This June marks the fiftieth anniversary of St. Josemaría's departure to heaven. On one occasion he himself commented that he had "died" three times. The first, during the civil war in Spain, when they killed a person in front of his house, thinking it was him. The second was on the feast of Our Lady of Montserrat, when he was miraculously cured of diabetes after suffering an anaphylactic shock.
And the third? On the same morning of June 26, he asked to be transmit a message to the Pope, currently revered as the St. Paul VI: "That every day, for years now, I have offered Holy Mass for the Church and for the Pope. You can assure him that I have offered my life to the Lord for the Pope, whoever he may be.". Hours later he died, as he had wished, without making a sound. Throughout his life he sought to put God at the center and not to seek personal recognition.
The previous Holy Thursday, the eve of his golden jubilee of priesthood, St. Josemaría read: "At the turn of fifty years, I am like a babbling child. I am beginning, beginning again, in every day.". That same year, in an after-dinner get-together with his children from the General Council, he defined himself as follows: "The Father? A sinner who loves Jesus Christ, who has not yet learned the lessons that God gives him; a very big fool: this was the Father! Tell it to those who ask you, they will ask you.". And he expressed his desire to help everyone.
Since October 6, 2002, the date of his canonization, he can help us as an intercessor saint. On the same day, St. John Paul II defined him as the saint of ordinary life, an example of how to meet God in our ordinary life.
