The Chamber IV of the Argentine Federal Court of Cassation now holds in its hands the decision of whether the case for human trafficking and reduction to servitude involving 44 women—recruited as girls or adolescents between 1972 and 2015 to become auxiliary numeraries of Opus Dei—remains alive or is time-barred. The question on the table is no longer whether those events occurred; it is whether they occurred too long ago. In Rome, meanwhile, Leo XIV met in February with Prelate Ocáriz and his auxiliary vicar, Mariano Fazio—whose investigative statement the federal prosecutor has requested since July—and confirmed to them that the reform of the Work’s statutes, ordered nearly four years ago, remains “under study” and without a date. In Buenos Aires a system is being judged; in Rome they are studying how to reform it without naming it. And in both files the piece that explains them is missing: the texts in which that system was set out by its author, in black and white, for internal consumption. A good friend has sent me one of those texts: the volume of meditations While He Spoke to Us on the Road, printed in Rome in 2000, whose authenticity the Work has never denied. Between pages 143 and 155 appears the meditation that José María Escrivá preached to his own on 12 March 1961 under the title “The Good Shepherd.” It must be read slowly, because sentence by sentence it says considerably more than its editors noticed when they printed it.
In that meditation Escrivá recounts a scene on a Castilian road: some men drove thick stakes into the ground, stretched a net around them—“that is why it is called a sheepfold,” he explained—and left it open on only one side; then one man called the sheep with loud cries, “words that carried a certain tenderness,” and the sheep went in. “What a timely scene!” he exclaimed. He was right, though not in the sense he believed. Rarely has an author supplied so exact an image of his own system: affection at the mouth of the entrance, a net around it, an opening in only one direction. The thirteen pages that follow are devoted to constructing precisely that with materials from the tenth chapter of St John.
Formally it is an exhortation to frequent confession and to openness of conscience, and for two-thirds of its length it is conventional asceticism that any retreat director would sign. The payload lies in the remaining third, and it begins with a surgical operation on the sacred text. The meditation works on John 10, 1-13 and cites, with notarial precision, ten of its thirteen verses: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11, 12 and 13. Three are missing. Verse 6 is an evangelist’s aside and its absence means nothing. The other two are 7 and 9: precisely those in which Christ says ego sum ostium—“I am the door of the sheep”; “I am the door: whoever enters through me will be saved,” in the official version of the Episcopal Conference. The omission is not distraction; it is structural necessity, because the door, in this meditation, is split in two. For the sheep it remains Christ—“each one of you has entered through the door, through the love of Christ”—; for the shepherds, the criterion of legitimate passage changes hands: “Do you know who, for my sheep, is the good shepherd? The one who has a mission granted by me.” In John the door is single and the same for shepherd and flock. The two verses that prevent the split are the two that are not there.
Installed in the gap, the founder occupies the pronoun. Christ’s sheep become “my sheep.” “Through my mouth Jesus Christ speaks to you in a special way, because I in a special way am the good Shepherd in his name”: the repeated adverb does all the work. “God will call you to account if you do not heed my indications.” And when the thesis needs support, the procedure is always the same: his own question, his own answer, retroactive divine attribution. “And could not other shepherds go to seek my sheep and pasture them? No. No! And it is not I who affirm it, but the Lord himself.” The Lord, in John 10, affirms nothing about the spiritual direction of an institution founded in 1928; the exegesis presents itself as quotation. The scale of values is fixed in a memorable enumeration: “Popes, you will know many; I have known several. Cardinals, by the dozen. Bishops, even more… but there is only one Founder of Opus Dei.” Cardinals by the dozen; founder, unique piece. The entire hierarchy, priced below the proper charism in the only market that matters here, that of scarcity.
The reverse of the operation is the fate that befalls the rest of the Catholic clergy. The “thieves and robbers” of the parable, who in the gospel are those who lack ecclesial mission, come to designate priests with licenses from the Ordinary—that is, approved by the Church—who are reclassified as “the stranger” and “the bad shepherd” from whom one must flee, “even if they are good shepherds of other sheep and even if they are saints,” “even if they work miracles.” Holiness and miracles, the two criteria by which the Church recognizes divine approval, declared insufficient against internal deputation; spiritual direction, on the other hand, “belongs to the local Directors, laymen, laymen!” And to complete the arsenal, the compelle intrare of Luke: where the gospel commands that strangers be urged into the banquet, the meditation reverses the vector and directs coercion inward, against one’s own brothers, in an adjectival escalation that deserves an epitaph: “holy coercion,” “blessed coercion, of love,” and finally “this most beautiful coercion of charity, far from taking away your brother’s freedom, delicately helps him to administer it well.” Four successive adjectives on a noun that is never touched. Coercion, redefined as counsel in the administration of another’s freedom.
