Mary Beth Burger is a forty-two year old supernumerary.  She is a wife and mother of four.  She is a physical therapist and owns an outpatient orthopedic physical therapy clinic in Virginia.  Her oldest child, Christopher, was born blind and suffers from other handicaps, including a form of autism.  She and her husband adopted their second-youngest child, who was born in Vietnam.  Mary Beth joined Opus Dei in 1989. 

Below are excepts from an interview captured in Women of Opus Dei

Q. How does Opus Dei have an impact on your professional standards, your training, and the way you carry out your work, whether it's your work in the home or your physical therapy work?

In order to give the most glory to God, you need to do whatever you're doing to the best of your ability - whether it is in the house trying to cook meals or have the house in order.  I'm no the most organized person, but I try to do things the best I can and do them as well as I can.  I take a lot of continuing education classes because I want to be as up-to-date as possible, because I want to be able to help the patients physically the best I can because then I'm giving more glory to God by doing the best I can be doing.

It's trying to make whatever ordinary things you do extraordinary by supernaturalizing or offering to God whatever you're doing.  You're trying to do them the best you can whether you're out with the kids and at the park, or at work, and trying to be as cheerful as possible.

In the morning before they wake up and I'm doing my prayer, the first thing I pray for is patience and cheerfulness for when the kids wake up and everyone is calling me at the same time: Mom and Mom and Mom... just trying to keep the cheerfulness and the patience.  Also I pray to see humor in certain things to that I don't react with my Irish temper but try to react to things as best I can.  When you know you are doing it for God, you're trying to do it the best you can.

Q: You invest a lot of time in mental prayer, doing your spiritual reading.  What does this really do for you?  What's the payoff?

Well, it gives me focus for my day; it gives me balance.  It helps keep everything I do through the day centered on God.  When I don't do the different things such as prayer or my spiritual reading or the Angelus at noon, I lose that presence of God.  There are days when God hasn't been up at the forefront, and those days are not as fulfilling and don't have as much meaning.  I'm actually much happier when I do struggle to fit them in.

Q: So in general do you think being in Opus Dei has helped you as a mother, especially with a child who has a serious handicap?

It makes me see my son as a child of God.  All of us are children of God, and all of us are special blessings.  But it puts a whole other slant to it when you see Christopher and I know that he's a special gift that God has given me, and having Opus Dei has helped me to look at that very positively.  If I didn't have Opus Dei, I don't know if I would be as positive in my thoughts. 

Having the Asperger's, a learning disability, as well as blindness impacts Christopher a lot.  Initially I thought, Okay, a blind child, you can help him to be independent.  But when you have the Asperger's and a learning disability on top of the vision problem, it changes how independent Christopher may become as an adult.  My job is to get Christopher to be the best person he can be, to grow in God's love and wisdom and to be the best he can be.  But I take one day at a time with the grace of God and with the support and guidance of Opus Dei.