24 — INTERIOR APOSTOLATE

Presence of God. — I place myself at the feet of Jesus, sweetest Savior and our Redeemer, so that He may teach me how to collaborate with Him in the salvation of souls.

Meditation

1 — Apostolate, considered in its totality, includes all that we can do in collaboration with Christ to spread supernatural life in souls. Apostolate is always a collaboration with Jesus and reaches its goal only when it helps to confer and develop divine grace in souls. Catholic doctrine indicates prayer and sacrifice as the fundamental means of this collaboration with Christ; the encyclical “Mystici corporis” also speaks first of “prayers and voluntary mortifications” and then of the external activity of pastors and faithful. Collaboration with Jesus for the salvation of souls finds its deepest center in prayer and sacrifice, precisely because Jesus Himself redeemed the world, in a special way, through prayer and sacrifice.

In fact, Jesus saved us not only by the external activity of preaching, teaching, instituting and administering the sacraments, but also by the obedience and silence of His hidden life, by prayer of which the Gospel so often speaks explicitly, and above all by the sacrifice of the Cross, in which His whole redemptive work reached its summit: “Precisely then,” says St. John of the Cross, “He accomplished the greatest work of all He had ever done in life... the work by which He reconciled and united the human race with God through grace” (Ascent II, 7, 11). In first place, therefore, stands the so-called “interior apostolate” of prayer and self-immolation; on this is then founded the external apostolate of action, which draws its strength and efficacy from the first.

2 — Apostolate does not consist in doing “on a small scale” all that Jesus did “on a great scale” for the salvation of the world, but in “taking part” in His work. The more our action participates in what is deepest and most fruitful in Christ’s work, the more effective it will be; this is reached precisely through prayer and sacrifice embraced with generosity and constancy in union with Christ’s sacrifice, for the salvation of souls. This is why the Church—while recognizing the urgency of external apostolate—continues to desire and support those forms of contemplative life dedicated to interior apostolate: “Religious orders devoted to contemplation are in a certain way necessary to the Church,” Pius XII recently affirmed (Allocution of H.H. Pius XII to the International Congress for the Updating of the States of Perfection, December 8, 1950).

But for interior apostolate truly to be the most fruitful, the soul dedicated to it must nourish in itself a living apostolic flame, as St. Teresa of Avila desired, she who did not hesitate to say to her daughters: “The day when your prayers, disciplines, desires and fasts are not employed for what I have said [the salvation of souls], know that you would not attain the end for which the Lord has gathered you here” (Way 3, 10). The apostolic ideal must impel the soul to embrace with full generosity a life of continual hidden immolation, in order to make of it a powerful means of salvation for brothers and sisters; and on the other hand it must spur it to progress rapidly in the path of holiness so as to become soon able to obtain from God all those graces it desires for the Church. “For them I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified” (Jn. 17, 19); this must be, in a wholly particular way, the motto of the interior soul. The holier a soul is, the more profound an influence it exercises in the Church.

Colloquy

“To be Your spouse, O Jesus!... and, through my union with You, mother of souls, all this should be enough for me. Nevertheless I feel in myself other vocations: I feel the vocation of warrior, of priest, of apostle, of doctor, of martyr... I would like to perform all the most heroic actions, I feel the courage of a crusader, I would like to die on a field of battle for the defense of the Church... I would like to enlighten souls like the prophets and doctors. I would like to go through the earth, preaching Your Name and planting on unbelieving soil Your glorious Cross, O Beloved! Above all, however, I would want martyrdom. Martyrdom! There is the dream of my youth! But this too is another folly, because I do not desire only one kind of torment; to satisfy me, all would be needed.

“To all my follies what do You answer, O my Jesus? Is there perhaps down here a soul smaller, more powerless than mine? Yet, precisely because of my weakness, You were pleased to satisfy my childish desires, and now You want to satisfy other desires greater than the universe.

“I understood that only love makes the members [of Christ’s Mystical Body] act, and that, if love were extinguished, the apostles would no longer announce the Gospel and martyrs would refuse to shed their blood. I understood too that love contains in itself all vocations, that love is everything and embraces all times and all places, since it is eternal! O Jesus, my Love, I have finally found my vocation! my vocation is love! Yes, I have found my place in the bosom of the Church, and this place, O my God, has been assigned to me by You; in the heart of the Church, which is my Mother, I shall be love!... Thus I shall be everything; thus my dream will come true.

“My brothers work for me, while I remain very close to the royal throne, and I love for those who fight” (T.B.G. St. 11).

O Lord, only love will give value to my prayer, will give efficacy to my poor works, will make me generous in embracing every kind of mortification and penance that faithful observance of my rule continually offers and requires of me, every occasion of sacrifice that the concrete circumstances of life present to me. Give me, O Lord, I beg You, this love, so that, in the bosom of the Church and in union with You, I may exercise a fruitful and effective apostolate. “An act of pure love is more precious in God’s sight... and brings greater benefit to the Church than all other works put together” (J.C. C. 29, 2). How I would like, O my God, to have this “pure love”! How I desire to strip myself generously of every selfishness, of every self-love, how I desire to forget myself totally in order to attain a love so effective for the Church and for souls!