MADRID, JULY 30, 2003 (Zenit.org).- A new book recounts 200 select testimonies of St. Josemaria Escriva’s intercession as “tangible experiences of divine mercy” to be “shared by all Christians.”
There are more than 120,000 testimonies of spiritual and material favors received through the intercession of St. Josemaria Escriva. The postulator of his cause of canonization Monsignor Flavio Capucci has gathered 200 of them in a book entitled “Favors We Ask of the Saints.”
According to Monsignor Capucci, the idea to publish these accounts was conceived as the canonization approached, “as the tangible experiences of divine mercy that they refer to are the patrimony of lived faith which should be shared by all Christians.”
The testimonies compiled in the volume, published by “Ediciones Palabra,” extend over a 27-year period: from the death of St. Josemaria on June 26, 1975, to his canonization on October 6, 2002.
The range of witnesses who sign the accounts is extensive: from cloistered nuns to non-Christians. In fact, the majority of the accounts are from people who do not belong to Opus Dei and who, in many cases, know little about the Prelature, Monsignor Joaquin Alonso said, a theological consultor of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and one-time collaborator with the saint.
The letters of gratitude for favors received through St. Josemaria’s intercession reflect situations ranging from drug addiction to people on the verge of suicide, and victims of illnesses such as AIDS, cancer, and depression. There are also accounts of individuals saved from a firing squad, from a traffic accident, and from kidnapping.
“There are some who find a job, others who find lost objects, still others who regain peace at home or pass a difficult exam. The majority talk about coming closer to God, at times after a life fallen away from the faith,” Monsignor Alonso explained during the presentation of the book.
“The aspect that most caught my attention is that the favors obtained through St. Josemaria almost always have two sides to them: they are not limited to solving a problem, but also give light, a spiritual fruit to people who invoke him,” he concluded.
