Chapter III. The Unity and Sublimity of the Apostolic Life: A Synthesis of Contemplation and Action

"For the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth."

II Cor. 3: 6 "The work of the active life is twofold. One proceeds from the fullness of contemplation, such as teaching and preaching. . . . The other work of the active life consists entirely in outward occupation, for instance, almsgiving, receiving guests." Summa thcol., Ha Ilae, q. 188, a. 6

Having dealt with the union of the purified soul with God and the contemplation presupposed by such union, we would now do well to discuss its fruits in the apostolic life as maintained in its unity and sublimity. To define purely contemplative religious life is an obviously less exacting task than to define the kind of life that unites both contemplation and apostolic activity. The difficulty here arises partly from the fact that the ideal of apostolic religious life is realized under quite a number of different forms, according to the place given to action. This place varies somewhat in the Carmelites, the Dominicans, and the sons of St. Francis, not to mention the older orders.

Nevertheless the difficulty we experience in defining the apostolic religious life, in grasping what really constitutes its spirit, arises chiefly from the fact that we are prone to materialize it, to stop short at the letter, at the multiplicity of somewhat tangible elements within it, without rising above these to its well-balanced unity, which alone can explain the true role of these different elements and give them life. Here is a case where we need to recall St. Paul's words: "Our sufficiency is from God. Who also hath made us fit ministers of the new testament, not in the letter, but in the spirit. For the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth." 1

When we have looked, as St. Thomas generally does, at the difficulty of the problem, we shall afterward be in a better position to understand the worth of its solution as the holy doctor gives it to us.

the apostolic life: .its difficulty and superiority

As higher organisms have many clearly differentiated but convergent functions, so the apostolic or mixed life is obviously more complex than the purely contemplative life of the Carthusians and the active life of the hospitalers. Precisely this complexity makes the apostolic life particularly difficult. In religious orders like St. Dominic's, St. Francis', the Carmelites, the Premonstratensians, and others, monastic observances such as fasting and abstinence, night watches, the deep study of philosophy and theology, integral liturgical prayer, that is, the Divine Office chorally recited, and finally, in Cor. 3: 6.

a 7 o THE LOVE OF GOD the apostolate through oral or written teaching and preaching, all find a place.

If one of diese elements is overstressed, the harmony of the apostolic life is endangered; there occurs hypertrophy of one organ and atrophy of another, a lack of balance of functions, and consequently more or less serious disorder. Every evidence points to the necessity of maintaining a close unity in such diversity. Unity is breath to this life; when it is lost, all is lost. The mixed life disintegrates into its various elements and perishes. Substitutes resembling it take its place but have not its high nature. Sometimes we hear people say that the old orders have had their day. If they have remained faithful to the ideals of the saints who founded diem, how can this be true?

If we lose sight of that higher unity which is die very soul of apostolic life, some of us come to diink tiiat monastic observances harm study; others consider that deep study works against proper monastic observance. We even manage to establish an apparent opposition between study and preaching. Some romantic preachers depreciate philosophical and theological teaching as too abstract and lifeless: "baseless, formless, alright for the classroom." On the other hand, we find men of learning occupied in patient historical and critical research who belittle preaching, looking upon it as sometiiing superficial and meaningless. In one way or another what constitutes the life of all great apostles is forgotten. Men of deep meditation, prayer, true contemplatives, the Pauls and Dominies of every age, have given to other souls for their salvation, their own living contemplation of God and of Christ.

Blessed Henry Suso in his Boo\ of Eternal Wisdom clearly points out how the spiritual life is only too frequently materialized by two opponent groups, the one devoting themselves almost exclusively to study, and the other to observances and austerities; he makes no allusion to those who give themselves entirely to the externals of the apostolate or to natural, and largely unsanctified, activity.

The disciple desired to know if somewhere a man might not exist who had reached the noble height of renouncement (about which die Truth had spoken to him), a man really transformed into Christ; and he desired that God would make this man known to him so that he might speak familiarly with him. And as the disciple was thinking seriously of this, he was lifted out of himself and taken into a country where the senses cannot go. There he beheld an image hanging between heaven and earth, the image of a man whose look was full of goodness though he was held fast to a cross. And the disciple saw ranged about the cross yet unable to draw near to it two classes of people. One of these saw the image interiorly but not exteriorly; the others exteriorly but not interiorly. . . . Oh! Eternal Truth, said the disciple, tell me the meaning of this marvellous vision.

