By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

It starts with the “heroic minute.”

For members of Opus Dei, the effort to bring daily life together with the divine begins when their alarm clocks ring and they throw off the covers and hit their knees to make a morning offering.

For Yolanda Martinez, a mother of five from Oak Lawn, it comes early enough to allow another prayer session, daily Mass, a prayer of thanksgiving, a visit with the Blessed Sacrament and a decade of the rosary said while jogging—all before she gets her children out the door and to school by 9 a.m.

“That was the hardest thing for me,” Martinez said of the commitment to rise as soon as the alarm rang. “In the winter, it’s cold, and you don’t want to get out of bed. In the summer, sometimes you can’t fall asleep early, so you don’t want to get up.”

Martinez is among about 400 Chicago-area members of the Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei, the organization founded in 1928 by Spanish-born priest Blessed Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer to promote the holiness of everyday life.

Opus Dei was designated a “personal prelature” of the Catholic Church in 1982, meaning it is governed by its own bishop from its headquarters in Rome, rather than by the bishops in dioceses in which it operates. This year, roughly 80,000 members in 81 countries will celebrate Escriva’s Oct. 6 canonization. Ninety-eight percent are lay people.

Escriva led Opus Dei—Latin for “the Work of God”— until his death in 1975. Hundreds will gather to learn about his message at a June 27 symposium and a June 28 conference, both in Evanston, celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Conference speakers include Scott Hahn from Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, on “Passionately Loving the Word: Scripture in the Prayer and Preaching of Blessed Josemaria Escriva; N. Don Wycliff, editorial page editor of the Chicago Tribune on evangelization and the media; and Anne Wolf, mother of 10, and Doug Hinderer, father of nine, on “Chastity, and How to Foster It in Your Children.”

The mix of the mundane and the metaphysical comes as no accident. Believing that work, raising a family, socializing with friends—can be a prayer offered to God means that everything must be done well, with attention to detail.

For Linda Ruff, that helped when she traded a career as a CPA for days of diapers and dish duty after the birth of her third child.

“My ego took a hit,” said Ruff, who lives with her husband, Ben, and their six children in Sauganash. “I could have felt that what I was doing wasn’t that important.”

But with the sense of “divine filiation”—the idea that we are children of God and all we do can be sacred—she was able to find meaning, and patience.

“It hugely elevates everything you do,” she said.

For Ben Ruff, who was introduced to Opus Dei by high school friends in St. Louis, Opus Dei helps him maintain a sense of perspective on his life.

“Being a bond trader is part of that,” he said. “But being a husband and father is a much bigger part.”

After Escriva first shared his vision of ordinary men and women who love and serve God, Opus Dei spread slowly. In 1940, it had between 300 and 400 members. In the United States, it arrived first in Chicago in 1949, and remains active here with two schools, two centers for inner-city youth and St. Mary of the Angels Parish under the direction of Opus Dei priests. Chicago also has residences for male and female numerary members, who make a commitment to live in celibacy and work for the good of Opus Dei—although, like other lay members, they work in the secular world.

Supernumerary members most often are married and have children. In the Chicago area, there are about 300 married members and 100 either numeraries or celibate associates, said Jim Palos, a numerary member and a spokesman.

The numeraries really exist to serve the wider organization, since they don’t have the same time commitments as people with families, Palos said. Their main function, he said, is to help the supernumerary members “be leaven in the world.”

Being “leaven” means living lives of holiness at work, at play, in social settings, but without setting themselves apart, said Squire Lance, special assistant to Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown and an Opus Dei member since 1978.

“I don’t go around like this,” said Lance, folding his hands in front of him in prayer, “with a sign saying ‘Christian’ on my back.”

Instead, members approach others one on one, invite them to activities and try to win people to Christ by their example.

“We’re not secretive, we’re private,” said M. Sharon Hefferan, a numerary member who serves as executive director of the Metro Achievement Center for inner-city girls. “Any of our members are happy to talk about Opus Dei.”

Happy to talk and answer questions, but sometimes, maybe just a little tired of having to answer the same ones, such as:

What about Robert Hanssen, the former FBI agent recently sentenced to life in prison for spying for Moscow—and a member of Opus Dei?

The organization can’t be held responsible for the actions of any individual members, said Palos and Father Peter Armenio, the Opus Dei vicar for the Midwest. And if the FBI and the CIA did not know Hanssen was passing U.S. secrets to the Russians, how should Opus Dei have known?

What about news stories about college students becoming drawn into membership as numeraries? One family that went public had their daughter debriefed, as though they were rescuing her from a cult, when she left Opus Dei.

“I know there must have been people who had bad experiences with Opus Dei, and I’m sorry about that,” said Hefferan, who first encountered Opus Dei while a student at Georgetown University. “That wasn’t my experience. I do pray for them.”

In an effort to stop such reports, Armenio said he wants to know if anyone feels as if they are being recruited or pressured to join Opus Dei in the Midwest. Members indeed should invite people to learn more about the Work, he said, but only those who feel called to it should become members.

Is it “ultra-conservative?”

Members are asked to follow the teachings of the Catholic Church, including those on sexual morality. Schools and other programs generally are divided by gender. But belief in Catholic teaching also includes belief in the social justice teachings, Armenio said.

What about self-flagellation and “mortification of the flesh”?

Martinez was put off by reading that Escriva whipped himself until he bled when she began looking into Opus Dei. “When I read that, I didn’t understand, because I always thought God gave me my body and he wants me to take care of it,” she said.

When she raised the issue with her Opus Dei spiritual director, he said that some people are called to emulate the suffering of Jesus on the cross. Others are not.

Suffering and sacrifice aren’t unusual in modern culture, said Hefferan, citing the grimaces she often sees on the faces of joggers in the morning. But most people do it for themselves, she said, while Opus Dei members do it for God.

“Sacrificing for God is the foreign idea,” she said.