The mechanical heart of the text is a classic double bind, and what is astonishing is that it is stated without embarrassment. First the solemn juridical concession: “all my children enjoy the most absolute freedom to confess to any priest approved by the Ordinary,” with no obligation to inform the Directors. Immediately afterward, the annulment: “Does one who acts thus sin? No! Does he have a good spirit? No! He has set out to listen to the voice of the bad shepherd.” Escrivá himself compresses the system into four words that no critic could have formulated better: “We can and we cannot. And do I sin? No. And do I have to tell the Directors? No. But I insist: woe to you!, poor, poor little one!” The prophetic curse fused with the maternal diminutive in the same phrase. The right survives only as the matter of its own renunciation: the first sacrifice of the good son consists in “not exercising that right—because we possess it—if we can avoid it, and we can avoid it always or almost always.” The parenthesis keeps the juridical fiction inside the sentence that empties it.
Notice the architecture: three normative layers. In the juridical, I can. In the moral, I do not sin; it is granted twice, with exclamation marks. And in the third, that of “spirit,” sanctions fall that no sin in this passage entails: “loss of peace and joy,” “precipice,” “abyss,” “possible perdition of the soul,” “miserable,” “cancerous one who did not want to be cured,” and the terminal clause: “if you truly wish to be saints; if not, you are superfluous.” From which it follows, by the pure internal logic of the text, something theologically extraordinary: a soul can reach possible perdition without having committed any sin along the way. Either the meditation is incoherent, or “good spirit” functions as a soteriological category parallel to the moral law and above it: institutional loyalty tracks salvation where sin does not reach. And the only sin the passage truly assigns does not fall on the one who exercises his right, but on the insufficiently coercive spectators: “I would not excuse from sin those who lived with that son of mine, because they would not have known how to give him the means to persevere, means to which he had a right.” The individual right to choose a confessor is renounced as proof of fidelity; the right that is asserted with energy is the right to be pressured.
There are also two slips that amount to a confession. The first, concerning the seal: “I did not ordinarily confess any of my sons, because I did not consider it logical to remain with my hands tied by the sacramental seal. They, voluntarily, told me everything, everything!, outside Confession. In this way spiritual direction went forward splendidly.” The sacramental seal, presented as an operational impediment for the one who governs and not as protection for the penitent: the exact inversion of the institution’s purpose. The adverb “voluntarily” arrives after the discourse itself has defined reserve as cowardice, bad spirit and ample reason—that is, after abolishing the conditions of the voluntariness it invokes. And it is not a closed foundational anecdote: “as all continue to do now in the fraternal conversation with the Director.” At the summit, the complete fusion of forum and government, in both directions: “now I confess to one of your brothers, and when I rise, he kneels so that I may confess him.” The second slip appears when the harm of confessing outside must be illustrated: that confessor, faced with another soul “who is thinking of requesting admission to Opus Dei, might perhaps talk him out of it.” The ledger of damages runs toward the vocational flow. On the same page, the doctrine of the Mystical Body—which is the Church—slides without seam into “the entire body of the Work.” And the entire argument rests on a premise that betrays it: after assuring that “that confessor will of course keep the sacramental seal,” the following “but” imagines that same confessor guiding his counsel according to what he learned in confession. To prove that one must confess inside, it needs to suppose that those outside do exactly what the seal forbids.
The rest is the installation of the climate: all shepherds of all (“you are all the good shepherd”), fraternal correction “sometimes with a glance,” “none is a loose verse,” oves et milites Christi; and reserve, pathologized without respite: whoever does not tell everything, “down to the most trivial,” is “a madman,” his heart is “rotten,” it is necessary to “insert the scalpel, and cauterize.” With that anthropology installed, the double bind no longer seems coercion: it seems therapy. All under the foundational norm stated with proverbial wisdom: “dirty linen is washed at home.” It is worth recalling that the Church had already legislated against this: canon 530 of the 1917 Code prohibited superiors from inducing “in any way” the manifestation of conscience of their subjects, precisely because the legislator knew that no precept is needed where spiritual terror suffices. The reason for the norm admits no discussion, and this meditation is its textbook case.
