The Soul of the Apostolate by Chautard - Part One (cont.)

4. IGNORANCE AND NEGLECT OF THIS INTERIOR LIFE

St. Gregory the Great

- St. Gregory the Great, who was as skillful an administrator and as zealous as an apostle as he was great in contemplation  sums up in two words: Secum vivebat - To live with oneself, within oneself; to desire self-control, and not allow oneself to be dominated by exterior things...to make the will conform, without ceasing, with the will of God.
- [The] frenzy for exterior life finally succeeds in gaining over us an attraction which we can no longer resist. Is there any reason to be surprised, then, that the interior life is neglected? " Neglected" is putting it mildly. It is often enough despised and turned to ridicule by the very people who ought to be the first to appreciate its advantages and its necessity.
- Priests are so anxious to avoid the effort required to live an interior life that they reach the point of overlooking the value of living with Christ...everything, in the plan of Redemption, is based on the Eucharistic life as much as it is upon the rock of Peter.

Empty

- True, the Church has not yet become for them a Protestant chapel; the Tabernacle is not empty yet. But in their eyes, the Eucharistic life can hardly be adapted to the needs of modern civilization...The interior life, which is a necessary consequence of the Eucharistic life, has had its day.
For people steeped in these theories, and their number is legion, Holy Communion has lost the true meaning which the early Christians were able to see in it. They believe in the Eucharist, yes; but they no longer see in it something absolutely necessary.
(Wow...bear in mind this was written 100 years ago. What would he say today now that the Tabernacles have been hidden? Now that the candles are no longer even kept lit next to the hidden Tabernacles? Now that people not only receive Our Lord dressed immodestly and with little to no reverence but those same people also administer Him!)
- A number of the faithful, and even of priests and religious, follow this cult of action to the point of making it a kind of dogma which inspires their attitude and all their actions, and leads them to throw themselves without restraint into a life of extroversion.
(Some priests now spend more time, as it would seem, on social media and in the public eye than perhaps interiorly. This is certainly not a hard and fast, definitive identification of any specific priests as only God knows this, but one cannot doubt it is a sweeping problem on some scale)

- [For] the man of exterior works, when he has to consider the interior life, he disdains, or, rather, detests it all the more because it has the only remedy to his morbid state...What Our Lord is looking for, above all, is adorers in the spirit and in truth. But these activistic heretics, for their part, imagine that they are giving greater glory to God in aiming above all at external results...these activists will not be content merely to treat as slackers and visionaries those who give themselves, in the cloister, to prayer and penance with an ardor for souls equal to that of the most tireless missionary.
(Today, overall religious vocations are down DRASTICALLY trending toward extinction; and many of the remaining religious are so secularized they don't wear habits/cassocks, they dress in street clothes and spend little to no time cloistered)

5. REPLY TO A FIRST OBJECTION: IS THE INTERIOR LIFE LAZY?
-The life of prayer is a source of activity beyond compare
- Dom Sebastian Wyart said there are three kinds of works:

Laborer, Intellect, & Monk

1. Almost exclusively physical work of those who live by manual labor, by a craft, or in the army...this kind of work is the easiest of the three.
2. Intellectual toil of the scholar, the thinker, in his often arduous pursuit of truth; that of the writer, the professor, the diplomat, the financier, the engineer...this labor in itself is, he said, far more difficult than the first kind.
3. The labor of interior life...when it is taken seriously it is by far the most exacting. But at the same time, it is this kind that offers us the most satisfaction here on earth. It is likewise the most important...the first two types of labor, which lead to wealth and fame, but who, when it comes to the effort to acquire virtue, are totally deficient in ambition, energy or courage.
- A man who is determined to acquire an interior life must take, for his ideal, unremitting domination of self and complete control over his environment  in order to act in all things solely for the glory of God...to achieve this result, what an effort it will cost him! ...In all things, and always, he endeavors to keep his course dead ahead, in the direction of God's good pleasure.
- Neither the troubles of his life, nor the storms aroused by passion, will succeed in turning him aside from the line of conduct, he has laid down for himself. But on the other hand, if he does weaken for a moment, he pulls himself together at once, and pressed forward with even more determination than before.

- To withdraw for three days from a life which, though full of things to be done, is easy, and to live on the supernatural plane, making the supernatural sink into every detail of our existence during this retreat; to compel one's mind to see everything, during this time, by the light of faith alone, and one's heart to forget everything in order to seek Christ alone, and His life...if only three days of such occupation may seem already so exhausting, what does nature think of the idea of an entire life to be gradually made subject to the rule of the interior life?
- By constant vigilance, self-denial, and mortification, we have to tear away from thoughts of earth a heart made heavy with all the weight of a corrupted nature, gravi corde (Psalm 4)...We have to resist the allurement of pleasures that are both sensible and present, for the hope of a spiritual happiness which we shall only loose from everything that can cause us to love this world.
- "Add half an hour of meditation every morning. Not only will you get through all your business, but you will find time for still more."

