Stuff of daily living that takes on transcendent significance

By John Allen, Jr. in Opus Dei

At its core, the message of Opus Dei is that the redemption of the world will come in large part through laywomen and men sanctifying their daily work, transforming secularity from within.

“Spirituality” and “prayer,” according to this way of seeing things, are not things reserved primarily for church, a set of pious practices marked off from the rest of life; the real focus of the spiritual life is one’s ordinary work and relationships, the stuff of daily living that, seen from the point of view of eternity, takes on transcendent significance.

It is an explosive concept, with the potential for unleashing creative Christian energy in many areas of endeavor.

The ambition is nothing less than reaching across centuries of Church history to revitalize the approach of the earliest Christians—ordinary laywomen and men, indistinguishable from their colleagues and neighbors, going about their normal occupations, who nevertheless “catch fire” with the gospel and change the world.