I have just said, sanctify your everyday lives. And with these words I refer to the whole program of your task as Christians. Stop dreaming. Leave behind false idealism, fantasies, and what I usually call mystical wishful thinking; if only I hadn't married, if only I hadn't this profession, if only I were healthier, if only I were young, if only I were old... Instead turn seriously to the most material and immediate reality, which is where Our Lord is: 'Look at My hands, and My feet,' said the risen Jesus, 'be assured that it is Myself, touch Me and see, a spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see that I have' (Luke 24:29).

Light is shed upon many aspects of the world in which you live, when we start from these truths. Think, for example, of your activity as citizens. A man who knows that the world, and not just the church, is the place where he finds Christ, loves that world. He endeavours to become properly formed, intellectually and professionally. He makes up his own mind with complete freedom about the problems of the environment in which he moves, and then he makes his own decisions. Being the decisions of a Christian, they result from personal reflection, in which he endeavours, in all humility, to grasp the Will of God in both the unimportant and the important events of his life.


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But it would never occur to such a Christian to think or to say that he was stepping down from the temple into the world to represent the Church, or that his solutions are ' the Catholic solutions' to problems. That would be completely inadmissible! That would be clericalism, 'official Catholicism', or whatever you want to call it. In any case, it means doing violence to the very nature of things. You must foster everywhere a genuine 'lay outlook', which will lead to three conclusions: be sufficiently honest, so as to shoulder one's own personal responsibility; be sufficiently Christian, so as to respect those brothers in the Faith who, in matters of free discussion, propose solutions which differ from those which each one of us maintains; and be sufficiently Catholic so as not to use our Mother the Church, involving her in human factions.

It is obvious that, in this field as in all others, you would not be able to carry out this program of sanctifying your everyday life if you did not enjoy all the freedom which proceeds from your dignity as men and women created in the image of God and which the Church freely recognises. Personal freedom is essential to the Christian life. But do not forget, my children, that I always speak of a responsible freedom.

Interpret, then, my words as what they are: a call to exercise your rights every day, and not merely in time of emergency. A call to fulfil honourably your commitments as citizens, in all fields — in politics and in financial affairs, in university life and in your job — accepting with courage all the consequences of your free decisions and the personal independence which corresponds to each one of you. A Christian 'lay outlook' of this sort will enable you to flee from all intolerance, from all fanaticism. To put it in a positive way, it will help you to live in peace with all your fellow citizens, and to promote this understanding and harmony in all spheres of social life.

I know I have no need to remind you of what I have been repeating for so many years. This doctrine of civic freedom, of understanding, of living together in harmony, forms a very important part of the message of Opus Dei. Must I affirm once again that the men and women who want to serve Jesus Christ in the Work of God, are simply citizens the same as everyone else, who strive to live their Christian vocation to its ultimate consequences with a serious sense of responsibility?
Nothing distinguishes my children from their fellow citizens. On the other hand, apart from the Faith they share, they have nothing in common with the members of religious congregations. I love the religious, and venerate and admire their apostolates, their cloister, their separation from the world, their contemptus mundi, which are other signs of holiness in the Church. But the Lord has not given me a religious vocation, and for me to desire it would be a disorder. No authority on earth can force me to be a religious, just as no authority can force me to marry. I am a secular priest: a priest of Jesus Christ who is passionately in love with the world.
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