What did St. Josemaría see on the day Opus Dei was founded?

On Oct. 2, 1928, “the Lord founded His Work; brought Opus Dei (The Work of God) into being,” wrote St. Josemaría Escrivá in his personal notes, as recorded by Andrés Vázquez de Prada in the Spanish-language volume of “ The Founder of Opus Dei ,” a definitive text on the Spanish saint’s life.

“The Work of God was not imagined by a man,” he would later say. “For many years, the Lord had been inspiring it in an inept and deaf instrument, who saw it for the first time on the Feast of the Guardian Angels.”

It was, the saint understood, the answer to the prayers he repeatedly addressed to God: “Domine, ut videam!” and “Domine, ut sit!” (“Lord, that I may see!” and “Lord, that it may come to be!”)

On that October day, the founder of Opus Dei was making a spiritual retreat at the Central House of the Vincentian missionaries in Madrid. “I received enlightenment regarding the whole Work ... Deeply moved, I knelt down, I was alone in my room in the interval between talks, and thanked the Lord; I recall with emotion the ringing of the bells of the parish church of Our Lady of the Angels.”

On that occasion, Vázquez de Prada notes, St. Josemaría’s mind “was illuminated with a clear,…