6. REPLY TO ANOTHER OBJECTION: IS THE INTERIOR LIFE SELFISH?
- Let us not speak of the lazy man or the spiritual glutton for whom the interior life consists in the delights of a pleasurable idleness, and who are much more avid for the consolations of God than for the God of consolations. They have only a false piety.
(This is indeed what can be a primary problem with charismatics; relying too much upon feelings and consolations)
- We have already said that this life is the pure and abundant source of the most generous works of charity for souls and of charity which seeks to alleviate the sufferings of this world. But let us consider the usefulness of this life from another point of view. Was the interior life of Mary and Joseph selfish and sterile? What blasphemy, and what absurdity!..."My sister hath left me alone to serve" (in Martha's words) [says] the presumptuous idiot who sees nothing but his own exterior works and their result.
- "And for them do I sanctify myself that they also may be sanctified in truth," the soul that has realized all the implications of the Master's phrase, "that they also," and who, knowing the value of prayer and sacrifice, unites to the tears and the blood of a heart that purifies itself more and more each day.
- "Those who pray," said the eminent statesman Donoso Cortes, after his conversion, "do more for the world than those who fight, and if the world is going from bad to worse, it is because there are more battles than prayers."
- St. Augustine [said that] people forget that their prayers, purified by this complete separation from the world, were all the more powerful and more NECESSARY for a depraved society.

St. Teresa's Transverberation

- A short but fervent prayer will usually do more to bring about a conversion than long discussions or fine speeches...A single burning prayer of the seraphic St. Theresa [of Avila] (as was learned through a highly credible revelation) converted TEN THOUSAND heretics.
- This, indeed, is the whole work of the Carmelite, the Trappistine, the Poor Clare. See how they follow the advance of the apostle, supplying him with the overflow of their prayers and penances.
- No one in this world knows the reason for the conversions of pagans at the very ends of the earth, for the heroic endurance of Christians under persecution, for the heavenly joy of martyred missionaries. All this invisibly bound up with the prayer of some humble, cloistered nun.

- "Ten Carmelite nuns, praying," said a Bishop of Cochin-China to the Governor of Saigon, "will be of greater help to me than twenty missionaries preaching."
- Was the life of the Curé d'Ars selfish and sterile? Such a statement would only be worthy of a silent contempt. Anyone able to judge in such matters knows that it was precisely the perfection of his intimate union with God that was the reason for the zeal and success of this priest without natural talents, but who, as contemplative as a Carthusian, thirsted for souls with a thirst that his inner life had made unquenchable.
- Nowadays, the whole power of hell seems more than ever bent upon fighting the moral power of the Church and suffocating the divine life in souls...the fact that France got back on her feet after the revolution must be accredited to a priesthood that learned the interior life the hard way, by persecution. But through these men a current of divine life came to enliven a generation which seemed condemned to death by apostasy and an indifference which no human power seemed able to overcome.
- And yet now, how is it that we have been unable to form, in our nation, a majority with enough real Christianity in it to fight against the coalition of the followers of Satan? No doubt, the abandonment of the liturgical life and the cessation of its influence upon the faithful have contributed to this impotence...But is there not another cause to be traced to the fact that we priests and educators, because we lack an intensive inner life, are unable to beget in souls anything more than a surface piety, without any powerful ideals or strong convictions?
(ACCOUNTABILITY! Pope St. Pius V, "All the problems in the world are due to lukewarm catholics")
- If the priest is a saint (the saying goes), the people will be fervent; if the priest is fervent, the people will be pious; if the priest is pious, the people will at least be decent. But if the priest is only decent, the people will be godless.

St. Alphonsus Liguori

- St. Alphonsus [said], "The good morals and the salvation of the people depend on good pastors. If there is a good priest in charge of the parish, you will soon see devotion flourishing, people frequenting the Sacraments, and honoring the practice of mental prayer."
(By their fruits you shall know them!)






7. NO CONFLICT BETWEEN THE INTERIOR LIFE AND THE SALVATION OF SOULS
- Work is prayer. Sacrifice excels prayer. And does not St. Gregory call the zeal for souls the most pleasing sacrifice anyone could offer to God?...Of all goods, the most pleasing that man can offer to God is, undeniable the salvation of a soul. But every one must FIRST offer HIS OWN SOUL, according to what is said in Scripture: "If you wish to please God, have pity on your own soul."
- The necessity of the interior life is so far from being an obstacle to zealous activity in generous souls...it would be the greatest possible mistake for such persons to renounce this work..."Woe unto me," says St. Paul, "if I preach not the gospel." It would be an even greater mistake to devote oneself to the conversion of souls while forgetting one's own salvation.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

- St. Bernard, who was himself a rare miracle of apostolic zeal, [said] "I do not tell you," writes the same saint to Pope Bl. Eugenius III, "to withdraw completely from secular operations. I only exhort you not to throw yourself entirely into them. If you are a man belonging to everybody, belong also to yourself. Otherwise what good would it do you to save everybody else, if you were to be lost yourself?"
- Bishop Dupanloup [said], "God has given me the grace to recognize that the big obstacle to my acquiring a peaceful and fruitful interior life is my natural activity, and my tendency to be carried away by my work. And I have recognized, besides, that this lack of interior life is the source of all my faults, all my troubles, my dryness, my fits of disgust, and my bad health. I have therefore...drawn up the following points with that end in view:

Bishop Dupanloup

1. I will always take more time than is necessary, to do everything. This is the way to avoid being in a hurry and getting excited.
2. Since I invariably have more things to do than time in which to do them, and this prospect preoccupies me and gets me all worked up, I will cease to think about all that I have to do, and only consider the time I have at my disposal. I will make use of that time, without losing a moment of it."
- Satan does not hesitate to encourage a purely superficial success, if he can by this success prevent the apostle from making progress in the interior life.




Continue to Part Two...