There are moments when nothing changes, and yet everything takes on a new brilliance.

The landscape is the same.

The family is the same.

The work is the same.

But suddenly, we discovered something that had remained hidden until then.

He wasn’t hiding. We were just looking at him from the wrong place.

Three words about Spanish soil

A few weeks ago, during his trip to Spain, Leo XIV chose three words for his pilgrimage.

It wasn’t a program.

It wasn’t a manifesto.

Three words from the Gospel of John 4:35—from Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman—waiting to be heard again: “Lift up your eyes…”

“Lift up your eyes”

It wasn’t a call to escape reality. It was an invitation to delve deeper.

Because what is essential is rarely imposed. It is discovered.

October 2, 1928

This invitation from Leo XIV immediately transports us to another time. To another Madrid.

A young priest – Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer – clearly received the mission that God entrusted to him.

That day Opus Dei was born.

In Madrid.

In Spain.

In the same land that Leo XIV has just visited.

Coincidence? Perhaps. But some coincidences deserve to be contemplated slowly.

God was never outside of our lives

We live saturated with information.

The immediate demands our impatiently and steals our energy:

When the means take the place of the ends.

When forms obscure the background.

When the journey makes us forget the destination.

Saint Josemaría’s contribution did not consist in inventing something new, but in illuminating the transcendence of the ordinary:

God was not outside of our lives. He was within them.

At work. Within the family. Within friendships.

Lifting one’s gaze did not mean ceasing to work. It meant working while looking at God and allowing oneself to be seen by Him.

“There comes a time when it becomes impossible for us to distinguish where prayer ends and work begins, because our work is also prayer, contemplation, a true mystical life of union with God—without oddities—: deification.”

(Letter, May 6, 1945, no. 23)

How to prepare that new perspective

Every transformation always begins with a new way of seeing.

In a culture that rewards speed,

We need to stop .

Stopping and contemplating does not distance us from the world.

It gives perspective to depth.

It doesn’t reduce the horizon. It gives it height.

And there, suddenly, we discover Who is looking at us, slowly, calmly, and peacefully.

We discover the presence of Love in the midst of the most ordinary realities.

Our life takes on another dimension.

But NO ONE gets far completely alone.

We live connected like never before, and yet we still need something that no technology can replace.

No gaze remains alive for long in solitude.

We need people who will walk beside us.

May they help us to “lift our eyes”.

May they sustain us when hope falters.

Let them remind us who we are when we risk forgetting it.

True friendship has something of an everyday miracle about it.

Saint Josemaría saw friendship as one of the privileged places to share the faith: because what is essential is rarely transmitted from a platform. It passes from heart to heart.

We are all sheep and shepherd along that common path.

“UT OPERARETUR” (Genesis 2:15)

We live in an age fascinated by doing.  But doing follows being . And the meaning of doing is  to reveal  the being that does.

Work is not just what we do.  It is also one of the ways in which we express who we are.

The painting speaks of the painter.

The work speaks of its author.

Every task performed with love, competence, and a spirit of service speaks silently about the person who performs it.

That is why Saint Josemaría discovered in work a path to holiness.

Because it allows the invisible to become visible. It allows faith to become life.

Let love become service.

A centenary that is not nostalgia

October 2, 2028, marks the centenary of that founding moment in Madrid. The celebration will continue until February 14, 2030, which will also mark the centenary of the beginning of the Work with women.

The current Prelate of Opus Dei, Monsignor Fernando Ocáriz, has proposed a spiritual itinerary structured around three axes:

Contemplation  in the midst of the world,

Friendship  as a relationship that enriches, accompanies, and sustains.

Sanctification  of work.

Three ways to look up without running away from the ordinary.

It is celebrated with the humility of fresh eyes. In a rapidly changing world that needs what is permanent to avoid foundering. It is the audacity of those who know that the gaze of LOVE changes everything.

To look again from God’s perspective in time.

The question that arises is:

How can we relate the enduring nature of values ​​to the changing nature of environments?

The answer seems simple. And, at the same time, inexhaustible.

Look again.

To see from God’s perspective.

To see with different eyes.

Perhaps we just need to take flight,  and discover, with amazement, that  “We had never seen it from that hill.”

“Let me see with your eyes, my Christ!”

Jesus of my soul!

(Saint Josemaría, March 19, 1975)