In 2025 Rome dissolved the Sodalitium of Christian Life with abuses of conscience at the center of the file. No sensible person will equate the personal crimes of a Figari with the biography of Escrivá, and this article does not do so. But the technology of government is identical piece by piece: isolation from external counsel, catastrophizing of exit, total transparency upward, sacralization of the founder. Every element is in these thirteen pages, in the founder’s voice, in 1961, printed by the institution itself in 2000. The question, therefore, is not psychological or posthumous; it is ecclesial: what does it mean that the Church canonized in 2002, in a process famous for its speed, the author of a system whose replicas it today dissolves by decree. “What a timely scene!” the Father said before the sheepfold of Castile, the net stretched and the words of affection at the single door. It is the only thing in this meditation that has not aged.
Appendix. We reproduce below, in full, the meditation “The Good Shepherd” (12-III-1961), according to the volume of internal meditations While He Spoke to Us on the Road (Rome, 2000, pp. 143-155).
A day of retreat, a day on which the Lord grants us special graces to consider our end: to sanctify ourselves and to sanctify. But today I would like once again to point out to you what our spirit is in a wonderful means of sanctification, in a means instituted by Jesus Christ, because it is a sacrament: Confession. And, starting from that divine institution, I wish to offer you some considerations on another means that is also a sign of the maternal affection of the Work: spiritual direction with the Director, the fraternal talk.
As usual, I have brought some books, index cards and papers. Sometimes it happens that, during the meditation, I go off on other paths and pay no attention to them. But to this book I do pay attention, always, because it is the Gospel, and I do not pretend to speak anything but words of life, those of Jesus Christ Our Lord.
In Christ’s sheepfold
Let us open the Gospel of St John at chapter ten: Amen, amen dico vobis, qui non intrat per ostium in ovile ovium, sed ascendit aliunde, ille fur est et latro [1]; truly, truly I say to you, he who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, that man is a thief and a robber.
My children!, peace to your heart and to my heart. We are not thieves or robbers, because we have entered per ostium; he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens, and the sheep listen to his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out [2]. The Lord, the Good Shepherd, opens his sheepfold, and the sheep listen to his voice, and He knows them all, one by one. How old this scene seems!, doesn’t it? But do not think it is so ancient that it is not repeated today. On the contrary, it remains charged with timeliness. I remember once, traveling along a road in Castile, we saw some men driving thick, strong stakes into the ground; then they stretched a net—hence the name sheepfold—forming a circle, which they left open on one side. Finally, one began to utter loud cries with words that carried a certain tenderness. And the sheep came and went in. He called them one by one; and he paid a compliment to this one, and caressed another. He knew them all. What a timely scene!
My children!, children of my soul!: do not forget that each one of you has entered by the door, by the love of Christ. You are sheep of the same fold and at the same time, in some way, besides being sheep of that fold, each one of you must also be a good shepherd of those sheep. And if he has the duty to let himself be led and to answer to his name, he also has the duty, no less strong, to contribute to the holiness and perseverance of his brothers.
If ever I should see one falter, and falter to the point of losing his earthly happiness and perhaps the eternal one; I would not excuse from sin those who lived with that son of mine, because they would not have known how to give him the means to persevere, means to which he had a right.
None of you is alone, none is a loose verse: we are verses of the same poem, epic, divine. And each one of you, as well as I, has an interest that this unity, this harmony, not be broken, united as a great flock, as a great army, oves et milites Christi, on the way to holiness.
Going to the Good Shepherd
Et cum proprias oves emiserit, ante eas vadit, et oves illum sequuntur, quia sciunt vocem eius [3]. The shepherd, when he has led out his own sheep, walks ahead of them all, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice. We must follow those who perform the office of good shepherds. Each one of you must also be listened to by your brother, when you exercise fraternal correction, sometimes with a glance, sometimes with the consideration the case may require. On other occasions, you may remember that compelle intrare of the Gospel [4]. If the Lord wished that strangers be compelled to go to the banquet, how much more will He wish that you use a holy coercion, a blessed coercion, of love, with your brothers, sheep of the same flock of Jesus Christ! This most beautiful coercion of charity, far from taking away your brother’s freedom, delicately helps him to administer it well. Do not forget it.
