Fr. Rieman: There are people that enter into our lives
and known to ourselves sent by the Holy Spirit,
that make a great impact in our lives.
And in my life that was Fr. Joseph.
You know, he just opened up the way that l was to follow.
Narrator: ln 1949, a young Spanish priest arrived
in the United States.
Carl Schmitt: He was such a simple, ordinary guy who was
just so extraordinary.
The impact of his life in my life to me is huge.
Dave Sperling: Fr. Joseph was a simple man in the
best sense of the word.
You put that together with
this deep living faith that he portrayed.
Narrator: He came to begin the activities of Opus Dei...
a Catholic organization with a revolutionary idea
that everyone is called to holiness
right in their ordinary lives.
Fr. Rieman: Fr. Joseph brings sanctity out of the clouds
right down to reality.
We're all called, poor things that we are.
You look at someone and say, ''You could be a saint.''
Narrator: This new form of spirituality
would stir the hearts of many American Catholics.
And while he blazed the trail for Opus Dei,
he lived a simple life hidden in the shadows.
Carl Schmitt: He was a vehicle for holiness
even as it was completely hidden.
Fr. Barrett: His whole life was formation,
catechesis, teaching people how to pray.
Dave Sperling: He inspired me, saying,
''You have to have a deep faith and trust in God.''
Maria Valdeavellano: He gave us a meditation,
and l remember 2 words,
'fully' and 'completely.'
And that was his message:
that we had to respond fully and completely.
Fr. Barrett: lf you were with him,
you knew he was extraordinary.
You always had that sense that he was close to God.
Henry Menzies: People knew he cared about them.
His world was other people
and about himself he couldn't care less.
Narrator: ln 2011, the cause for canonization was opened.
Formal testimony has been gathered
from people who knew him
and who find in him a powerful role model.
Janice Carroll: ''Fr. Joseph had such a strong faith...''
Henry Menzies: ''He lived heroically...''
Dave Sperling: ''His constant giving of himself...''
Henry Menzies: ''His cheerfulness, his peace...''
Janice Carroll: ''Constant concern for souls...''
Narrator: Now the Catholic Church will decide
whether Fr. Joseph Múzquiz is a saint.
Carl: ''The ordinariness sings in my mind...''
Henry Menzies: ''Gracious...
Maria: ''Fully and completely, fully and completely...''
Janice: He was that example to me.
This is it. This is the right way.
This is the way to do it.
This is to live an ordinary life and to become a saint.
Narrator: Jose Luis Múzquiz was born in 1912 in Spain.
His family was Catholic and lived the faith.
ln 1934 in Madrid, he met a future saint
who would change the course of his life:
Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei.
Narrator: Fr. Josemaría's revolutionary vision was
that lay people could make their everyday lives holy.
At the time most Catholics believed dedication to God
meant the seminary and priesthood,
so the young Múzquiz doubted that Opus Dei could succeed.
Narrator: Fr. Josemaría Escrivá would guide Opus Dei
for almost 50 years and eventually be canonized.
ln 2002, before a crowd of hundreds of thousands of people,
Pope John Paul ll called the founder of Opus Dei,
''The Saint of Ordinary Life.''
lts members now often refer to him as simply, ''The Father.''
John Coverdale: ln the beginning, St. Josemaría
didn't even have a name for what he was doing.
He referred to it as ''The Work''
but not as a proper name
but simply as the activity l'm carrying on.
Then one day his spiritual director asked him,
''how's that work of God coming?''
And he said, ''Ah, that's it, that's the name!''
At the time, some people thought
that St. Josemaría's message was heretical.
No, they said, if you want
to come closer to God, to be holy,
what you have to do is become a priest or a monk or a nun.
John: St. Josemaría's message
was that laymen as well as priests
are called to holiness.
Ordinary life and activities
are not simply an adjunct to the spiritual life.
Rather they are what God asks us to sanctify
and what brings us closer to Him.
[applause]
[bell rings]
Narrator: lt was while he was a college student
that Múzquiz decided to receive spiritual formation
from St. Josemaría.
John: This is the building
that housed the School of Engineering
when Fr. Joseph was an engineering student here.
At that time this was really the most prestigious
university-level school in Spain.
lt was the hardest to get into.
He graduated number 2 in his class.
He seemed to have the world ahead of him as his oyster.
He had all kinds of professional prospects.
Somebody like that, why would he make the sacrifice
of giving himself to God in Opus Dei,
and l think the real answer
is one that St. Josemaría gave which is to say:
''lt is no sacrifice to give oneself to God.
