At what point does a person join St Raphael’s work?

It is not necessary to wait until you have a deep friendship in order to introduce a boy or girl to the St Raphael work. But it is essential that you already are friends, because you both come from the same place and knew each other there, or because you are related, or because you are studying the same thing, or simply because someone else has introduced you. This initial relationship then allows you to discuss various ideas, which provides you with an opportunity to explain what we are trying to do.

Prudence

It would be foolish if the first time you met someone you started telling him or her about some residence or corporate apostolate, or some formation classes run by Opus Dei, since they most probably would not understand it.

And if they have heard any of those false stories about the Work – those spread about by ill-intentioned or ignorant people – they might possibly get the idea that we want to rope them in and then take fright. If this were the situation and we were to speak to someone in this way, in most cases it would be more difficult to win them over later on and make progress with them. If they didn’t give us a straight ‘No’ or avoid contact with us from the start, either through politeness or lack of personality, they would be deceiving us and we would be deceiving ourselves and end up wasting our time.