The Forge

The Forge contains 1055 points for meditation, arranged in thirteenchapters. Many of the points are clearly autobiographical. They come fromnotes written by the founder of Opus Dei in some spiritual copybooks, notexcatly a diary, which he kept in the 1930s. In these personal jottings, herecorded incidents that showed the action of God in his soul, so that hecould go over them and meditate on them in his personal prayer. He alsorecorded events and anecdotes from everyday life from which he alwaystried to draw some supernatural lesson. Monsignor Escrivá never likeddrawing attention to himself, and so references to circumstances and eventsof an autobiographical nature are normally related in the third person.The central theme of The Forge can be summarized in these words: “Ifwe are faithful to him, Jesus’ own life will somehow be repeated in the lifeof each one of us, both in its internal development (the process ofsanctification) and in our outward behavior” (418).