The Soul of the Apostolate by Chautard - Part One

1. GOD WANTS GOOD WORKS AND, THEREFORE, HE WANTS ZEALOUS ACTION
- In the earliest centuries, came the contemplative orders, whose ceaseless prayer and fierce penances were a powerful aid in the conversion of the pagan world. In the Middle Ages, the preaching orders sprang up, with the mendicant and military orders, and those vowed to the ransom of captives in the powers of infidels. Finally, modern times have seen the birth of crowds of teaching institutes, missionary societies, congregations of all sorts, whose mission is to spread abroad every kind of spiritual and material good.
- We see a multitude of works that were scarcely even heard of, a generation ago, rise up in opposition to evils of the most serious kind: Catechism classes for first communicants and converts, as well as for abandoned children, all types of Catholic societies, sodalities, and confraternities, laymen's retreats for young and old of both sexes, Apostleship of Prayer, the Work of the Propagation of the Faith, Catholic action in student and military circles, Catholic press association and other works of both general and local usefulness.
- May these humble pages go out to the soldiers of Christ...to fight against an excessive exteriorization through good works. St. Paul [wrote]: "Woe unto me if I preach not the Gospel" [which] does not entitle us to forget: "What does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?"
- [We] will better understand the need not only of a pious, but of an interior life, if [our] zeal is to have any success.

2. GOD WILLS THAT THE LIFE-PRINCIPLE OF OUR WORK BE CHRIST HIMSELF
- Science is proud of its immense success, and justly so. And yet there has always been and always will be [something] impossible to it: to create life...God reserves for Himself the power of creating life.
(It would seem this is to be understood in the sense that you need the correct "matter" to create life. You can't make a tree from a piece of iron ore. You can't make a child, whether conceived in the womb or test tube baby, without a sperm and egg.)
- HE ALONE, JESUS, IS THE LIFE.
- Men, called to the honor of working with the Savior in transmitting the divine life to souls, ought to consider themselves mere channels, whose function is to draw from this one and only source.
(Make me a channel of your peace...)
- If the apostle were to forget this truth in his actions and were to insult Jesus Christ by relying on his own powers, it would be a...disorder...insufferable in the sight of God. To reject the truth, or to ignore it in one's actions, always constitutes and intellectual disorder. (Pelagianism) 
- Now, for a man, in his practical conduct, to go about this active works as if Jesus were not his one end only life-principle, is what Cardinal Mermillod has called the "HERESY OF GOOD WORKS." Feverish activity taking the place of God; grace ignored; human pride trying to thrust Jesus from His throne...in this age of naturalism.

3. WHAT IS THE INTERIOR LIFE?
- EVERYONE is obliged to accept the following principles as absolutely certain, and base his inner life upon them:
FIRST TRUTH
- Supernatural life is the life of Jesus Christ Himself in my soul, by faith, hope and charity...the presence of our Lord by this supernatural life is not the real presence proper to Holy Communion, but a presence of vital action like that of the action of the head or heart upon the members of the body.
- This life, begun in Baptism by the state of grace, perfected at Confirmation, recovered by Penance and enriched by the Holy Eucharist, is my Christian life.

