A few words about Saxum

It´s not only the Latin term for “rock”, it´s also the nickname that St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, used for one of his spiritual sons, a bespectacled engineer by the name of Alvaro del Portillo, because he was so solid and reliable. “Saxum, how white I see the road --the long road-- that you still have to travel. White and fruitful, like a ripe field..." These are the words that St. Josemaría wrote in a letter to Alvaro in 1934, and would prove to be prophetic.

Whether it was a question of risking his life in the Spanish Civil War, rolling out of bed with a raging fever to find money today to pay a pressing debt tomorrow, or simply helping St. Josemaría organize his work and keep to his schedule, Blessed Alvaro was St. Josemaría´s right hand man for decades, and then became his first successor as the head of Opus Dei.

St. Josemaría never got a chance to visit the Holy Land, although in his prayer and imagination he would have trekked up and down the hills of Judea, boated across the Sea of Galilee, and trodden the path to Jerusalem innumerable times, in the company of Jesus of Nazareth. For him, the Gospel passages came alive as he imagined himself as one more character in the scene. Many years later, Blessed Alvaro was able to fulfill his predecessor´s desire to make a pilgrimage to the land where the events of salvation history took place, the land that the Church Fathers refer to as “the Fifth Gospel”. For his 80^th birthday, Blessed Alvaro got a plane ticket to Tel Aviv (not a bad birthday present), and celebrated his last Mass in the Cenacle, the Upper Room where Jesus instituted the Eucharist. His last Mass, because upon his return to Rome the following day, he suffered a massive heart failure and passed on into the next life... but continues pretty darn active in this one, judging from the devotion so many people (including myself) have to him. 

The Saxum conference center project takes its name from Blessed Alvaro, so that thousands and thousands of people from all over the world will, like him, have the opportunity to make a pilgrimage the Holy Land and step into the pages of the Fifth Gospel.

The Saxum website is pretty cool: www.saxum.org. And, for those who are interested in sponsoring me in the Malta marathon, you can find out how to help with Saxum here: http://www.saxum.org/donations/ways-to-give/ . 

Thanks! Next up: in situ training in Valletta, the capital of Malta... Stay posted!