I am no longer young. I do not say it to indulge in calling myself old, but because I feel the duty to transmit to you this idea, which seems of little importance, and yet has great significance. Take your notes, and engrave in your heart what I tell you. Because it is not only a priest who speaks to you: it is the Founder, and there is only one. Popes, you will know many; I have known several. Cardinals, by the dozen. Bishops, even more… but there is only one Founder of Opus Dei, even if he is of such little foundation as I: only one! And God will call you to account if you do not heed my indications. Through my mouth Jesus Christ speaks to you in a special way, because I in a special way am the good Shepherd in his name. And I insist that each one of you is also a good shepherd.
Alienum autem non sequuntur [5], the sheep do not follow the strange shepherd. It means that, in departing from this teaching of Jesus, the mistake begins that leads to the loss of peace and joy, and to the possible perdition of the soul. Because sometimes, instead of fleeing from the stranger—alienum autem non sequuntur—someone might distance himself from his Directors, from his brothers; and go to a man sufficiently ignorant or imprudent or unwise, capable of leading him onward on the path of perdition.
My children, you must make the firm purpose not to commit that mistake in your life. The Lord himself, through St John, warns us not to seek counsel outside, that that would be like going voluntarily to the precipice. One must flee from the stranger: sed fugiunt ab eo! [6], you must listen only to the voice of the good shepherd!
Do you know who, for my sheep, is the good shepherd? The one who has a mission granted by me. And I ordinarily grant it to the Directors and to the priests of the Work. People who do not know Opus Dei are not in a position to act as shepherd of my sheep, even if they are good shepherds of other sheep and even if they are saints. For my children, they are not the good shepherd of whom Jesus Christ speaks. Is that clear? Sed fugiunt ab eo! [7]. Follow the Master’s counsel: flee. Why should we listen to the voice of one who does not know the spirit of our Work? One must hear the voice of the good shepherd, of those who have received the mission to pasture the sheep of Opus Dei. All the others are not shepherds with that specific mission.
The physician who can heal
My children, I now wish you to consider what is indicated in our particular Law. I have repeated to you thousands of times that I am very fond of freedom, as I also know that my children have common sense. I cannot accept that any local Director—who must intervene to open the doors of Opus Dei to those sheep of Christ—show himself so shortsighted as to have allowed entry to those who do not reason as I shall now pause to explain to you in concrete terms.
In the Work, we must all go to the sacrament of Confession at least once a week. It is fitting that you confess to the priests who are designated. You may do so with any priest who has faculties from the Ordinary. In this way, I defend freedom, but with common sense. All my children enjoy the most absolute freedom to confess to any priest approved by the Ordinary, and they are not obliged to tell the Directors of the Work that they have done so. Does one who acts thus sin? No! Does he have a good spirit? No! He has set out to listen to the voice of the bad shepherd.
Certainly, since most members of Opus Dei live in their homes, in the most diverse places, they will not always be able to go to the priests of the Work, and sometimes they will confess to others. When they act thus, in opening their conscience, a most gentle aroma of a field in bloom, blessed by the Lord [8], the fragrance of a life fully given to God and beautified by delicacy of conscience, will be awakened. But if, in some case, that situation were not present in their soul, it is fitting that they place themselves in the hands of their brother, the good shepherd, even if for that they must employ means that go beyond the ordinary.
If the soul in particular circumstances needs a medication—so to speak—more careful, that is, if the timely and prompt counsel, the more intense spiritual direction, is required, it must not be sought outside the Work. Whoever behaved otherwise would voluntarily depart from the good path and go toward the abyss; without doubt, he would have lost the good spirit.
Tell me: a sick person who wishes to be cured, what does he do? He goes to a particular physician, who knows him. —Look at me well, do tests on me, take my blood pressure, my temperature… and he examines him, and auscultates him, and looks at him with X-rays, thoroughly examined. If the physician works as he should, he will try to ensure that the patient, out of weakness, out of inadvertence, does not fail to tell him something that may be of interest. Then the patient, if he is not mad, will hasten to tell the physician all the symptoms, all the circumstances, that to him seem to be manifestations of his illness, down to the most trivial. It does not occur to him to go to any physician—and then to another, and to a third, and to more…—to have an aspirin prescribed, but he runs to the physician who knows him well.