That's the best thing you can do.''
And, it is certainly how he felt about it.
Narrator: He graduated from the School of Engineering
intrigued by Opus Dei,
but with the sense that it was not really for him.
[bell tolls]
Then, dark storm clouds of war gathered over Spain,
and the future of Opus Dei was dire.
[gunfire]
July 1936 began a three-year civil war that would leave
more than 300,000 people dead.
Violence against the clergy was especially brutal.
Churches were sacked and burned
and a manhunt for priests and prominent Catholics began.
By the end of the war more than 7,000 priests and nuns
had been assassinated.
Fr. Josemaría was a prime target.
He went into hiding to save his life
and then fled the country
in an arduous trek through the Pyrenees Mountains.
Múzquiz served in the Nationalist Army
as an Engineering Officer.
Many of his friends had been killed,
and he simply assumed
that Escrivá-and Opus Dei- were also dead.
John: A quite important factor
in Fr. Joseph's vocation to Opus Dei
was the fact that St. Josemaría, against all odds,
had survived the Spanish Civil War.
He concluded that this could only have happened
through God's special providence
and that was a sign that Opus Dei was truly a work of God
and that God was calling him to form part of it.
So shortly after the end of the war in 1939,
he joined Opus Dei.
Narrator: After the war, he went to work
as a Civil Engineer for the Spanish National Railroad;
he also founded a consulting engineering office on the side.
As a new member of Opus Dei,
he understood that work would now be different.
John: He began to see his work
as something he could offer to God
and convert into prayer-
not in the sense of saying Our Fathers all day long,
but in the sense of lifting his mind and heart to God.
Narrator: What attracted the young Múzquiz to Opus Dei
was the same spirit that attracts people today-
the desire to live a holy life out in the world.
Barrett: The whole idea of the vocation is,
''l want to be a saint in the middle of the world.''
You, how do you be a saint?
We are trying to see it through the eyes of Christ.
What am l doing here?
lf l am one of the apostles following Christ,
what am l doing?
Janice: You can't have your head in heaven or your heart in God
if you don't have your feet on the ground.
You can't be floating around in some kind of a holy state.
You have to address the crosses of the day,
the struggles of the day and embrace them.
l remember one time he said to me,
''The homemaker in care of her home
will find Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Calvary.''
And he was right on the money.
Fr. Barrett: l joined Opus Dei, l met it in 1971;
3 months later l joined.
l said, ''Wow, this has got it all together,
this is where l want to be,
that l can be a professional man in the middle of the world,
not give that up
but at the same time l am going to be a saint.
l am going to have interior life,
l am going to learn my faith inside and out,
and l am going to be able to reach out to other souls.''
l liked that.
Fr. Barrett: Opus Dei just clicked.
lt happened to me, too, that it just clicked.
Narrator: For Joseph Múzquiz, Opus Dei ''clicked,''
and he would come to exemplify its spirit to the fullest.
Dave: You can't split the 2 here.
One is the spirit of Opus Dei,
the other his living example of that spirit.
l first met Opus Dei 1957 when l was at Harvard
and it's something l learned from him.
''Look, you've got to be a better student,
not just to get better grades
but you have to offer this to God.''
Fr. Rieman: And he told me, he said,
''Everybody is called to holiness, to be happy
and to spread that happiness and that love
and that laughter to everybody.''
Fr. Barrett: That was Fr. Joseph encouraging people
to be good at what you are going to do,
whatever profession you go into, but sanctify it.
Don't just do it well, sanctify it.
Fr. Rieman: l always thought when l was a kid,
the only ones who are going to be saints
were the nuns and the priests,
and the rest was going to climb into a window
if Our Lady opened it up. [chuckles]
Yeah, l never thought about really holiness in that way.
Narrator: From the beginning, Opus Dei was meant
for all kinds of people.
lts faithful were men and women, rich and poor,
young and old, married and single.
Some are called to be priests,
to serve the faithful of Opus Dei and others
with their priestly ministry.
On June 25, 1944, Múzquiz left his engineering career behind
and was ordained, alongside José María Hernández de Garnica,
and Álvaro del Portillo,
as the first priests of Opus Dei.
[bell rings]
John: So we're here in Madrid
in front of the Monastery of the lncarnation
where Fr. Joseph celebrated his first Mass.
l think it's a good place to reflect a little bit
on his vocation to the priesthood
and his vocation to Opus Dei.
lnstead of designing structures and working for the railroad,
he would be saying Mass and preaching meditations
and hearing confessions.
