Bossuet has a sentence which is beyond the comprehension of an apostle who does not realize what must be the soul of his apostolate. It runs: “When God desires a work to be wholly from His hand, he reduces all to impotence and nothingness, and then He acts.”
Nothing wounds God so much as pride. And yet when we go out for success, we can get to such a point, by our lack of purity of intention, that we set ourselves up as a sort of divinity, the principle and end of our own works. This idolatry is an abomina tion in the sight of God. And so when He sees that the activities of the apostle lack that selflessness which His glory demands from a creature, he some times leaves the field clear for secondary causes to go to work, and the building soon comes crashing down.
The workman faces his task with all the fire of his nature—active, intelligent, loyal. Perhaps he realizes brilliant success. He even rejoices in them. He takes complacency in them. It is his work. All his! Veni, vidi, vici. He has just about appropriated this famous saying to himself. But wait a little. Something hap pens, with the permission of God; a direct attack by Satan or the world is inflicted upon the work or even the person of the apostle; result, total ruin. But far more tragic is the interior upheaval in this ex-champion—the product of his sorrow and discouragement. The greater was his joy, the more profound his present state of dejection.
Something happens, with the permission of God; direct attack by Satan or the world is inflicted upon the work or even the person of the apostle; result, total ruin. But far more tragic is the interior upheaval in this ex-champion—the product of his sorrow and discouragement. The greater was his joy, the more profound his present state of dejection.
Only Our Lord is capable of raising up this wreck. “Get up,” He says to the discouraged apostle, “and instead of acting alone, take to your work again, but with Me, in Me, and by Me.” But the miserable man no longer hears this voice. He has become so lost in externals that it would take a real miracle of grace for him to hear it—a miracle upon which his repeated infidelities give him no right to count. Only a vague conviction of the Power of God and of His Providence hovers over the desolation of this benighted failure, and it is not enough to drive away the clouds of sadness which continue to envelop him.
What a different sight is the real priest, whose ideal it is to reproduce Our Lord! For him, prayer and holiness of life remain the two chief ways of acting upon the Heart of God and on the hearts of men. Yes, he has spent himself, and generously too. But the mirage of success seemed to him to be something unworthy of the undivided attention of a real apostle. Let storms come if they will, the secondary cause that produced them is of no importance. In the midst of a heap of ruins, since he has worked only with Our Lord, he hears clearly in the depths of his heart the “Fear not”—nolitimere—which gave back to the disciples, in the storm, their peace and confidence.
He runs to renew his love of the Blessed Sacrament, his deep, personal devotion to the Sorrows of Our Lady; and that is the first result of the trial.
His soul, instead of being crushed by failure, comes out of the wine press with its youth renewed. His youth will be renewed like an eagle.
Sicut aquilae juventus renovabitur (Psalm 102).
Where does he get this attitude of humble triumph in the midst of defeat? Seek the secret of it nowhere else but in that union with Christ and in that unshakable confidence in His omnipotence which made St. Ignatius say: “If the Company were to be suppressed, without any fault on my part, a quarter of an hour alone with God would be enough to give me back my calm and peace.” “The heart of an interior soul,” says the Curé d’Ars, “stands in the middle of humiliations and sufferings like a rock in the midst of the sea.”
We wonder if most active workers are capable of applying to their own lives the idea expressed by General de Sonis in this wonderful daily prayer related by the author of his life?
“My God, here I am before You, poor, little, stripped of everything.
“Here I am at Your feet, sunk in the depths of my own nothingness.
“I wish I had something to offer You, but I am nothing but wretchedness! You, You are everything. You are my wealth.
“My God, I thank You for having willed that I should be nothing in Your sight. I love my humiliation and my nothingness. I thank You for having taken away from me a few satisfactions of self-love, a few consolations of the heart. I thank You for every deception that has befallen me, every ingratitude, every humiliation. I see that they were necessary: the goods of which they deprived me might have kept me far from You.
“O my God, I bless You when You give me trials. I love to be used up, broken to pieces, destroyed by You. Crush me more and more. Let me be in the building not as a stone worked and polished by the hand of the mason, but like an insignificant grain of sand, gathered from the dust of the road.
“My God, I thank You for having let me catch a glimpse of the sweetness of Your consolations, and I thank You for having taken that glimpse away. Everything that You do is just and good. I bless You in my abject poverty, I regret nothing except that I have not loved You enough. I desire nothing but that Your will be done.
“You are my Owner, I am Your property. Turn me this way or that way. Break me up, work on me however You like. I want to be reduced to nothing for love of You.
“O Jesus, how good is Your hand, even at the most terrible intensity of my trial. Let me be crucified, but crucified by You. Amen.”
The apostle does indeed suffer. Perhaps the event that has just frustrated his efforts and ruined his work will result in the loss of several of his flock. A bitter sorrow for this true pastor—but it will not be able to dampen the ardor that will make him start over again. He knows that all redemption, be it merely that of a single soul, is a great work, accomplished above all by suffering. He is certain that generosity in supporting trial increases his progress in virtue, and procures greater glory for God; and this certainty is enough to sustain him.
Besides, he knows that often God wants from him nothing more than the seeds of success. Others will come, who will reap rich harvests, and perhaps they will think themselves entitled to all the credit. But heaven will be able to see the cause of it all in the thankless and seemingly sterile work that went before “I have sent you to reap that which you did not labor; others have labored and you have entered into their labors.”
Misi vos metere quod vos non laborastis; alii laboraverunt et vos in labores eorum introistis (Joan. 4:38).
Our Lord, Author of the success of the Apostles after Pentecost, willed that, in the course of His public life, He should only sow the seed of that success by teaching and example, and He predicted to His apostles that it would be given them to do works greater than His own: “The works I do, he also shall do, and greater than these shall he do.”
Opera quae ego facio, et ipse faciet, et majora horum faciet (Joan. 14:12).
What! A true apostle lose courage! He allow himself to be shaken by the words of cowards! He condemn himself to go into retirement just because of some failure! To say such a thing is to lack all understanding either of his interior life or his faith in Christ. A tireless bee, he sets about joyfully building up new honeycombs in his plundered hive.
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