St. Paul the Apostle

SECOND TRUTH
- By this life, Jesus Christ imparts to me His Spirit...St. Paul wrote, "I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me."
- The state of activity of a soul which strives against its natural inclinations in order to regulate them, and endeavors to acquire the HABIT of judging and direction its movements in ALL THINGS according to the light of the Gospel and the example of Our Lord.
- The soul wishes in this way to be faithful to the grace which Our Lord offers to it at every moment.
THIRD TRUTH
- [We need] to strive after a precise and certain faith of Jesus with us, not merely a living, but an extremely vital reality. When Jesus in this manner becomes my light, my ideal, my counsel, my support, my refuge, my strength, my healer, my consolation, my joy, my love, in a word my life, I shall acquire all the virtues.
FOURTH TRUTH
- My supernatural life may increase at every moment by a new infusion of the grace of the active presence of Jesus in me; an infused produced:
1. By each meritorious act (virtue, work, suffering under all forms [such as privation of creatures, physical or moral pain, humiliation, self-denial], prayer, Mass, acts of devotion to Our Lady, etc.)
2. By the Sacraments especially the Eucharist.
- Thou, Jesus, dost present Thyself, objectively to me, at every instant of the day...and dost request my co-operation to increase Thy life in myself.
FIFTH TRUTH
- The triple concupiscence caused by original sin and increased by every one of my actual sins establishes elements of death that militate against the life of Jesus in me...Nevertheless, inclinations and feelings contrary to that life, and temptations, even violent and prolonged, can do no harm as long as my will resists them.
SIXTH TRUTH
- If I am not faithful in the use of certain means, my intelligence will become blind and my will too weak to co-operate with Jesus...I shall find myself slipping into tepidity of the will:
(This tepidity is clearly distinct from the dryness and even disgust which fervent souls experience in spite of themselves...the soul that is poisoned with this kind of tepidity manifests two opposing wills: it avoids evident mortal sin...[but] it wants all the comforts of a free and easy life, and that is why it allows itself to commit deliberate venial sins. 
- [In order to break out of this tepidity], I would have to revive fear of God in my soul by imagining myself, as vividly as possible, face to face with my last end, and to revive compunction by the sweet science of Thy wounds.
SEVENTH TRUTH
- I must seriously fear that I do not have the degree of interior life that Jesus demands of me:
1. If I cease to increase my thirst...I necessarily cease to increase this thirst if I no longer make use of the means for doing so: morning mental-prayer, Mass, Sacraments, and Office, general and particular examinations of conscience, and spiritual reading.
2. If I do not have a minimum recollection to watch over my heart and keep it pure and generous enough not to silence the voice of Lord when He warns me of the elements of death. I cannot possibly retain this minimum if I make no use of the means that will secure it: liturgical life, aspirations, especially in the form of supplication, spiritual communion, practice of the presence of God, and so on.
- Without this, my life will soon be crawling with venial sins, perhaps without my being aware of it, self-delusion will throw up a smoke screen of a seeming piety that is more speculative than practical...and my blindness will be imputed to me as sin...
EIGHTH TRUTH
- Custody of the heart is simply a HABITUAL or at least frequent anxiety to preserve in all my acts from anything that might spoil their motive or their execution. It is a peaceful, unexcited anxiety, without any trace of strain, yet powerful because it is based on childlike confidence in God.
- Quo vadam et ad quid? Where am I going and why? What would Jesus do? How would He act in my place?
- For the soul that goes to Jesus through Mary, this custody of the heart takes on a still more affectionate quality, and recourse to this dear Mother becomes a continual need for his heart.
NINTH TRUTH
- Jesus Christ reigns in a soul that aspires to imitate Him seriously. Following the example of Jesus, it seeks no other rule, in this, but the will of God: "I came down from Heaven not to do my own will but the will of Him who sent me." The soul shows more readiness in doing things that are contrary to its nature, and repugnant to it..."For Christ did not please Himself."
TENTH TRUTH
- If I am only willing to pray and become faithful to grace, Jesus offers me every means of returning to an inner life that will restore to me my intimacy with Him...my soul will not cease to possess joy...and the Lord will give me rest continually.
ELEVENTH TRUTH
- My efforts, by themselves, are nothing, absolutely nothing. "Without Me you can do nothing." They will only be useful, and blessed by God, if by means of a  genuine interior life I unite them constantly to the life-giving action of Jesus. But then they will become all-powerful: "I can do all things in Him who strengthens me." But should they spring from pride and self-satisfaction, from confidence in my own talents, from the desire to shine, they will be rejected by God. This conviction...will make me really feel the need to pray that I may obtain humility, which is such a treasure for my soul, since it is a guarantee of God's help and of success in my labors.
- I must have the following:
1. My conviction of the nothingness of my own activity, left to itself
2. I am ruthless in stamping out all self-satisfaction and vanity, all self-admiration in my apostolate
3. I continue unwaveringly to distrust myself
4. I am praying to God to preserve me from pride.
- THE INTERIOR LIFE IS THE LIFE OF THE ELECT

St. Margaret Mary 

- It fits with the end God had in view when He created us...It is a state of complete happiness: "The end of human creatures is union with God; and in this their happiness consists."
- Heavenly state! The soul becomes a living heaven. Then, like St. Margaret Mary, I can sing:
Je possède en tout temps et je porte en tout lieu et le Dieu de mon coeur et le Coeur de mon Dieu.
I ever possess, and take with me everywhere, the God of my heart and the Heart of my God.
Grace is the seed of heaven.


4. IGNORANCE AND NEGLECT OF THIS INTERIOR LIFE
(to be continued...)

The Soul of the Apostolate by Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard OSCO (TAN) - Intro/Biography

I began reading this book recently after it was recommended by a catholic theologian who presents on a variety of traditional catholic subjects. It is about 300 pages long, so it will take some time to summarize it all on here as I slowly and methodically read through it. But so far, it is incredible...and if anything re-typing out the parts I am highlighting helps me to better retain it.

The book can be viewed/purchased directly from TAN books ($10 at the moment) on Amazon (about $14). You can also check your parish or local bookstores if they have one.

"O infinite Charity, make our wills burn with thirst for the interior life. Penetrate and flood our hearts with Thy sweetness and strength, and show them that even here on this earth there is no real happiness except in this life of imitation and sharing in Thine own life and in that of the Heart of Jesus in the bosom of the Father of all mercy and all kindness."