But the essence of it was still the same,
to do that new work of his as well as he possibly could
for love of God and of bringing other people closer to God.
Narrator: As a newly-ordained priest,
now ''Father'' Múzquiz poured himself
into his priestly ministry,
going wherever St. Josemaría sent him
and helping many people find God in daily life.
The Second World War was over, and Opus Dei was taking flight.
New centers were sprouting up in cities across Spain,
and even abroad.
He traveled tirelessly
to care for the growing number of persons
responding to the message of Opus Dei.
Trips to the South became part of his routine.
He would leave Madrid aboard the overnight train
to towns like Granada, Cordoba or Seville,
teaching people throughout Andalusia.
As St. Josemaría pointed out,
they resembled the first Christians
who traveled from place to place spreading the Gospel.
Then, in 1949, it was time
for Opus Dei to expand across the Atlantic.
Narrator: On February 17, 1949,
Fr. Joseph and Sal Ferigle, a graduate physics student,
soared across the sky, headed for the United States.
From the air, the broad, sprawling continent
was striking.
Fr. Joseph wrote, ''The country is very big,
and all of it has to be filled with tabernacles.
We are very happy and have great desires to work.
From the plane you see immense horizons!''
The 2 arrived in Chicago
where the work of establishing Opus Dei would begin.
Cardinal George: Chicago was a place
open to the need of the Church to be part of the world
and to work for justice as well as for charity.
Narrator: Fr. Joseph celebrated his first Mass in Chicago
at St. Francis of Assisi Church.
Surely giving thanks for arriving safely to his new home,
he must have contemplated the formidable challenges
that lay ahead.
Dave: Fr. Joseph was coming into an entirely new culture
with its own norms, its own way of doing things.
He had to adjust to that.
He had to learn how to be a part of that.
Fr. Barrett: They had nothing,
and then they had to start laying ground with really zero
including their own struggle to learn English.
lt was very hard for them.
Narrator: They quickly decided to establish a student residence
near the University of Chicago on the south side of the city
where they would reach out to young people.
Cardinal George: They wanted to go the universities
because they wanted to try to bring people
who would be influential in the general culture
into closer contact with the Lord.
Narrator: Within months and without any money,
they bought a large house a few blocks from campus
in which to get started:
5544 Woodlawn Avenue.
Art Thelen: The last time l was here-
l can't remember when it was but l lived here from 1959 to 1963,
it's been a long time-
this is the first center of Opus Dei in the United States
so really it's a significant place
because everything started here, for Opus Dei in this country.
Fr. Joseph really, it was amazing
that he was able to put this together
while having no money or anything of the sort.
John Haley: Fr. Joseph had this slogan he used to love, he says,
''ln Opus Dei we buy buildings without money.
Woodlawn Residence, we bought it without money.''
Narrator: lt was the kindness of Tom Cremin,
a real estate agent so impressed with their faith
he donated his commission so they could buy the house.
Betty Boesen: One day in 1949,
2 foreign men came into the real estate office.
Tom showed them a number of houses before they selected one.
When he had asked Fr. Múzquiz for the down payment,
the priest said they did not have enough money.
John: ''So, okay,'' he says, ''for example, with Woodlawn
we got a mortgage from the bank
and then we got a second mortgage from the seller
and then there was just a little bit more to pay
and we didn't have that.''
Betty: They had $2,500 or something like that,
and they thought they were paying for the whole house.
And it was really not even enough for the down payment.
My dad said he was so impressed with these men he had met,
so he offered them his whole commission.
Fr. Rieman: l joined Opus Dei July 15, 1950.
l was the first guy in the Work.
l didn't know l was the first guy,
l thought there were other guys there.
l was in the Navy; l was in a dive-bombing squadron
in the back seat of the dive-bomber.
l came out of the Navy
and then of course that's when l met Fr. Joseph.
Howie Malham: l met Opus Dei in August of 1949
when l enrolled in school.
And l walked into a class, and there was an empty seat,
and there was a guy sitting next to it, and l said,
''ls that seat taken?''
He says, ''No, it's yours. l've been holding it for you.''
Hello to Dick Rieman.
ln no time at all l'm saying ''Hello, Fr. Joe.''
He did a great job of conveying the message of Opus Dei
in a very simple way that piqued my curiosity.
l said, ''l think you are onto something
that's very interesting to me.''
Dave: l was baptized as a convert to Catholicism.
l simply didn't know Catholic priests;
l had never met a Catholic Priest.