You will go to brother priests of yours, as I do. And you will open your heart wide to them—rotten, if it were rotten!—, with sincerity, with the desire to be cured; otherwise, that rottenness would never be cured. And in the same way it happens in personal spiritual direction, with the Director or with whoever has the charge of receiving your fraternal talk. If we were to go to a person who can only superficially cure the wound… it is because we would be cowards, because we would not behave as good sheep, because we would go to hide the truth, to the harm of our soul. And causing ourselves this evil, seeking an occasional physician, without the capacity to devote to us more than a few seconds, who cannot insert the scalpel, and cauterize the wound, we would also be causing harm to the Work. If you did this, you would have a bad spirit, you would be a wretch. By that act you would not sin, but woe to you!, you would have begun to err, to be mistaken. You would have begun to hear the voice of the bad shepherd, by not wanting to be cured, by not wanting to take the means.
You would also be harming others. That confessor will of course keep the sacramental seal: all priests guard it zealously, always. But when another soul comes to him for counsel, and manifests to him that he is thinking of requesting admission to Opus Dei, perhaps he would talk him out of it. That confessor could not avoid the thought: go to the place where that wretch is, that cancerous one who did not want to be cured?
You know the doctrine of the Mystical Body, of the Communion of Saints. Well, you would be harming your brothers, and those who are yet to come, and yourself, the entire body of the Work. Because moreover that bad shepherd did not come to seek you, you alone would be responsible. Because that other, who is not a good shepherd, not knowing the timely remedies, non venit nisi ut furetur et mactet et perdat [9], comes only to steal and to kill and to destroy. We need to live that determined and concrete spirit that the Lord desires. Our spirit is very clear: our asceticism, our mysticism, perfectly clear. And whatever deforms this spirit is to steal and to kill.
Purposes! Clarity of ideas! We can and we cannot. And do I sin? No. And do I have to tell the Directors? No. But I insist: woe to you!, poor, poor little one! Omnes quotquot venerunt fures sunt et latrones [10]. Those who are not the good shepherd turn out to be thieves and robbers. Only he is the good shepherd who, knowing and living the spirit that animates your life, receives that mission from the one who can give it to him: to this one the gatekeeper opens, and the sheep listen to his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. And, when he has led out his own sheep, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, because they know his voice [11]. Therefore, the members of Opus Dei, if they truly wish to be faithful, do not follow a stranger, but flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers [12].
And could not other shepherds go to seek my sheep and pasture them well? No. The Lord says it categorically: qui non intrat per ostium in ovile ovium, sed ascendit aliunde, ille fur est et latro [13]; he who does not enter by the door into the sheepfold of the sheep, but climbs up some other way, is a thief and a robber. Could perhaps someone of good will come to give help, to take a bundle of sheep and offer them good pasture, and bring them back to the fold? No. No! And it is not I who affirm it but the Lord himself. Those who do not have a mission entrusted by the Directors are not good shepherds, even if they work miracles. Because the priest who receives the confession does not act only as judge, but also as teacher, physician, father: shepherd. How could he well exercise these functions if he were ignorant of what God expects of us, according to the vocation he has granted us? How, if he does not possess our spirit? How, if he lacks the legitimate mandate, and therefore the special grace to exercise his mission well?
Ego sum pastor bonus. Bonus pastor animam suam dat pro ovibus suis [14]; I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. My children, it does not matter that I tell you. It happened many years ago. You know that institutions promoted by God suffer—especially in the beginnings—misunderstanding, and that the Lord permits so many adversities… Sometimes it is the good who raise the persecution. Objectively, a diabolical work; subjectively, we cannot judge it.
Well, in a hard, very hard moment, years ago, the son of mine who was aware of those sorrows ordered that a travertine plaque with a reproduction of the Good Shepherd found in the catacombs and these verses of Juan del Enzina be placed in the Father’s workroom, beside the door that opens onto the tribune of the oratory of the Most Holy Trinity: tan buen ganadico, / y más en tal valle, / placer es guardalle. / Y tengo jurado / de nunca dejalle, / mas siempre guardalle. From the first day, from that 2 October 1928, I feel the divine, paternal and maternal impulse toward you and toward your lives. Nothing of any of you is strange to me, nor of those thousands of daughters and sons of mine whom I do not know.
Your brother did very well, in those circumstances of danger, of which Cardinal Schuster warned us. The Cardinal of Milan behaved splendidly; he was a saint, and perhaps some of you will see him on the altars. Two sons of mine, the Director and the priest of the Milan Center, went to visit me. The Cardinal asked them: how is the Father?; do you know if he has found any cross? They answered: well, we do not know anything special, but if he has one, he will live content, because he has always told us that if we find the Cross, it is a sign that we are near Christ… The cardinal then added: tell him to be prepared; that he remember his fellow countryman; St Joseph Calasanz, and that he move.