And a voice answered him interiorly saying: The image which you have seen represents the only Son of God, inasmuch as He has taken upon Himself our human nature. You saw but one image and yet it was diversified and multiplied, representing as it does all the men who are His members and, through Him and in Him, sons of God. The Head rules the many members of the one body. He is the first born by reason of His assumption into the Divine Person; the others, on the contrary, become sons only in so far as they are transformed in union with this image. The cross signifies that a man who has really renounced himself ought always to live interiorly as well as exteriorly, in complete abnegation, accepting all that God wills him to suffer, no matter from

27a THE LOVE OF GOD whence it comes, dying to himself and being ready to take anything for the glory of our Heavenly Father. Such men are noble within and on guard without.

Those who see this image interiorly but not exteriorly merely reason about the life of Christ, considering it only speculatively but not practically, failing to mortify their nature by imitating this image. They think of it but afterwards give themselves up to their natural tendencies and false liberty, deeming those of a different outlook than themselves as narrow and unintelligent men.

Those who consider this image exteriorly but not interiorly, seem hard and severe. They perform penitential exercises, live circumspectly, and enact before men a kind of honorable and holy life, but neglect the interior consideration of Christ, Whose life was sweet and lovable. They are absolutely unlike the model which they themselves propose. . . . Self will remains, preserved to such a degree that they never come to possess the divine virtues of obedience, patience, submissiveness, and others of like character which make men conformable to the image of Christ. 2

Blessed Henry Suso then understood why "these two kinds of people stood about the cross but would not approach it." He understood much better than he had before, that "God has given the potentiality and the power to become the sons of God only to those who are born of God. . . . The man who has renounced himself, who has God alone as his father, sees nothing temporal purely in its temporality but looks upon and understands all things in God."¹ The "opened eyes" with which he regards everything get thensight from the contemplation of revealed mysteries, a contemplation superior to the exterior practices of penance and

to mere study. It ought to be, together widi the love of God, the soul of the apostolate. This truth can become more evident to us if we consider the genuine purpose of religious life, ordered not to personal sanctification alone but to the salvation of souls as well.

To see more clearly what should be the relationship between the different elements of the religious life, particularly in the case of the orders already mentioned, we need to ask ourselves what is their special end, since the end, the reason for which the means exist, is first in the order of intention, although last in the order of execution.

As an answer to the problem, we have St. Thomas' remark that preaching the great mysteries of faith ought to flow from the contemplation of these divine mysteries, "ex plenitudine contemplationis, derivatur." This serves as the principle of his response: "It is better to give to others the fruits of one's contemplation than merely to contemplate. . . . Accordingly the highest place in religious orders is held by those which are directed to teaching and preaching, which, moreover, are nearest to die episcopal perfection. . . . The second place belongs to those which are directed to contemplation, and the third to those which are occupied with external actions." 4 In other words, the apostle, like Jesus Christ and the Twelve, should be a contemplative, passing on his contemplation to others in order to save and sanctify them. St. Thomas' words expressing the particular end of religious

life dedicated to the apostolate have become the motto of his Order: Contemplari et contemplata aliis trader e: to contemplate and to give to others the fruits of contemplation.

But how are these words to be understood ? Three interpretations are proposed, plainly corresponding to three different mentalities, each more or less aware of its own spirit. The Carmelites of Salamanca 5 set them down as follows:

According to die first interpretation, reminiscent of some views expressed by Suarez, the mixed or apostolic life tends equally to contemplation and to action, as to two principal and immediate ends, ex aequo.

According to the second interpretation, a more or less conscious opinion of many preachers, the mixed or apostolic religious life has apostolic action for its primary and principal end, but it also tends toward some sort of contemplation as a means necessary to action.

The third interpretation gives us a much loftier view, holding that the mixed or apostolic religious life tends, on the contrary, principally and primarily to that contemplation and union with God which it implies and secondarily to action, an effect of die apostle's own contemplation and a possible means of disposing his hearers in their turn for the contemplation of divine things and for union with God.