So you suddenly meet a Catholic priest
who is a extraordinary combination-
a very positive joy of living, a deeply spiritual outlook,
but intensely human,
and a constant concern for other people.
l mean, he was just interested in me.
He was just sort of living for you and giving himself to you.
Howie Malham: He had a card, as a matter of fact,
and that's a thing they started using
to promote people to come to Woodlawn,
''Come and learn how to be a saint in the modern day.''
Fr. Rieman: And that was the beginning.
When you have a vocation, if you are called to this thing,
God sets it up.
Art Thelen: So we all got our first taste
of what Opus Dei is
and what we should do and how we should live our vocations.
Narrator: Seven months after his arrival, Fr. Joseph
celebrated Mass in the Woodlawn Oratory.
lt was the first time Mass was celebrated
in a center of Opus Dei in the United States.
Art: lf you walked up the stairs to the 2nd floor,
it was on the left-hand side.
This is a sketch.
lt's a small oratory.
l think it seated 10 or 15 people.
Howie: That's where the altar would be
and then the pews would be here and the pews would be here.
Art: We didn't have a lot of people coming around,
but everyone fit in.
Howie: And that's when l got to know
Fr. Joseph's love for Our Lord.
Fr. Rieman: lt wasn't something dramatic or something like that.
But you could just see the man in a very simple, natural way,
was losing himself with Our Lord there.
Howie: People said ''He lived the Mass, he lived the Mass,''
and l say he was in it.
Janice: He was wrapped in the Mass, his piety and his depth.
He was immersed in God there at the altar.
Fr. Rieman: That's one of the first things that impressed me.
Gosh! When he said the Mass, it was something else.
Narrator: With Christ present in the Woodlawn tabernacle,
Múzquiz wrote, ''We are happy to have Our Lord at home with us.
Here, far away, one notices even more
the need to unburden oneself with Him
and to thank Him for everything He has given us
and is going to give us.''
The following year, again without money,
Fr. Joseph opened Kenwood,
the first women's residence in the U.S.,
located a few blocks away from Woodlawn,
and the first woman member of Opus Dei, Pat Lind, had joined.
Fr. Rieman: Fr. Joseph had so much faith.
We talked about the spreading of the Opus Dei,
we were spreading all over the world,
to France and England and everything else.
And we knew it would spread here.
Hard-working, that guy;
Holy Christmas!
The schedule he kept?
He's going everyplace.
Henry Menzies: He had the vision
of establishing the Work in this country
and that you need people, right?
that's how you establish the Work.
Howie: Milwaukee, South Bend...
Fr. Rieman: We went to St. Louis, we saw the Bishop there.
And then we went to lowa.
We traveled to Minnesota, Sleepy Eye, Minnesota.
Holy Christmas!
Howie: Washington, D.C....
Fr. Rieman: Wisconsin.
He met a lot of guys.
John: He was by temperament a man of big vision,
but l think that he also understood clearly
that God wanted Opus Dei not to be some little thing
but to grow and expand.
Fr. Rieman: Some of the bishops would say, that's great,
you got to admire the guy, coming over here with nothing.
We didn't have a dime in those days.
We bought a 1936 Chevy for $90.
So we told the guy, ''Would you put some gas in it?
We don't have any money.''
Howie: That was not the simplest way of making connections,
to build up on this thing called Opus Dei.
Henry: lt was completely new for people,
and of course the people that didn't understand it
usually were the biggest Catholics
because they thought they knew everything about it,
so to speak.
Narrator: ln the early 1950s,
well before the Second Vatican Council,
only a handful of American Catholics
had even heard of Opus Dei,
and its ideas were shockingly novel.
Múzquiz wrote St. Josemaría,
''We have to struggle against a terrible lack of formation.
My fellow priests propose as the maximum goal in life
for a young man to marry a Catholic girl.''
Finding women and men
who would dedicate their lives to God in Opus Dei,
and spread it to others was slow and difficult.
But Fr. Joseph was undaunted.
Howie: You wouldn't think for one minute
that this guy is very worried.
He said, ''lt's going to happen, they are going to come.''
Fr. Rieman: When you heard Fr. Joseph
talk about Our Lord and the holiness,
he wasn't preaching, he was living it.
You knew he wasn't just saying, ''Hey, you've got to be holy.''
This man was wearing it on his lapel.
Paul Deck: The question of whether it was easy
or difficult for him was secondary.
lt was God's Will.
lt's what St. Josemaría wanted done
in order to make Opus Dei a reality.
