens with a seal of belonging.

As a child, I read the Gospel at night with a flashlight under the sheets, because nighttime was for sleeping, not for reading. I underlined it in color. Those pages became a secret and a refuge, like a hidden treasure that no one else knew about. It was my secret, the first seed of a friendship that has never failed me.

In 1972, I met Saint Josemaría at Tajamar School in Madrid. It wasn’t a single light, but a horizon of endless dawns. I always explain it with an image: like a woman looking for the right dress for a party. Suddenly, a flash of light appeared: a shop window with a dressed mannequin. And I was that mannequin that came to life, with a dress, shoes, and purse, transformed into the belle of the party.
It was my outfit: destiny, path, and tools for stumbling blocks. It was the Love that awaited me around every corner. I said “yes” without hesitation to love and pain, to the task of reaping the harvest each day, lending a shoulder to the wheel without excuses or will-o’-the-wisps, trusting in the One who had sought me out since the beginning of time.

Saint Josemaría was a hurricane that scorched hearts, and mine was prepared by so many hours at the foot of the cross, when I would escape to accompany him at university: “I feel your gaze fixed on the depths of my hard soul; its heat burns my insides, like fire, pure wax.” I told him, fixing my gaze on his.

I requested admission to Opus Dei on December 14, 1972, and, by God’s mercy, I have never looked back. That day marked a before and after. I learned that fidelity is not rigidity, but flexibility, allowing oneself to be molded each day, with the certainty that what is given is never lost.

Today, October 2, 2025, I make public my gratitude to the Love that gazed upon me with infinite mercy. It is a serene gratitude, born of experience, yet at the same time vibrant as the first day.

I make my own the prayer of Gustave Thibon (1903-2001), in his book “Our blind gaze before the light”:

“When I say: I pray for you, this doesn’t mean that I occasionally mutter a few words in your memory, but that I want to take your entire responsibility upon my shoulders; that I carry you within me as a mother carries her child; that I wish to share—and not only share, but to draw entirely upon myself—all the evil, all the pain that threatens you; and that I offer to God my entire night so that He may return it to you transformed into light.”

Today, at my age, my heart still vibrates, longing for the eternal embrace and for her smile upon entering my presence. That hope sustains me and drives me not to live on borrowed time, but to embrace each day as a stitch in the tapestry of my life.

Only love frees me from the adolescent fear of hearing: “I don’t know you.” I have understood that there is no safer path than to allow myself to be recognized by Him, because His gaze is never lost, even if mine sometimes wanders.

Every day I try to thread the needle with the thread God grants me to weave my tapestry, with a knotty backside, but knowing that this is the daily journey. And, although the tapestry may seem imperfect, I trust that on the other side—the one only He sees—a beautiful work is emerging.

Ultimately, it all comes down to this: remaining in Love. Because in the fabric of my life, made of light and shadow, of faithfulness and setbacks, only Love has been and always will be the warp that holds every thread together.

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:37, 38)