We need now to evaluate these three interpretations, so strikingly different in spirit. From St. Thomas' point of view, the first cannot be admitted. The mixed or apostolic life cannot tend to contemplation and to acdon, as to two principal and immediate ends ex aequo. The notion of two entirely adequate ends, neither of which would be subordinate to the other implies a duality without subordination and diere-

6 Cursus theologicus, tr. XX, de statu rcligioso, disp. II, dub. 3, no. 29.

fore the destruction of unity in religious life. Action and contemplation sought as two principal and immediate ends would be prejudicial to each odier. Finally, a choice between them would have to be made. The hound cannot chase two rabbits at once.

The second interpretation is no more admissible. If in fact the mixed life has action for its primary and principal end and tends to contempladon only as a means to action, nothing remains to distinguish it from the active religious life, which also ought to give some place to prayer in order that the corporal works of mercy may be exercised in a supernatural manner. Besides, contemplation and union with God cannot conceivably be made a means subordinated to action, for they are greater than action. Obviously diis life can hold nothing higher than union with God through contemplation and love. 6 As a result, apostolic acdon has real worth only so far as it stems from this source, in no way a subordinate means to it but its eminent cause. Moreover, apostolic action itself is a means subordinated to divine union, for the purpose of the apostle is to lead souls to union with God. The order of agents corresponds to the order of ends: "Ordo agentium debet correspondere ordini finium." 7 The apostle seeks to lead others to divine union, and his own union with God serves to bring them to share the same divine gift and to be saved.

The third interpretadon holds that the mixed or apostolic life tends primarily and principally toward contemplation and union with God, not stopping there as the purely contemplative life does, but flowing over into apostolic acdon,

preaching, the administration of the sacraments, and spiritual direction. 8 The Carmelites of Salamanca expressed dieir view in this wise, and the Dominican Passerini followed Blessed Humbert of Rome 9 in holding die same opinion: "The mixed or apostolic life has as its principal end contemplation or union with God, a source of fruitfulness for the salvation of souls." 10

St. Thomas clearly took the same position when he said that tiieological teaching and preaching are works of the active life but ought to overflow from the fullness of contemplation if they are to bear fruit. 11 He adds that our Lord Jesus Christ was not content to limit Himself to a purely contemplative life but chose one that presupposed abundant contemplation and shared it with souls through preaching. 12 St. Thomas puts it this way: "For it is becoming to that kind of life, which we hold Christ to have embraced, wherein a man delivers to others the fruits of his contempladon, that he devote himself first of all to contemplation, and that he afterward come down to the publicity of active life by associating with other men." 13

8 Salmanticcnscs, he. tit.

9 Lettre sure les trois veeux et explication de la Regie de saint Augustin, chap. 5, on prayer.

11 Ha Hae, q. 188, a. 6. St. Thomas makes no denial that in the purely contemplative life, that of Chartreux for example, there is a virtual and hidden apostolate, a profound influence on souls through prayer and immolation; the solitary in this way reaches souls in Christ, in whom he regards them, and can obtain for them great graces of conversion and sanctification. But the hidden apostolate of prayer and immolation is to be found in the aposde also, in St. Paul and St. Dominic, and they have the apostolate properly so called as well, which, if it docs not add to the intensity of their contemplation and union with God, is an extension and visible reflection of it. Christ's life is more complete with His preaching of the gospel than it would have been without it.

Disciples of St. Thomas have even pointed out that the relationship of contemplation and union with God to the apostolic life bears a likeness to the relationship of the Incarnation to Redemption. The Incarnation, the hypostatic union of the human nature of Christ with the uncreated person of the Word, is not ordered to our redemption as a means to a higher end, but as an eminent cause to an inferior effect. St. Thomas tells us: "God loves Christ not only more than He loves the whole human race, but more than He loves the entire created universe: because He willed for Him the greater good in giving Him a name that is above all names, so far as He was true God. Nor did anything of His excellence diminish when God delivered Him up to death for the salvation of the human race; rather did He become thereby a glorious conqueror: The government was placed upon His shoulder, according to Isa. 9: 6." 14

From all eternity, by the formal motive of mercy, 15 God has willed not an Incarnation subordinated to the Redemption, as a means to a higher end, but the redemptive Incarnation, in view of which He permitted the sin of the first man. 10 Similarly, the purpose of an order dedicated to the mixed or apostolic life is not the apostolate, with contemplation subordinated to it as to a higher end, but contemplation becoming fruitful in the apostolate.