There was nothing else to think about. That was it.
Fr. Rieman: St. Josemaría used to say it,
''Just keep God's pace.
God's running the show.''
Narrator: Through prayer, Múzquiz placed
the future of Opus Dei into the hands of God.
He wrote, ''Here we have to expect everything from Our Lord.
He and He alone has the power to move hearts
to give themselves to Him.''
While criss-crossing the country,
Fr. Joseph brought many American men and women
into contact with Opus Dei,
and gradually hearts did move.
Howie: The tempo was increasing.
There were a few more faces
that were coming into the picture, new faces.
Fr. Malcolm Kennedy: l think he moved forward
always as aggressively, as quickly as he possibly could.
l figured, well, this will be several months
before l really have to buckle down.
He said, ''Well, what about next week in Chicago?''
John: You realize this is the kind of thing you need
just to start some crazy thing like this in a big country-
just this dogged cheerful determination
just to keep going, going, going.
Henry: So that's why you can't really locate him in a place.
You don't think of Fr. Joseph in a place.
He was always moving.
Carl: Sometimes you'd open the door and say
''Oh, Fr. Joseph, you're here, oh wonderful!''
He would be out with his book and asking to call so-and-so.
l'd say, ''Take it easy! Let's get you to your room!''
He was already working when he came in the door.
Fr. Barrett: And that's the way he was.
He was always reaching out to people and helping them
especially to understand St. Josemaría.
Narrator: Through Fr. Joseph, many American Catholics
were learning how to live life immersed in prayer,
how to transform the daily suffering and joy-
at work and at home-
into offerings to God.
For growing numbers, Opus Dei was the answer.
Paul: ln a relatively short period of time
he met a large number of people in this country,
all over the country.
He was always on the move.
Some of them were people of very high rank;
some of them were very simple people.
But he met them not with the sense
that ''Boy this is going to be a big deal,
because this man is a public figure.''
He met them because he had the occasion
of trying to spread the spirit of Opus Dei.
Tom Bowman: He was not a great orator by any means,
nor did he pretend to be,
which was perhaps one of the endearing things about him,
He was a wonderfully humble man and completely unaffected.
Fr. Rieman: You believe that this is all going to happen,
not in a very special way, ''Oh, l see the Work spreading.''
No, no, no, no, no, no.
You just hack away, hack away.
Paul: And as a result, things began to grow.
And when you look back
you see dozens of centers of Opus Dei in as many cities
and it's all because Fr. Joseph came here with the conviction
that we are going to do Opus Dei in the United States.
[bell rings]
Narrator: lf Chicago was the birthplace of Opus Dei,
it was in the university town of Boston
that roots were also sinking deep.
Fr. Barrett: ln the 1950s and the early 1960s,
a number of wonderful people joined Opus Dei,
a large number from Harvard and MlT.
And these young people in a sense were a backbone
of the development of Opus Dei.
l think those were grace-filled years
when these young people came close to Opus Dei
and very quickly joined.
John: l think that a lot of it was this steady,
confident, supernatural, optimistic-just push.
And if something didn't work out, his response would be,
''Well, God has something better in mind.
We'll just go for that.''
Narrator: Arnold Hall Conference Center in the Boston area
stands as a tangible example of such conviction.
ln the 1960s members of Opus Dei had worked long and hard
to purchase a modest-sized property for a conference center
only to have the deal fall through.
Then Fr. Joseph arrived.
Maria: And the first thing he told us was,
''We have to get a real conference center.''
And then he said, ''And God wants it,
and for God everything is possible.''
And here is Fr. Joseph back to moving the things
because he is the one who moved things.
So Arnold Hall and Fr. Joseph have this bond.
Janice: ln forging ahead with Arnold Hall
and with all the different projects that Fr. Joseph had,
his one goal was souls.
He was not interested in beautiful buildings per se,
but rather that that allowed the possibility of souls
coming back to God, to the confessional,
growing in their faith.
Narrator: As a place of spiritual retreat
and instruction,
Arnold Hall has been instrumental
in passing on the spirit of Opus Dei
and drawing many people closer to God.
Maria: Fr. Joseph's idea of success would be
to help people discover their relationship with God
and to follow God's call.
l think he would have felt equally successful
were those people simply better Catholics,
better professionals, better parents,
if the vocation to Opus Dei was not their vocation,
but they were actually responding
to that call to holiness which is universal.
l think that would have probably given him as much joy.
