22 — APOSTOLIC HOPE

Presence of God. — O Jesus, in your power, in your infinite love, in your Passion I place every hope for the souls you have entrusted to me.

Meditation

1 — In his work the apostle needs to be sustained by strong hope. Moments of enthusiasm are brief; successes are soon followed by failures; difficulties are many; the struggle unleashed by hostile forces is harsh and unceasing; and if the apostle were not anchored in God by firm theological hope, sooner or later he would give up, discouraged, in the enterprise. “I have overcome the world” (Jn. 16:33), Jesus said, and sending the Apostles to carry out his victorious mission he assured them: “I am with you all days even to the consummation of the world” (Mt. 28:20). Here is the foundation of apostolic hope: Christ’s victory, his unceasing assistance. Yes, He is with us all days, therefore also on dark days when the horizon is black with no glimpse of light, when the enemy triumphs, friends depart, and humanly speaking no possibility of success is seen. If we trusted in our own resources, abilities, works, we would be right to despair and surrender; but it is not so. We hope, and we are certain in our hope, because God is omnipotent, because God wills that all men be saved, because Christ redeemed us with his Blood, because He died for us and for us rose again, because finally his promises - promises of a God - are infallible: “heaven and earth shall pass, but my words shall not pass” (Mt. 24:35).

Relying on God’s salvific will, on his infinite power, on Christ’s Redemption, the apostle must nourish certain hope that in the end grace will triumph. But at the same time, so as not to expose himself to illusions, he must be convinced that victory is reached only by passing through Calvary. “The apostle is not greater than He who sent him” (Jn. 13:16); if Jesus reached the triumph of Resurrection only after his Passion and most painful death, the apostle cannot claim to tread another way. Hours of darkness will necessarily come for him too, but instead of being a sign of defeat they will be the prelude to victory; instead of being a sign of abandonment by God, they will be proof that God is with him, precisely because He is leading him by the same way by which He led his divine Son.

2 — Jesus too knew failure: when, after finishing his discourse in the synagogue, the Nazarenes in indignation “led Him to the brow of the hill, that they might cast Him down” (Lk. 4:29); when, twice, the Jews scandalized by his words “took up stones to stone Him” (Jn. 10:30-31); when the Pharisees conspired against Him and plotted deceit to condemn Him to death; when Judas betrayed Him; when his own abandoned Him and He, become the mockery of soldiers, was scourged, crowned with thorns, dressed as a mock king, slapped, spat upon; when He was preferred less than Barabbas; when He was dragged to Calvary between two thieves and crucified in their midst. Humanly speaking, one can indeed say that Jesus’ apostolate ended in a clamorous failure, in the death of a criminal. All this must be deeply impressed in the apostle’s mind so that he may not be scandalized when something similar occurs in his life: “If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (Jn. 15:20).

Through persecutions, humiliations, and failures the apostle will learn not to trust his own strength, to regard himself as an unprofitable servant even after toiling much, to become convinced of his own insufficiency and the insufficiency of all human means, and therefore to place all his hopes in God alone. He will learn to work only for love of God, without seeking the comfort of success, renouncing even the legitimate satisfaction of seeing the results of his labors; he will learn to detach himself from men’s opinion and judgment, to act independently of their approval or disapproval, and to await only God’s judgment and approval. The adversities and sorrows the apostle meets in his work constitute his dark night, comparable to that of contemplatives; painful night, but most precious, because ordered to purify his spirit of all remnants of self-love, egoism, vanity, and attachment to creatures and their esteem. If well accepted, this night will lead him little by little to ever greater interior purity and therefore to ever fuller union with God. He must therefore remain firm in hope and, despite struggles, difficulties, and failures, be sure of success not only for the salvation of souls entrusted to him, but also for his own personal sanctification. And if, by God’s permission, this success remains hidden from him and all his work, like Jesus’ own, ends in apparent defeat, in the Wounds and Blood of the divine Crucified he will find strength still to hope, to hope against all hope.

Colloquy

“O Lord, I want to draw your mercy upon this poor world not only by the generosity of my sacrifice and detachment, but also by the generosity of my confidence. I want to believe against all evidence, to hope against all hope. I want to believe with unshakable confidence even when things seem to become ever more painful and difficult to resolve. O Lord, I want to move you by the firmness and generosity of my confidence!

“I know and firmly believe that You love me, that You permit everything for your greater glory and for my greater good; I know that I can cooperate in the salvation of souls and that the sufferings of this time are not proportioned to future glory; I know that to become saints one must suffer much and that one reaches pure love through pure suffering; I know that all is possible for me in You who are my support.

“Even when crushed, anguished, in agony, looking at You, Jesus Crucified, I can always taste an intimate, supernatural joy, because You admit me to share your sufferings so as to conform me to your Passion and one day admit me to share your glory.

“O Jesus, before any suffering, humiliation, trial, interior or exterior pain, I can always rejoice, thinking that You honor me by inviting me to share your Passion, your redemptive work for souls. Therefore, far from considering these sorrows as evils, teach me to embrace and welcome them as favors and precious means for my sanctification, vivifying them with love and with peaceful, total adherence to your will. O Lord, in this spirit I intend to offer You my prayer, my mortification, daily renunciation, and continual acceptance of the sufferings You send me, to draw graces upon the whole Church, to save souls” (cf. Sr. Carmela of the Holy Spirit, o.c.d.).