The view here expressed conforms, moreover, to the Church's habit of making a distinction in the constitutions of religious orders between their primary and principal end: religious perfection, union with God by die spirit of faith and

charity, the end to which the three virtues and vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are subordinated; and the secondary or derivative end: one or other of the works of mercy.

Only St. Thomas' doctrine clearly shows the unity and sublimity of the apostolic life. He brings out plainly how the apostolate must have contemplation as its source. Then the good news of the gospel is preached in an enlightening, living, simple, and penetrating way, with unction to draw hearts and deep conviction to win them. 17 An apostolic order can then be said to have a unique end, contemplation bearing fruit in the apostolate.

Apostolic work, preaching, when they well up from the contemplation of divine things, give not only the letter but the spirit of the word of God, of supernatural mysteries, the commandments, and the counsels. The letter of the gospel can be easily known and even easily preached in a literary fashion. The conclusions of moral theology as expounded in most manuals can also be stated with a little application. What the faithful demand of a preacher, however, is the soul of things, that breath and supernatural flame, altogether different from romantic lyricism, which burns with the brief blaze of straw quickly set on fire and just as quickly turns to ashes. The breath of any apostolate, of preaching, should be the breath of divine truth, a great spirit of faith, of trust, of essentially supernatural love, putting the accent where it belongs on the mysteries of the Incarnation and the Redemption, the Eucharist, the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity, eternal life begun on earth and consummated in heaven.

As St. Paul says, God is indeed our sufficiency, making us fit ministers of the new testament, not in the letter, but in die spirit, the letter bringing death but the spirit giving life. "Our sufficiency is from God. Who also hath made us fit ministers of die new testament, not in the letter, but in the spirit. For the letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth." "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowldge of the glory of God, in the face of Christ Jesus. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency may be of the power of God, and not of us." 18 Here St. Paul is telling us of infused contemplation of revealed mysteries, which bears good fruit in the apostolate.

The letter of the Old Law, St. Thomas remarks, 19 made known what we must do to avoid sin but put no check on concupiscence, and wrought no justification in men like the New Law, which is, more than anything else, spirit and charity poured forth in our hearts. The letter of the Old Law even in a sense provided an occasion for sin, because concupiscence moves with more ardor after forbidden pleasures; and the knowledge that we are forbidden to do something which we continue to covet will kill us, if we deviate from righteousness to follow our inclinations. In fact, to sin at the same time against the natural law and die written law is a more serious matter than to sin only against the former. In this sense the letter of the Old Law occasionally did work death; not that it was bad, for it forbade evil; but because it was imperfect; for it failed to remove the cause of evil. Law, without the spirit engraven in men's hearts, is an occasion

for death. We need to receive that law which is spirit and life and pours forth charity into our hearts. 20

To grasp what the preaching of the gospel should be like, we must recall, as St. Thomas says, 21 that die New Law is only secondarily a written law, but above and before all a law infused into men's souls.

Now that which is preponderant in the law of the New Testament, and whereon all its efficacy is based, is the grace of the Holy Ghost, which is given through faith in Christ (Rom. 7:2). The law of the spirit of life, in Christ Jesus, hath delivered me from the law of sin and of death. . . . Nevertheless the New Law contains certain things that dispose us to receive the grace of the Holy Ghost, and pertaining to the use of that grace: such things are of secondary importance, so to speak, in the New Law; and the faithful needed to be instructed concerning them, both by word and writing, both as to what they should believe and as to what they should do. 22

The preaching of the gospel ought therefore above all to be spirit and life; that is, it should spring from contemplation of the mysteries of salvation in order that the faithful may truly live by them. The apostle carries the light of contemplation in a fragile vessel "that the excellency may be of the power of God, and not of us." Had our Lord's apostles been rich, powerful, of noble blood, all the great things they did would have been attributed to them and not to God. Therefore St. Paul adds: "In all things we suffer tribulation,

20 As St. Thomas observes (la llae, q. 106, a. i, ad 311m), those in the state of grace in the time of the Old Testament had divine life in their hearts, and under this title already belonged in a sense to the New Testament, for they possessed sanctifying grace by having at least implicit faith in the Christ to come.

