Rest, play, the environment and work as a means of sanctification are themes that the founder of Opus Dei addressed on several occasions. Professor Hernández Urigüen, chaplain of the ISSA-School of Management Assistants at the University of Navarre, spoke during an interview with the religious agency Zenit about these playful and ecological aspects addressed by St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer. He did so on the occasion of the publication of his new book, Juego, ecología y work. Three theological themes from the teachings of St. Josemaría Escrivá (EUNSA).

Rafael Hernández is a priest, professor and chaplain at lISSA -School of Management Assistants, a center located in San Sebastián, belonging to the University of Navarra. Over the years, 3,000 graduates have passed through the school in the field of business and management attendance .

Opus Dei is associated with work. You, on the other hand, bring to light the ludic dimension in St. Josemaría Escrivá.

St. Josemaría always contemplated work as the usual subject of sanctification for the laity who follow Jesus of Nazareth, especially in the years of hidden life, more or less thirty, working as a craftsman.

But notice: Jesus Christ is the Son who works with the full freedom of one who has received everything from God the Father. The Lord affirms that the Father works constantly and that He - Jesus - only does what He has learned from that activity of the First Person. The work, then, is no longer a sign of slavery or an annoying condemnation for original sin, but an activity in which those who identify with Jesus Christ can do everything with the joy of the sons and daughters of God.

He who enjoys what he does is already living a playful dimension: he can have a good time even in his effort. The effort is a challenge that involves activating the springs of virtue and creativity
St. Josemaría insisted through his life and teachings that the baptized, while they go about their chores, are contemplatives in the midst of the world.

The thesis that I sustain in the book is that the ludic dimension can and should intertwine the daily work of men and women.

So are rest and fun as important to him as work?

St. Josemaría always advised alternating work with rest, and he arranged for the faithful of the Prelature to learn to combine a demanding and serious work activity with moments of rest: sports, excursions, family conversation, reading, hobbies... He always fostered the full freedom of his spiritual sons and daughters, encouraging them to always be themselves and to develop each one's personality to the maximum without clichés or standardizing molds.

In addition, St. Josemaría's sense of divine filiation led him to encourage good humor among everyone and to de-dramatize situations. In the spiritual struggle he used images of gymnastics and sports. In fact, there are films of his catechesis in which he portrayed like no one else before thousands of young people and others the gesture of the pole vaulters in the Olympics. He spoke of sportsmanship as an attitude that translates the theological virtue of hope into the human.

He insisted that the spiritual life, even the ascetic struggle, does not consist only in avoiding falling, but in getting up again and again when one has failed. He went so far as to define the interior life as "beginning and beginning again".

He always took care of the rest of others even with practical advice. For example, he could prescribe to a very stressed intellectual: "Dedicate a few days only to rowing, read Tintin (or another comic book), pray three Hail Marys at night and try to sleep a lot and well".

Of course he knew how all those people who followed him were personally very demanding in their work and daily service to others, and that after a period of rest they returned with renewed energy.

Did ecology really concern St. Josemaría Escrivá?

The second chapter of the book develops some clues as to how St. Josemaría's teaching provides very new ideas for expressing the Christian message in ecological language, and also for illuminating the environmental problem from a spirituality that, in his own expression, allows "refund to give subject its noble and original meaning".

His writings involve a whole theology of creation and redemption in which it is affirmed that "the world is good, because God's works are always perfect, and that it is we men who make the world bad through sin"(Conversations, 70).

I have also discovered in his texts the styles of Christian life that favor care for the environment: concrete ways of living sobriety without getting carried away by consumerism, care for the objects we use, avoiding unnecessary damage, and "naturalness". This expression of the saint has always fascinated me because it encourages a sapiential acceptance of nature and of the way in which Christians in the street live in accordance with space and time without stridency.

Other fascinating texts of St. Josemaría allude to his way of celebrating Mass. He was convinced that in celebrating Mass: "All God's creatures-earth and sky and sea and animals and plants-are present, giving glory to our Lord for the whole of creation.

Another image he frequently used referred to the witness and action of lay Christians: in the midst of a world so often stained by sin: "We have to continue in the midst of this rotten world; in the midst of this sea of murky waters; in the midst of those rivers that pass through the big cities and the villages, and whose waters do not have the virtue of strengthening the body, of quenching thirst, because they poison. My children, in the middle of the street, in the middle of the world, we must always be trying to create around us a backwater of clean waters, so that other fish may come, and among all of us we may enlarge the backwater, purifying the river, returning its quality to the waters of the sea".

What theological contribution did Escrivá make?

In my opinion, of the first order. Although he did not expressly set out to do theology, his charism and his teachings provide ideas that always illuminate, as I have previously stated, the problems of history, always starting from the original light: to sanctify oneself through work and the ordinary circumstances of the Christian in the midst of the world.

A very positive vision of the world and of human realities that stimulates the baptized man and woman, without leaving this world, to fill in the task that God has entrusted to us with respect to Creation.

What would Christian materialism be according to the founder of Opus Dei?

This original expression of St. Josemaría is commented on at length in the book. He preached it at campus in Pamplona at the University of Navarre on the morning of October 8, 1967. These are some of his expressions: "The authentic Christian sense, which professes the resurrection of all flesh, has always confronted, as is logical, disincarnation, without fear of being judged as materialism. It is licit, therefore, to speak of a Christian materialism that boldly opposes materialisms closed to the spirit"(Conversations with Msgr. Escriva de Balaguer, 115).

In a few paragraphs above, he himself explained its meaning: "There is no other way, my children: either we know how to find the Lord in our ordinary life, or we will never find him".