List of points

You might tell me, 'Why should I make an effort?' It is not I who answer you, but St Paul: 'Christ's love is urging us.' A whole lifetime would be little, if it was spent expanding the frontiers of your charity. From the very beginnings of Opus Dei I have repeated tirelessly that cry of Our Lord: 'By this shall men know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.' I did this to encourage generous souls to put it into practice in their own lives. This is precisely how we shall be recognised as Christians, if we make charity the starting point of everything we do.

He, who is purity personified, does not assert that his disciples will be known by the purity of their lives. He, who so lived sobriety that he didn't even have a stone upon which to lay his head, and spent so many days in prayer and fasting, did not declare to his Apostles: 'you will be known as my chosen ones because you are not gluttons or drunkards'.

The purity of Christ's life was — and will be in every generation — a slap in the face to the society of his day, a society which then as now was often so corrupt. His temperance also stung those whose lives were one long banquet, interrupted only by self-induced vomiting so that they could then get back to eating, thus fulfilling to the letter the words of Saul: their stomachs have become their god.

During the course of his life on earth, Jesus, Our Lord, had all manner of insults heaped upon him and was mistreated in every way possible. Remember the way it was rumoured that he was a trouble-maker and how he was said to be possessed? At other times, demonstrations of his infinite Love were deliberately misinterpreted, and he was accused of being a friend of sinners.

Later on he, who personified penance and moderation, was accused of haunting the tables of the rich. He was also contemptuously referred to as fabri filius, the carpenter's son, the worker's son, as if this were an insult. He allowed himself to be denounced as a glutton and a drunkard… He let his enemies accuse him of everything, except that he was not chaste. On this point he sealed their lips, because he wanted us to keep a vivid memory of his immaculate example: a wonderful example of purity, of cleanness, of light, of a love that can set the whole world on fire in order to purify it.

For myself, I always like to consider holy purity in the light of Our Lord's own behaviour. In practising this virtue, what refinement he showed! See what St John says about Jesus when fatigatus ex itinere, sedebat sic supra fontem, wearied as he was from the journey, he was sitting by the well.

Recollect yourselves and go over the scene again slowly in your minds. Jesus Christ, perfectus Deus, perfectus homo, is tired out from his travels and his apostolic work. Perhaps there have been times when the same thing has happened to you and you have ended up worn out, because you have reached the limit of your resources. It is a touching sight to see our Master so exhausted. He is hungry too — his disciples have gone to a neighbouring village to look for food. And he is thirsty.

But tired though his body is, his thirst for souls is even greater. So, when the Samaritan woman, the sinner, arrives, Christ with his priestly heart turns eagerly to save the lost sheep, and he forgets his tiredness, his hunger and his thirst.

Our Lord was busy with this great work of charity when the apostles came back from the village, and they mirabantur quia cum muliere loquebatur, they were astonished to find him talking to a woman, alone. How careful he was! What love he had for the beautiful virtue of holy purity, that virtue which helps us to be stronger, manlier, more fruitful, better able to work for God, and more capable of undertaking great things!