The Soul of the Apostolate by Chautard - Part Two (UNION OF THE ACTIVE LIFE AND THE INTERIOR LIFE)

1. THE PRIORITY OF THE INTERIOR OVER THE ACTIVE LIFE IN THE EYES OF GOD
- In God is life, all life. He is life itself. Yet it is not by exterior works, by the creation...but rather by what theology calls operationes ad intra, the perpetual generation of the Son and the unceasing procession of the Holy Spirit. Here, preeminently, is His eternal, His essential work.
- Let us consider the mortal life of Our Lord. Thirty years of recollection and solitude, then forty days of retreat and penance are the prelude to His brief evangelical career. How often, too, during His apostolic journeys, we see Him retiring to the mountains or the desert to pray.
Still more striking is the example of our Lord's reply to Martha: "Mary hath chosen the better part," a reply which definitely establishes the pre-eminence of the interior life.


- The apostles, faithful to His example, [said] "We will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word."

Pope Leo XIII

- Not many years ago, the superior general of one of the most important teaching congregations in France, was invited by her superiors to consent to the secularization of her nuns. What should they do: sacrifice the religious life in order to continue teaching, or abandon their active work in order to keep their status as religious? She was granted an audience with Pope Leo XIII: "Before everything else, before any kind of work, keep the religious life for those of your daughters who really possess the spirit of their holy state, and who really love the life of prayer. And if you cannot keep both your life of prayer and your active work, God will find a way to raise up other workers, in France, if they are necessary. As for you, by your interior life, above all by your prayers and sacrifices, you will be more useful to France by remaining true religious."

Pope St. Pius X

- Pius X flatly declared his views on this subject: "Let it be taken as a firmly established truth, as far as you are concerned, that the religious life is vastly superior to the common life, and that even if you have grave obligations to your neighbor, in your duty to teach, far more grave still are the obligations that bind you to God."
- St. Bonaventure accumulates comparatives to demonstrate the excellence of this inner life: Vita sublimior, securior, opulentior, suavior, stabilior. "A life that is more sublime, secure, richer, pleasanter, and more stable."

Vita sublimior
- The active life is concerned with men, the contemplative introduces us into the realm of the highest truth, and never turns aside its gaze from the very principle of all life.
Vita securior
- There is less danger. In a life that is almost exclusively active, the soul is excited, worked up, scatters all its energies and, by that very fact, weakens itself. It has a threefold defect: it is worried with mental problems, it has troubles that stir up the passions, and occupations are multiplied and so our energy and our action rae divided. But for the interior life alone one thing is necessary: Union with God.
Vita opulentior
- Contemplation overflows with greater merits. Why? Because at the same time it increases the zest of the will and the degree of sanctifying grace in the soul, and makes the soul act with love as its motive power.
Vita suavior
- the truly interior soul abandons itself to the good pleasure of God...it goes so far as to be joyful under affliction, and happy to carry the Cross.
Vita stabilior
- Preaching, teaching, works of every sort all come to an end at the threshold of eternity. But the interior life will never cease...St Bernard's words: "In this life man lives more purely, falls more rarely, recovers more promptly, advances more surely, receives more graces, dies more calmly, is more quickly cleansed, and gains a greater recompense."

2. GOOD WORKS SHOULD BE NOTHING BUT AN OVERFLOW FROM THE INNER LIFE
- "Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48)
- To man, God does more than grant exterior gifts: He sends him also His word...In giving us His Son, He keeps Him, nevertheless, ever in Himself...By the sacraments, and especially by the Eucharist, Jesus christ comes down to enrich us with His grace. He pours it out upon us without measure, for He also is a limitless ocean whose fullness overflows upon us without ever being exhausted. "Of His fullness we have all received" (Jn 1:16).

St. Bernard of Clairvaux

- "Your 'word' is your consideration. If it go forth from you let it still remain." (St. Bernard of Clairvaux) Yes. Our "word" is the interior spirit, formed by grace, in our souls...poured out unceasingly for the benefit of our neighbors, let it be renewed likewise without ceasing...Our interior life ought to be the stem, filled with vigorous sap, of which our works are the flowers.
- The life of action ought to flow from the contemplative life, to interpret and extend it, outside oneself, though at the same time being detached from it as little as possible.
- "Before allowing his tongue to speak," says St. Augustine, "the apostle should lift up his thirsting soul to God, in order to give forth what he has drunk in, and pour forth that with which he is filled."
- St. Bernard's saying, "If you are wise, you will be reservoirs and not channels." The channels let water flow away, and do not retain a drop. But the reservoir is first filled, and then, without emptying itself, pours out its overflow, which is ever renewed, over the fields which it waters. How many there are devoted to works, who are never anything but channels, and retain nothing for themselves, but remain dry while trying to pass on life-giving grace to souls! "We have many channels in the Church today," St. Bernard added, sadly, "but very few reservoirs." The interior life alone can transform divine truth and charity in us, to a truly life-giving nourishment for others.

