Romana

In its 17th issue, corresponding to the year 2023, the journal Studia et Documenta (published by the Istituto Storico San Josemaría Escrivá) has made available, among other texts, one of St. Josemaría’s foundational letters, number 29. Until now it had only been available for members of Opus Dei.

Luis Cano, editor of the letters, wrote an article in the same issue about the 38 letters of the founder of Opus Dei. These letters, because of their length and spiritual themes, and the fact that they are addressed to all the members of Opus Dei, are usually called foundational. The title of this article is “The Letters of St. Josemaría: a hypothesis about their chronology and literary genre.” Together with another article by Francesc Castells (“The Letters of St. Josemaría: study of their chronology”), they make up the first section of this issue, dedicated exclusively to the Letters.

Since 2020, two volumes with eight of these Letters have already been published in book form: nos. 1-4 in the first volume (2020) and nos. 5-8 in the second (2022). The bibliographical section of this issue of Studia et Documenta has an editorial note of about thirty pages on the latter volume, signed by Javier Sesé.

Letter no. 29, whose main theme is the formation and apostolate of the supernumeraries of Opus Dei, is found in the documents section on pages 279 to 351. The first ten pages have an introduction by Luis Cano, and the last two are a list of variants (the critical apparatus for the present edition).