Opus Dei
Sanctify your work.
The norms of piety are the most explicit and most imitated modern plan of life — a fixed daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly rule for laypeople pursuing sanctity in ordinary work. Its foundation is divine filiation: you are a child of God, and so there is no sacred and secular, only one life offered whole.
Two periods of mental prayer, Holy Mass, the Rosary, spiritual reading, a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, the examination of conscience — and through it all, the little duty of each moment, done well for love. The norms are not suggestions; failures are confessed.
For working laypeople with a stomach for structure who want a complete, lived rule. The soul who reads The Way and says: yes, this.
St. Josemaría Escrivá, The Way; Christ is Passing By
What it proposes
- Morning Offering — Heroic Minute 06:30 · Daily · Essential
The Heroic Minute — rising at the fixed hour without hesitation, Serviam! on the lips — followed by the offering of every ordinary task as a child of God.
- Holy Mass 07:00 · Daily · Essential
The root and center of the interior life, from which the sanctification of the whole working day draws its sap.
- Mental Prayer — Opus Dei 07:30 · Daily · Essential
The first of two daily half-hours of conversation with God — the norm Opus Dei holds most jealously, where divine filiation becomes a lived intimacy and not a mere idea.
- Mental Prayer — Opus Dei 19:00 · Daily · Essential
The second period of mental prayer, gathering the work of the day back to God so that labor and prayer become a single offering.
- New Testament Reading 21:00 · Daily · Essential
A few minutes of the New Testament itself, taken in order — entering each scene as one more of the people present, so that the Gospel is inhabited and not merely read.
- Spiritual Reading 21:30 · Daily · Essential
Ten or fifteen minutes of a solid spiritual book, read slowly with a pen — steady formation that keeps the rule from hardening into routine.
- Angelus 12:00 · Daily · Essential
A pause at midday to recall the Incarnation, breaking the morning's work to remember whose child you are and for whom you labor.
- Particular Examination 12:05 · Daily · Essential
Right after the Angelus, two or three minutes on the one point settled with your director — the predominant defect to uproot or the virtue to win — counting the morning's falls and setting a purpose for the afternoon.
- Holy Rosary 18:00 · Daily · Essential
The daily Marian devotion St. Josemaría called a powerful weapon — Our Lady's hand resting on the ordinary day.
- Visit to the Blessed Sacrament 13:30 · Daily · Essential
A brief stop before the Tabernacle in the midst of errands and work — a son returning, even for a moment, to his Father's house.
- Examination of Conscience 22:00 · Daily · Essential
The night's accounting of how the little duty of each moment was kept or missed — for in this rule, failures are not shrugged off but confessed.
- Confession 10:00 · Sat · Essential
Frequent sacramental confession, the weekly washing that keeps a soul pursuing sanctity in the world honest and clean.
- Preces (Opus Dei) 08:00 · Daily · Essential
The vocal prayers of the Work, prayed each day — a litany that binds the member to the whole of Opus Dei, to the Church, the Pope, and the souls entrusted to its apostolate.
- Three Hail Marys (Opus Dei) 22:30 · Daily · Essential
Three Hail Marys before sleep, asking Our Lady for the gift of holy purity to guard the day just ended and the one to come.
In the Ember app, adopt this tradition as your own plan of life, practice by practice, with times and reminders.