UNITY OF THE APOSTOLIC LIFE 2 8r but are not distressed ; we are straitened, but are not destitute; we suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we perish not: always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that die life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh." 23 In a sense, this carrying of Christ's death in other mortal flesh always continues in die life of the persecuted Church; and while Jesus promised a hundredfold to those who would follow Him, He also foretold persecution. 24

Many more people than we realize expect those who preach the gospel to have an even greater hunger and thirst for justice than their own. Supernatural hunger and thirst far surpass any kind of passing endiusiasm and endure through the frequent setbacks of the apostolate only because of the gift of fortitude, corresponding, as St. Augustine and St. Thomas point out, to the evangelical beatitude: "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice." 25 The gift of fortitude, united to the doctrine of faith and the fire of charity, indeed makes athletes of the faith, as preachers should be. More people than we surmise look for this in those who bring the word of God to them.

We must understand that the apostolic life is not only an exact mean between two extremes toward which youth deviates by turns, first to a dried-up scientific attitude and then to a lyric approach without doctrinal foundation. The just mean is a summit, a culminating point, the great peak of living divine truth, which constitutes the soul of the perfect

mean, somewhat in the same way that charity animates or informs the moral virtues and lifts them above mediocrity or lukewarmness.

Those true apostles whom the Church has raised to her altars attained this end. Their words recall the Verbum sptrans amorem, the Word from which Love proceeds, really reflecting for us the inner life of God. In them we see the special end of the apostolic life, contemplative and at the same time active.

To attain its end an apostolic order should neglect none of the elements of formation determined by its divinely inspired founder, for to founders God has given an exceptional grace of state for the guidance of their children. These elements must be seen not only in themselves but especially in relation to the end to which they are ordered; from this point of view nothing is reckoned as of small moment in religious life. Things little in themselves become great because of their relationship to their end; just as the functioning of any cell in an organism cannot be unimportant to it.

From this vantage point we see that all the elements of apostolic religious life are ordered in an ascending and balanced harmony: (1) regular observance, (2) study, (3) wellperformed liturgical prayer leading to contemplation and union with God and then overflowing into (4) apostolic action. This life rises nearer and nearer to God to reach divine intimacy and then flows back to souls to save and sanctify them by making them know and love the mystery of Christ, who will Himself lead them to the Fadier.

A glance at the different elements of this life as lived in the orders of St. Dominic, St. Francis, and of Carmel, will serve to convince us of this. Regular observances, long or total abstinence, fasting, and night watches, have all been chosen by the founders of these orders in a spirit of penance or of immolation. He who can grasp their supernatural meaning sees them as a worship of adoration offered to God. The priest, especially if he has entered the religious state, ought to remember that, since he shares in the priesthood of Christ by the priestly character and by grace, he should also share in some measure in our Lord's state of victim. Since Christians are told to "take up their cross daily," priests particularly must heed this word, for they should work for the salvation of souls by the same means that our Lord Himself chose, selfimmolation, as Father Lacordaire reminds us by his way of defining the priesthood: "The priesthood is the immolation of a man joined with the immolation of God." 20

When in one place or another the old orders give up saying the night office as determined by their founders, the Lord seems no longer to send them so many and such strong vocations, raising up new congregations which have in their rule an hour of nocturnal adoration, for prayer should be unceasing day and night. Regular observances, especially fasting and abstinence, plainly have less importance than study and prayer; but they serve religious orders as the bark serves the tree. Strip off the bark of any tree, even a vigorous

26 "The priesthood is the immolation of a man added to the immolation of God, and he who is called to it feels in his heart the value and beauty of souls." Panegyric for Blessed Fourier.

2 8 4 THE LOVE OF GOD one, and the sap no longer rises in it. The saints warn us that we cannot detract from our observances without losing something of our spirit. Suppression or marked relaxation of rules leads infallibly to relaxation of ideas and of life; and God, who inspired the rules, does not bless such decadence. If regular observances are suppressed or attenuated contrary to the will of an order's founder, inspired as he was by God, thought and life decline as well, losing their supernatural character of radiant contemplation in an effort to become more reasonable, more scientific, but no longer capable of communicating life or of responding to the deep needs of souls. We should not be astonished then if our times lack true preachers, if those who speak utter cold words, expounding their theories without touching hearts or moving wills, no longer talking of God in a way alive enough to move others to love Him. When life fails to remain on the heights with thought, thought soon descends to the level of life.