Narrator: ln 1961, after just 12 years in the United States,
with operations expanding around the country,
Fr. Joseph was called to Rome
to work in Opus Dei's international governing body.
When he left, Opus Dei had grown to several hundred members.
Half a dozen men had been ordained priests
and many more were studying in Rome
in preparation for expanding Opus Dei around the world.
During the decade he was here,
Fr. Joseph not only laid the foundation for Opus Dei
in the United States,
he also traveled the globe
helping to establish it in other countries.
Maria: He was so instrumental with the development
of Opus Dei in the world as he was here.
He was going to China, he was going to lndia,
he was going to Africa,
he was going here, he was going there,
he was meeting with bishops,
he was seeing to the beginning of the Work in these countries.
Dave: And he was impatient, he was anxious,
to make sure that the seed was planted
in all of these continents as soon as possible.
Fr. Rieman: But Our Lord said the whole thing,
''Go out into the whole world.''
And that's what St. Josemaría based it on,
''Go out into the whole world, baptize the whole world.''
Narrator: As early as 1950, he traveled to Canada
and by 1957 the first center opened in Montreal.
Also in 1957, St. Josemaría asked him to go to Venezuela
to help with Opus Dei's work there.
A year later Fr. Joseph arrived in Tokyo
where he played a key role
in the early history of Opus Dei in Japan.
Opus Dei began in Switzerland in 1956
and from 1964 through 1966,
Fr. Joseph was the head of its activities there.
Fr. Kennedy: He was like somebody
who is running a marathon,
but he is going to be sprinting from the beginning.
lt's 26 miles, and usually you save yourself.
But he is going all out, full out
right from the beginning,
Narrator: By the mid-sixties, Fr. Joseph had worn himself out.
ln 1966, St. Josemaría decided
Fr. Joseph should return to Spain.
He became the chaplain of Pozoalbero,
an Opus Dei conference center near Cadiz,
in the south of Spain.
The serenity of Pozoalbero would be the perfect place
for the man who had done so much for others to finally slow down.
[Song in Spanish]
[church bell]
Narrator: ln 1972, four years after Opus Dei
celebrated its 40th anniversary,
St. Josemaría embarked on a two-month-long catechetical trip
throughout Spain and Portugal.
For Fr. Joseph, the stop in Pozoalbero
was especially poignant.
lt would be the last time the 2 would be together.
John: Fr. Joseph was there in the background,
on the sidelines, despite the fact that for him
this was a very special moment.
Having the founder there,
seeing him for what would prove to be the last time.
[audience applauds]
Narrator: On June 26, 1975,
while in living in Pozoalbero,
Fr. Joseph received news from Rome.
St. Josemaría had died suddenly of a heart attack.
After his death, Fr. Joseph
seemed to capture the sentiment of people around the world
when he said, ''Since our Father went to heaven,
l entrust everything to him.''
Fr. Joseph took part in the congress
that elected Alvaro del Portillo
as successor and new head of Opus Dei.
ln 1976, del Portillo asked him to return to once again
to be the head of Opus Dei in the United States.
Dave: Fr. Joseph wanted to come back to the United States
in 1976.
He had already said, ''Look, l'm an American,
let me go back to where l can really help people,
and l understand those people
and l'm one, l'm part of them now.''
Narrator: When he returned,
Opus Dei was on the cusp of tremendous growth.
Programs that began as seedlings decades earlier
were now bearing abundant fruit-
inner-city tutoring programs, middle and upper schools,
clubs and summer camps, service projects,
vocational training centers,
all inspired by the spirit of Opus Dei
and a legacy of Fr. Joseph.
His legacy can also be seen in Midtown Manhattan,
where Opus Dei built
and now operates its national headquarters.
ln 1980, after serving four years as head of Opus Dei,
Fr. Joseph received his final assignment.
Though he had established and run Opus Dei
in the United States,
he would end his life back in the Boston area,
an ordinary chaplain devoted to helping souls
at the nearby universities,
and above all at his beloved Arnold Hall.
Patricia Mochen: l knew Fr. Joseph
for the last 2 years of his life.
l was probably 13 or 14 when l first came to Arnold Hall.
He definitely made a big difference
in all of the girls' lives.
He gave us classes.
He gave us meditations, spiritual direction
and Confession.
And l can still see him today putting up his hand like this,
saying, ''Our life is a bridge
and we have the Morning Offering in the morning,
and the Examination of Conscience
in our night prayers at night.''
And then he would tell us
that the different posts were the Rosary, going to Mass,
having some meditation with Our Lord.