Indeed, your Father, a poor man, but who wishes to behave as a good shepherd, went… But let us leave this for now, and keep what I have told you in your heart.
Good shepherd. But also good sheep. Good sheep? Yes, my children: yes, yes; good sheep. I do not doubt in the least that you will all always be good sheep.
Opening the soul with sincerity
Spiritual direction. In the Catechism of the Work you will have studied that, in the first place, it belongs to the local Directors, laymen, laymen! The designated priest also imparts spiritual direction, in the exercise of his ministry. But none forms his own little chapel, his own little group. No division is tolerated, no one can maintain: I am of Paul, I of Apollos, I of Cephas, I of Christ. Has Christ then been divided? [15]. So-and-so is not a spiritual director, because in the Work spiritual direction is exercised only in actu; in other words, the lay Director, when he receives the fraternal talk or they come to consult him about something; and the priest when he hears confessions.
You also, each one of you, with fraternal correction, assume the duty of a prudent but heroic spiritual direction with the other brothers who are near him. You are all the good shepherd. All, by the very fact of being in Opus Dei, carry out this mission, which means the duty and the sacred right to help others to sanctify themselves.
Ego sum pastor bonus. Bonus pastor animam suam dat pro ovibus suis [16]; I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep. He makes all the sacrifices. And you must be ready to face them all as well. And the first one is quite clear: not to exercise that right—because we possess it—if we can avoid it, and we can avoid it always or almost always. Firm purpose: the first sacrifice consists in not forgetting, in life, what they express in Castile in a very graphic way: that dirty linen is washed at home. The first manifestation that you give yourselves is not to have the cowardice to go and wash dirty linen outside the Work. If you truly wish to be saints; if not, you are superfluous.
When I notice I am ill… You know that at times I have been; and in the present year you have seen that I have scarcely been able to come down to see you. Today, as soon as he knew you were making the retreat, I called the Rector, because I had the desire, the true wish to spend a while with you… Well, I was saying that, when I am more ill, I go to the physician more frequently; and I let him examine me, touch me wherever he wishes, and I answer all his questions. Otherwise, I would behave like a madman. Well, carry this behavior into the spiritual life.
The good shepherd gives his life for his sheep. But the hireling and the one who is not the shepherd, whose sheep are not his own, seeing the wolf coming, abandons the sheep and flees, and the wolf seizes them and scatters the flock. The hireling flees, because he is a hired hand and has no interest at all in the sheep [17]. There you have the exact account of how the man who has not received the mission to pasture the flock behaves. If he is a good priest, he does what is right, gives some generic pieces of advice: try to improve, say a Hail Mary… What a mission of doctor, of physician, of father, or of judge! And there you also discover the unhappy end of the one who imprudently seeks the counsel of a strange shepherd.
My children, open your soul! Your first brothers left you a colossal example. I did not want to confess them. Now I confess to one of your brothers, and when I rise, he kneels so that I may confess him. We have been doing this for many years now. But, at the beginning, I did not ordinarily confess any of my sons, because I did not consider it logical to remain with my hands tied by the sacramental seal. They, voluntarily, told me everything, everything!, outside Confession. In this way spiritual direction went forward splendidly and the souls were sanctified.
I am concerned about the formation of young people; I feel the fear that they may become a bit spoiled. In those early times we lived with a lack of everything or almost everything; mistreated, slandered… And always joyful, always smiling, always effective. Your brothers had to go to the university, and give classes, and work, to earn their living. I am pleased with you, my children: I know that you are studious and joyful. But pray that we may succeed, so that all my children, from their youth, may live from what they earn and know what money costs. Thus there will be no spoiled behavior.
Your brothers, I was saying, opened their soul to me outside Confession, with simplicity and total sincerity, as all continue to do now in the fraternal conversation with the Director. My children, do not be discouraged because you have concupiscence in your heart. Do not be frightened of anything. Truly faithful! Sincere! Sincere! Let us act with common sense and the supernatural spirit of knowing that if the Father, because he is father and because he is mother, leaves things very wide, you, because you are firm, sure sheep, to allow the good shepherd to work, will decide with good sense not to use certain rights, in order to obtain, in exchange, greater efficacy in the work of your sanctification and of the sanctification of the whole Work, of the sanctification of your brothers and of so many souls, and of the Church.
Holy Mary, Refuge of sinners and our Mother, present these purposes before the throne of God, and make them effective by your powerful intercession.