VIDEO INTERVIEWS

Angela Fortunato: public health administrator talks about finding her vocation

Doug Hinderer: corporate executive talks about his life and Opus Dei

Andrea Feehery: working on a hospitality staff

Elizabeth Heil: art grad student talks about diversity in Opus Dei

Virginia Hughes, wife, mother and lawyer, on joining Opus Dei

Pat Anderson: an HR director for Opus Dei in the U.S. talks about spiritual guidance and the roles of men and women in Opus Dei

Vince Lozano: technical writer and Opus Dei cooperator

PERSONAL TESTIMONIES

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Faith on the pages of a mystery novel.

Sergei: Sanctifying Work in Russia

Becoming Kazakh

Surprised by God

The Adventure Begins in Korea

A Nurse in Haiti

VIDEO TESTIMONIES

"My family is everything to me"

Finding God in my daily work as an art curator

A Young Christian in Lebanon

Lawyer, mother of 3 on how her faith helps her juggle all her roles

Oskari: Finding God on Google

Marilyn and Jean-René Philibert: cooperators of Opus Dei

"It was as though a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders"

My Family and Johann Sebastian Bach

Cristina Zudaire, an Argentinean supernumerary, is the mother of five, an organist, and a lover of Bach’s music. She tries to always leave room for beauty in "the hustle and bustle of daily life."

September 14, 2009

Ever since childhood, my father encouraged me to study music, and even though we had very little money, he managed to buy a good piano and selected the best-known teacher in the town for our piano lessons.

I met the Work when I was 18 through a friend of a friend of my mother. She brought me to the residence when I was looking for a place where I could go to Confession.  

At that time I was studying music and also studying to be a teacher of philosophy. That is where I met my husband, Daniel. Not long after our wedding I asked for admission to the Work. We wanted to live in Rauch, a small country community in the Pampa where my husband had been born and we were eager to begin a large family.

In the parish church of this small town there is a beautiful pipe organ. A few months before our wedding, some restorations had been completed, and this allowed me to continue with my musical studies.

We filled our home with music, good books, and artistic appreciation. Our five children began to arrive. I had learned in the Work that my family came first, and this reassured me that it would not be “a waste of time” to devote myself to them, enthusiastically forming their young minds and hearts.

But since music is the other side of my “vocation,” I also felt at ease when I spent some time each day sitting at the piano or organ mastering the great works of Bach. Johann Sebastian Bach himself has been for me a wonderful model of a loving father of a large family to whom he devoted the best hours of his busy life without detriment to his work as a composer. Some of his loveliest works were created for the musical education of his family. As my own children have grown, music has also become an important part of their lives.

Now they are all adolescents. The oldest studies voice, the second has asked to join the Work as a numerary and is still in high school, as are her two younger brothers. My youngest daughter is 12. Together with my husband, they belong to the parish choir and sing in church every Sunday. They love nature, culture, and art. And they all love the Work, since they see it as part of their family.

Recently I gave some organ concerts completely devoted to those great works of Bach that I have been studying for years amidst the hustle and bustle of the family, the tasks of homemaking, time with God and friendships.