And then he would draw
the little line of the wire in between
and say that would be Presence of God.
So he taught us young kids a very simple way
how to live with Our Lord in our daily life.
Maria: We were very grateful that he came
because we knew he had been ill.
[clock ticking]
Patricia: He would pull out this watch
that he was given by St. Josemaría,
and he'd pass it around
and all of us girls could hold it and look at it.
He passed on that he loved St. Josemaría
and that this watch was special and we should love him too.
[clock ticking]
Maria: l don't think we were thinking he was going to die,
but l know we were very conscious
that every year we had him was a treasure.
There was a little path
that was kind of abandoned in the woods.
Sometimes Fr. Joseph would go out for a walk
to say his rosary.
And of course, because he used it,
it became a little more obvious,
so people began to see that there was a path.
And we'd say ''Oh, don't go there,
because that is Fr. Joseph's path.''
People wanted to respect his privacy.
Narrator: The ''path'' of Fr. Joseph
was guided by his conviction
that life is a vocation, a personal call from God.
He would continue to confirm that vocation right to the end
when the new head of Opus Dei, Alvaro del Portillo,
made a visit to the United States in 1983.
Henry: Now this is our living room, as you see,
and this is the room where when Don Alvaro came back in 1983
we had the room full of people.
We've never had so many people ever.
Fr. Joseph came to me in a very sheepish way and he said,
''Henry, can you get a chair for me?''
Every chair was taken.
l said, ''Of course, Fr. Joseph!''
So we got a chair and put it there for Fr. Joseph.
lt showed his humility, l think.
Carl: When l saw Fr. Joseph taking little notes,
the whole thing just exploded in my mind.
He just represented in spades what it was all about.
He's a saint of the ordinary
and he never defeated the ordinariness.
The Creator of the Universe,
the Redeemer of the Universe lived incognito for 30 years
in an ordinary life with absolutely no special acclaim.
That to me was Fr. Joseph.
John: Just as he was leaving l happened to be standing there
and Don Alvaro put his arms on Fr. Joseph's shoulders and said,
''José Luis, the Work has taken root in the United States.''
He looked at him just right in the eyes and said that.
lt was like a testimonial of the meaning of Fr. Joseph's life.
Narrator: ln the summer of 1983,
while teaching a class at Arnold Hall Conference Center,
Fr. Joseph experienced chest pain.
Dr. Tom Bowman: We were speeding to get to the hospital
and we took a particularly hard right-hand turn,
which slammed the ambulance doors.
He looked up at me and said,
''Oh, Tom, now we're having fun.'' [laughs]
l was able to perform an electrocardiogram
and realized that he was having a massive heart attack.
And yet he didn't want to bother anybody,
and he was very anxious to get back to work.
So l had to convince him,
''No, Fr. Joseph, you are having a massive heart attack.''
To him a little bit of chest pain was nothing.
Suffering for Him was an opportunity to mortify himself.
Narrator: During the night,
Fr. Joseph suffered another major heart attack.
[clock ticking]
Carl: He started to flatline
and they were pumping trying to get his heart going again.
Dr. Bowman: Being his personal physician,
the impossible thing for me was to stop.
l simply couldn't give up.
Fr. Barrett: lt was a victory,
because even the way he died was beautiful.
Carl: The entire time l was sitting there
he was working away on notes.
Dr. Bowman: He was very much more concerned
about getting back and preaching than he was the fact
that he was essentially in the process of dying.
Carl: This is not a deathbed scene.
This guy really died with his boots on.
Dave: This is Fr. Joseph to the end,
not worried about himself at all,
but the people around him.
Maria: l heard that after he died
there was a young girl
who really had a great affection for him
because he had helped her a lot spiritually.
She went to Fr. Joseph's path to comb that place
hoping that she would find
something that he may have dropped-
maybe he had dropped a little medal or something.
So she went looking.
[Woman sings]
Carl: That very first night we waked him right in the Center.
lt's a very small chapel in Chestnut Hill.
We were all night with the casket.
[singing]
Fr. Barrett: lt was an enormous number of people.
The cars going out to the cemetery, there was a huge line.
[singing]
They did the ceremony at the grave
and people were kneeling and standing,
probably a thousand people.
[singing]
Maria: Bishop Riley went around the casket with the holy water
and then he said some prayers
asking God ''to take the soul of your servant, Joseph.''
And then he repeated and he said,
''the soul of your faithful servant Joseph.''
[singing]
Everyone cried.