 A Biographical Note
- The author of this modern spiritual classic was born on the feast of St. Gregory the Great, March 1, 1858...The reason why St. Gregory the Great was so perfect in expounding the relation of action and contemplation is that, called from the cloister to the Papacy in one of the crises in the history of the Church, he found out what that relation was in the crucible of trial and labor and distraction and struggle. And the reason why Dom Chautard has been able to write so well on the same theme for our own age is that he too was so often torn by the hand of God from the cloister and made an instrument of Divine Power and Providence...
- The Chautards ran a little bookshop, and the father of the future monk was one of those purely nominal Catholics who sometimes go to Mass, but whose principles are entirely vitiated by the materialistic and utilitarian views of the middle class to which they belong. The mother was in a different category. She had more faith, and she saw to it that her children were educated as Catholics. However, neither [Jean-Baptiste] nor they had an idea of his entering religion. He went to Marseilles to study economics at the university, with a commercial career in mind...[but] affected by the simple devotion a priest had to his Breviary, he began to ask himself why he did not pray more himself.
- [He found in a Catholic youth club] more than a tame and sheepish attempt to rival the attractions of the dance hall and the cafe by vainly trying to beat them at their own game of pleasing and entertaining human nature. There was something more, something that appealed to a much deeper and more urgent and more vital necessity: faith, supernatural charity, a deep and simple and unbreakable solidarity among souls united, as he was to discover, in Christ. And, as a result of all this, he began to taste "that peace which the world cannot give."

- He was admitted as a postulant at the Trappist Abbey of Aiguebelle in 1877. Here he began to learn, with an inexpressible joy, how to live the contemplative life...He began to live the life of a White Monk, that life of obscurity, obedience, silence, poverty, solitude, hidden in the "secret of God's face," that is, of His presence and of His will...a life of ceaseless praise.
- [In that time], Aiguebelle was faced with complete ruin...The Abbot took the bold step of sending him to Paris to try and use his ingenuity to save his community. But all Fr. Chautard's native ability and eloquence and learning and economics proved useless. Finally, he threw himself down in prayer at the shrine of Our Lady of Victories...the rest of the story can be guessed.

- [Eventually] the order, Sept-Fons, needed a new abbot. Dom Chautard was elected. He made use of his right to refuse, but when Dom Sebastian appealed to the Pope, Leo XIII expressed his desire that Dom Chautard accept, and he yielded to the will of God.
- In 1901, when one of the frequent attacks against the Church burst out again in France, Dom Chautard was chosen to represent the Cistercians of the Strict Observance in Paris...the Order at large was spared. Others were by no means so fortunate.

- During the First World War, Dom Chautard gave shelter at Sept-Fons to a community of Belgian Cistercians, another community from Palestine, the orphans from an asylum at Arras, and the inmates of an old men's home. Dom Chautard added to this a much more important work of mercy in the spiritual order. A magazine for French priests, conscripted and sent to the front [lines]. [When these priests returned from war], they needed nothing so much as the consolations and medicine of a doctrine like Dom Chautard's, which placed the greatest emphasis on the one source of all our strength: God's grace, obtained in ever greater abundance by a life of prayer and mortification.
- THE FRUITFULNESS OF AN ACTIVE LIFE [HAS] ITS ROOTS DEEP IN PRAYER AND PENANCE.
- Dom Chautard's keen eye had discovered a glaring inconsistency in the reaction of a certain type of Catholic leader. He observed that some priests, some organizers of Catholic Action, imagined that they could fight political enemies with more or less worldly and political weapons. In defending the Church against state persecutions, they thought the most important thing was to gain and preserve political and social power.
A few items come to mind here:

St. Louis de Montfort Secret of the Rosary 
Jesus in a vision to Dominic: "Dominic, I rejoice to see that you are not 

relying on your own wisdom and that, rather than seek the empty praise of men, 

you are working with great humility for the salvation of souls."

1 Corinthians 2:4-8

 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. 

6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

- Such apostles tended to congratulate themselves when they had raised large sums of money, or when the churches were filled with great throngs of people, without reference to what might be going on in the souls of all those who were present. To the eyes of the Cistercian Abbot, a man who had learned his wisdom close to God, in the silence of the cloister, before the Tabernacle, there was a deep-seated and subtly pernicious error to all this.
- The Church is built of living stones. It is built of saints. And saints are made only by the grace of God and the infused virtues and the gifts of the Holy Ghost, not by speeches and publicity and campaigns which are all doomed to sterility without the essential means of prayer and mortification.
- Dom Chautard saw that all this came from the subtle infection of Modernism and kindred heresies, bred of contact with a purely materialistic and secular culture. And he, like the saintly Pontiff under whose reign he was then living, saw that the only remedy was a return to the fundamentals of Christian Doctrine in all the power and beauty of their traditional presentation. (see also here)
- The Soul of the Apostolate recommends itself with even more urgency in our time, when the world is barely recovering from the most frightful social cataclysm in the history of man, with no prospect of anything brighter in the future.
- [Dom Chautard] had an unconquerable love of Christ and of His Immaculate Mother...steering clear of the two equally noxious extremes of quietism and the heresy of works.
- In his later years, he was persecuted by ill-health, and spent many nights without sleep, in between his days of arduous work for his Order and for souls. But all this, far from breaking his morale and leading him into the morass of self-pitying discouragement, only intensified his union with God...a deep interior life...a charity, indeed, which was hungry.
- If there is one concept that is capable of summing up Dom Chautard's spirituality, it is "GOD ALONE." God in everything, God in anything, God in His will, God in other men, God present in his own soul.



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