A second means for achieving the end of the apostolic life is study, especially the deep study of the word of God preserved in Holy Scripture and tradition, the study of philosophy, and of theology together widi its related sciences. Here we find a twofold wisdom: one purely natural, philosophy; the other acquired too but rooted in infused faith, theology. These two acquired wisdoms ought not to remain in the apostolic soul without being related to infused wisdom, the highest of the gifts of the Holy Ghost received at baptism and given more abundantly at confirmation. For an apostle, study should be a way of hymning the glory of God, especially the study of the doctrine of grace as made known to us by our Lord, and by St. Paul, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas: "Without Me you can do nothing." "If thou didst know the gift of God!"

We recall the place given to study in the ascending series described by St. Benedict in the forty-eighth chapter of his rule: "lectio, cogitatio, stadium, meditatio, oratio, contemplatio." St. Thomas received his first formation from the Benedictines and kept this gradation. 27 Although for him study may be more speculative, it always leads the faithful and generous soul to desire and to ask humbly for the higher light of contemplation. Theology with its complexity of theses never approximates the simplicity of faith. We can find a likeness to their relationship in the field of plane figures. Think of a polygon inscribed within a circle. The sides of the polygon could be increased to infinity, yet, no matter how small they were, they would never equal a single point, nor would the polygon ever come to overlie the circumference of the circle. Similarly, the best theology will never reach die wholly supernatural height of infused faith to be found in the smallest Christian child. Faith is to theology as Christ's sacerdotal prayer is to an Augustinian or Thomistic commentary upon it. We search in vain in this high and simple prayer for a major, a minor, and a conclusion. It describes the perfect circle of contemplation, always returning to the same idea, the better to enter into its meaning. It is a flash of light coming down from the height of heaven to illumine our minds, a treasure of a higher order, which discursive theology distributes to us in the coin of its conclusions, somewhat as the lower angels receive tl:c lofty and simple contemplation of the higher angels by a greater number of more limited ideas.

Preaching, if it is to save souls, must not stop at theology but go on to the height of faith, reaching thus the spirit of revealed mysteries, of the commandments and counsels, by

means of contemplation proceeding from infused faith and the gifts of understanding and wisdom. Seen from above, theology then shows itself a living science, indeed the most living of all sciences, "scientia subalternata scientiae Dei et beatorum," as St. Thomas says, a science subordinated to the science of God and of the blessed by the intermediary of living faith. 28 As the science of optics receives its principles from geometry, so theology receives its principles from God the revealer through infused faith. The principles which God contemplates in Himself and which the blessed in heaven see in Him we supernaturally believe, penetrating them by the gift of understanding, tasting and savoring them by die gift of wisdom. Then bookish formulas come to life, and study acts as a preparation for contemplation. The moving windlass described by St. Teresa now turns with ease and brings up the water necessary for the garden of our spirit.

Above regular observance and the work of study, stands liturgical prayer, if it is done well and with recollection; and beyond it, mental prayer; then above and beyond all, the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. These, because of the union with God to be found in them, are the culminating point of die apostolic life. From this summit the great river of God's word should flow down in living preaching. For it to do so, we must live liturgical prayer; if, as it so often happens, we recite it hurriedly and mechanically, it ceases to be prayer and, performed in such a way by a community, can even become a serious obstacle to recollection and divine union. We believe that we are gaining time by hurrying, and we lose the best time of life, the time due the Lord, when, were we teachable, we would find breath, repose, and renewed energy for our souls.

We must live by mental prayer, too, observing the exterior and interior silence which it requires and conversing with God throughout the day. If, in the apostolic life, the daily hour given to mental prayer is omitted or not properly observed, the apostle runs a great risk of becoming, as St. Paul expressed it, sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. Those who would preach without living liturgical and mental prayer are like travelers who like to talk about the view from die top of Mount Blanc without ever having made the climb. Anyone can run through a guidebook describing the panorama, but this glance cannot take the place of a real look over the glaciers. By dint of daily work, we find it no great difficulty to skim through the Bible, the works of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, but these books yield up their spirit only to those who read them by the same supernatural light in which they were thought out and written. Lacking this light, we see them as men beholding a beautiful stained glass window from the outside; we see and see not; if we would know its beauty we must go within.