3. ACTIVE WORKS MUST BEGIN AND END IN THE INTERIOR LIFE, AND, IN IT, FIND THEIR MEANS
- In our day, there are not a few that do not deserve this title at all ("works"). They are a species of enterprise, organized under a pious front, but with the real aim of acquiring, for their initiators, the applause of the public, and a reputation for an extraordinary ability. And these men are determined to achieve the success of such enterprises at any cost, even that of using the least justifiable means. Other works have intention that is at least good. Their end and their means are beyond reproach. And yet, because their organizers have little more than wavering faith in the power of the supernatural life to act upon souls, their results, in spite of great efforts, are either totally, or at any rate almost totally, futile.
- The saintly Father Allemand said, "Take my advice, do not be afraid to aim as high as you possibly can [with the youth], and you will be astonished at the results. Let me explain: do not merely have, as your ideal, to give the youth a selection of clean amusements that will turn them aside from illicit pleasures and dangerous associations, nor simply to give them a Christian varnish, through routine attendance at Mass, or the reception of the Sacraments at long intervals and with questionable dispositions. 'Launch out into the deep.'

"Launch into the deep"

(Luke 5:4) Let your ambition be, first of all, the noble one of making a certain number of them, at any cost, take a firm resolution of living as fervent Christians; that is, of making their mental prayer every morning, going to Mass every day (if they can), and doing a little spiritual reading, besides going frequently to Communion, and fervently too. Put all your efforts into giving this select group a great love of Jesus Christ, the spirit of self-denial, prayer, vigilance over themselves; in a word, solid virtues. And take no less trouble to develop in their souls a hunger for the Holy Eucharist. Train them as frank, devoted apostles, kind, ardent, manly, not narrow-minded in their piety, but full of tact, and never making the sad mistake of spying on their comrades under the pretext of zeal...Numbers will be no use to you unless every one is hand-picked. Let the growth of your club depend, most of all, on the influence exercised by the nucleus of apostles, the center of which will be Jesus and Mary, with you as their instrument."
>> This is what Fr. McMahon is doing at LaSalette; calling true men to Jesus and Mary
- If you know how to build your club on the foundation of an ardent, complete and apostolic Christian life, the barest minimum, in the way of premises, willalways be enough to accomodate all the accessories demanded by the normal functioning of the club.
- Above all, you yourself will have to pay the price, not so much by wearing yourself out rehearsing plays or getting up football games, as by storing up in yourself a life of prayer. For you can be sure that the extent to which you yourself are able to live on the love of Our Lord will be the exact measure of your ability to stir up in other people.
- How much good a Christian society, really living on the supernatural level, can do in a city! It works there like a strong leaven, and only the angels can tell you how many souls are saved because of it...if only the majority of priests and religious and workers in Catholic action knew what a powerful lever they have in their hands. Living in union with that Divine Heart they would soon transform our country! Yes indeed, they would bring our land to life, in spite of all the efforts of Satan and his slaves."

4. THE ACTIVE AND INTERIOR LIVES ARE COMPLETELY INTERDEPENDENT

- As Suarez points out, there cannot be any state that is properly and normally ordered to bring us to perfection, that does not at the same time share to some extent in both action and contemplation. The Angelic Doctor says that those who are called to the works of the active life would be mistaken if they thought that this duty dispensed them from the contemplative life. And so these two lives, far from excluding one another, depend on one another, presuppose one another, mingle together and complete one another. And if there is a question of giving greater importance to one than to the other, it is the contemplative life that merits our preference, as being the more perfect and the more necessary. (Summa, 2a 2ae, q. 182, a1, ad 3)
- The heart stands for the interior, or contemplative life: the arm for the active or exterior life. The heart goes on beating day and night. Let this all-important organ stop, even for a moment, and immediate death would result. The arm, however, merely an integral part of the human body, only moves from time to time. And thus, we ought sometimes to seek a little respite from our outward works, but never on the other hand relax our attention to spiritual things. The heart gives life and strength to the arm by means of the blood which it sends forth; otherwise, that member would wither up.
- We must never get mixed up in works that are not willed for us by God, but only when, and to the extent that, He wants to see us engaged in them, and only out of the desire to practice charity...no matter how much attention our work may require, we must keep ourselves always at peace, and always remain completely masters of ourselves. We must leave the successful outcome of the work entirely in the hands of God.
- Man is weak and without constancy. If he neglects his spiritual life, he soon loses the taste for it. Absorbed in material duties, he gets to take satisfaction in them.

5. THE EXCELLENCE OF THIS UNION

St. Thomas Aquinas

- The union of the two lives, contemplative and active, constitutes the true apostolate, the chief work of Christianity, as St. Thomas Aquinas says. The apostolate of a man of prayer is the word of the Gospel, conquering with the mandate of God; it is the zeal for souls, the ripening of conversions for the harvest. The apostolate of the saints sows seed all over the world. The apostle casts into souls the wheat of God.
- It is a good thing to contemplate the truth, and better still to pass it on to others. To reflect the light is something more than simply to receive it. By contemplation, the soul is fed: by the apostolate, it gives itself away. (Summa, 2a 2ae, q. 188, article 6) Prayer remains at the source of this ideal apostolate.
- These words are an open condemnation of the so-called "Americanism," the partisans of which envisage a mixed life in which contemplation is strangled by activity.
- Interior life and active life! Holiness within works. A powerful union, and a fruitful one. What miracles of conversion it can work! O God, send many apostles to Thy Church, but stir up in their hearts, already consumed with the desire to give themselves, a desperate sense of their need for the life of prayer. Grant to Thy workers this contemplative activity, and active contemplation. Then Thy work will be done, and the workers of Thy Gospel will win those victories which Thou didst foretell to them before Thy glorious Ascension.


On to Part Three...