At that moment if, if we hadn't been crying for 5 minutes,
we started it all over again
because it was so fitting and so beautiful.
[singing]
Fr. Barrett: And then Fr. Raphael
turned to the grave diggers and he said,
''Lower the casket.''
And all these people started throwing in papers.
And these guys at the grave
started picking up the papers and giving them back.
And they said, ''No, no, no,
they are names of people we are praying for,
intentions we are praying for,
so then it would be buried with the casket.''
[singing]
And one of the grave diggers said to somebody,
''Who is this man?''
And he said who he was, that he was a great man,
first a priest of Opus Dei
that used to be the head of Opus Dei in the United States,
and that he was a saint.
[singing]
Janice: We started making pilgrimages there,
families, individual people.
We beat down a path, l think, it's fair to say.
Maria: His place of burial became very popular.
l certainly wouldn't think of going to Boston
without passing by the cemetery.
Janice: The news spread about Fr. Joseph.
Certainly, many people knew him by then when he died.
You see the presence of people
coming to pray at Fr. Joseph's grave.
You do it because you want his intercession,
you want answers to prayers, everybody does,
and you want to pay your respects.
lt's holy ground, it's hallowed ground.
Narrator: ln 2011, the Archdiocese of Boston
officially opened the cause for canonization
of Fr. Joseph Múzquiz.
Building the case is the Postulator for the Cause.
As principle gatherer of testimony and fact-finder,
the Postulator will shepherd the arduous process
as it winds its way through the local diocese,
then on to the Vatican's
Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
Fr. Dave Cavanagh: As Postulator for the cause,
l present witnesses who can testify to one basic question.
''Did this person enjoy a reputation for holiness
because he had lived the Christian virtues heroically?''
We have received testimonies from the 1930s
right up until the time of his death.
From all over the world the picture of a man emerges
who was a very intimate friend of Our Lord
and had helped countless other people to befriend Our Lord.
Carl: Fr. Joseph taught me a fundamental secret
of Opus Dei in some sense-
the whole idea that anything can be turned into prayer,
there's grace to be found in the tiniest thing all the time.
Patricia: He would always ask us, ''How was your sports?
''Did you pray during your sports?
How are the relationships with your parents?''
This is a way to put Our Lord into that life.
So that carried over to our lives today.
Fr. Rieman: We have weaknesses, we all do.
We commit sins.
We make errors.
And that's what the battle is all about.
Maria: Something he loved to share with people,
''fully and completely.''
Here's this priest who'd really take this to heart and lived it.
Dave: l have no doubts in my mind that he's a saint.
The heroic, constant self-giving-
that's what the Church defines as sanctity.
John: No one day in his life was extraordinary.
But if you put the whole mosaic together,
if you see a whole life inspired by love of God, you say,
''Well, that's what holiness is.''
Fr. Cavanagh: People tell us over and over again,
they've learned from him how to find God in their ordinary lives
and how they turn to him in prayer.
Howie: Absolutely, l pray to Fr. Joseph.
Henry: l pray to Fr. Joseph every morning.
Paul: The reason for praying to Fr. Joseph,
he loved the work-a-day world that you and l live in
and he was a part of that world.
l think people who pray to him do so very much
with that sense, that he's one of us.
Dave: When you think that person is a saint,
you start praying to him and asking him to help you.
Muffy Preble: l never knew Fr. Joseph myself
but in getting to know him
l have grown to appreciate his search for sanctity
in the little things.
That is an example to me of how to live sanctity in daily life.
Vu Nguyen: The spirit of Fr. Joseph affects my life
because he's a normal guy.
He knew how to help people, and that's what l want to do.
And because that's his spirit,
l realize that it's also my spirit.
lt's what l want to do with my life.
Muffy: l pray to him a lot
and l've grown to have a great devotion to him,
because l can see that search for sanctity
is very valuable in the little things.
lt's in the people that l'm serving that l find Christ.
lt's in the people that l deal with day to day.
Fr. Rieman: And so he brings sanctity out of the clouds,
right down to reality.
We're all called, poor things that we are.
You look at someone and say, ''You could be a saint.''
Fr. Barrett: You can learn what he did.
l can't tell you how far you will go
because it depends on God's grace
and your own effort.
But everybody wants to go down that path
because what is life all about?
lt's about going to Heaven.
But it doesn't happen at the end of your life,
it happens right now.
So yeah, l would follow Fr. Joseph
to obtain those virtues, that supernatural sense.
l think all of us have to go down that path.
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