The highest moment of an apostle's day should obviously be the celebration of holy Mass. The apostle is to be as another Christ to his fellow men, sacerdos alter Christus. When can he be more united to his Master than at the time of consecration? Then he becomes indeed one with Him, as His conscious and free instrument, pronouncing the substancechanging words: "This is My body." "This is the chalice of My blood." At that moment Christ, who offered Himself on the cross, continues to offer Himself through His minister. 29 In thus offering Himself, our Lord also offers His whole mystical body, especially those who follow His example in the supernatural endurance of suffering. Each of our Masses

29 Council of Trent, Sess. XXII, chap. 2.

2 88 THE LOVE OF GOD and Communions should be more fervent than the one before, because each should increase in us the grace of the virtues and of the gifts. Day by day the priest should grow in understanding of the mysterious sacrifice of the cross perpetuated in substance on die altar. Contempladon of this kind ought to become the very soul of apostolic preaching, related to it not as a subordinate means but as its eminent cause, the ever-flowing source of a mighty river. St. Thomas in no way exaggerates when he says that evangelical preaching ought to have its source in the fullness of contemplation: "ex plenitudine contemplations derivatur." 30 And the word fullness, "plenitudo," has all the more significance because of the moderation that always marks the great doctor's style. Then, and then only, the preaching of the gospel gives both die letter and the spirit of the word of God in the measure of the soul's readiness and spiritual need.

Blessed Grignon de Montfort in his Amour de la divine sagesse 31 says that eternal Wisdom gives to those who possess Its lights the capacity to express diem. Then he goes on to add:

Our Lord's words to the apostles promise this: "For I will give you a mouth and wisdom, which all your adversaries shall not be able to resist and gainsay." 32 How few preachers have the ineffable gift of speech and can say with St. Paul, "We speak the wisdom of God!" 33 For the most part, they express only the natural lights of their minds or information gathered from books but not what divine Wisdom makes them feel, 34 or rather, not the divine

»Ha Hac, q.i88, a. 6. S1 Part I, chap. 6. " 2 Luke 3|i 15- 83 1 Cor. 2: 7. 84 Wisd. 6: 15.

abundance communicated to them by Wisdom. 35 As a result, few conversions are wrought by the spoken word. If a preacher really received from Wisdom the gift of speech, his listeners could no more withstand his words than those who heard St. Stephen could resist the wisdom and spirit that spoke. 38 Whatever such a preacher would say would be uttered with so much sweetness and authority that his word could not return to him without effect.

Too often we run a great risk of lowering the apostolic ideal by reducing contemplation, the nourishment of the apostolate, to mere historical and theological study, considered as a means subordinate to preaching. This brings about a loss to the whole apostolic life because it implies the abandonment of any aspiration to reach its summit, where all its elements are unified, where preaching wells up and overflows in something akin to the fire of eloquence spoken of by die Psalmist. Not to aspire to the summit of the apostolic life means to neglect the one diing necessary, to dry up die river at its source.

If on the contrary we look at the apostolic life in the light of the principles formulated by St. Thomas, we see bodi its unity and its sublimity and we no longer say that regular observance harms study or that deep study interferes with a life of observance. We do not give ourselves to lifeless study while depreciating preaching, nor to wholly external activity while underestimating study. On the odier hand, we stop materializing the elements of a life so rich and harmonious and we rediscover the sense of St. Paul's words, "The letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth." We even rediscover it sufficiently to communicate it to others, according to St.

29 o THE LOVE OF GOD

Thomas' formula, "Contemplari et contemplata aJiis tradere": to contemplate the mysteries of Christian faith deeply enough to have a living and radiant knowledge of them and to bring the light of God to others, that they may be sanctified and united to Him.

Footnotes

1. Fr. tr. Thiriot, (Euvres mystiques du Bx. H. Suso (Paris: Lccoffre, 1899), II, 233 ff- ↩