Let us leave to one side the cause of fruitfulness called by theologians ex opere operato. Considering only what is produced ex opere operantis, we recall that if the apostle carries out the principle of “He who abideth in Me and I in him,” the fecundity of his work, willed by God, is guaranteed: “the same beareth much fruit.”
Qui manet in me et ego in eo, hic fert fructum multum (Joan. 15:5).
Such is the plain logic of this text. After such an authority, there is no need to prove this thesis. Let us simply confirm it by facts.
For more than thirty years we have been able to observe, from afar, the progress of two orphanages for little girls, maintained by two separate congregations. Each one had to go through a period of evident decline. To be frank: out of sixteen orphans, all of whom had entered under the same conditions and had left upon coming of age, three from the first house and two from the second had passed, in from eight to fifteen months, from the practice of frequent Communion to the most degraded level of the social scale. Of the eleven others, one alone remained deeply Christian. And yet every one of them had been placed, on leaving, in a good situation.
In one of these orphanages, eleven years ago, there was a single change: a new Mother Superior was installed. Six months afterwards a radical transformation was apparent in the spirit of the house.
The same transformation was observed three years later in the other orphanage because, while the same superior and the same sisters remained, the chaplain had been changed.
Now since that time, not a single one of the poor girls who left, at the age of twenty-one, has been dragged down by Satan into the gutter. Every one, every single one of them without exception, has remained a good Christian.
The reason for these results is very simple. At the head of the house, or in the confessional, the spiritual direction previously given had not been really supernatural. And this was enough to paralyze, or at least to cripple, the action of grace. The former superior in one case and the former chaplain in the other, although sincerely pious people, had had no deep interior life and, consequently, exercised no deep or lasting influence. Theirs was a piety of the feelings, produced by their upbringing and environment, made up exclusively of pious practices and habits, and giving them nothing but vague beliefs, a love without strength, and virtues without deep root. It was a flabby piety, all in the show-window, mawkish, mechanical. It was a fake piety, capable of forming good little girls who would not make a nuisance of themselves, affected little creatures, full of pretty curtsies but with no force of character, dragged this way and that by their feelings and imaginations. A piety powerless to open up the wide horizons of Christian life, and form valiant women, ready to face a struggle; all it was good for was to keep these wretched little girls locked up in their cages, sighing for the day when they would be let out.
That was the poor excuse for a Christian life produced by Gospel-workers who knew almost nothing of the interior life. In the midst of these two communities, a superior, a chaplain, are replaced. Right away the face of things is altered. What a new meaning prayer begins to take on; what a new fruitfulness in the Sacraments. How different are the postures and bearing in chapel, even at work, at recreation. Analysis shows up a deep transformation which also manifests itself in a serene joy, a new enthusiasm, the acquisition of virtues, and in some souls an intense desire for a religious vocation. To what is such a transformation to be ascribed? The new superior, the new chaplain, led lives of prayer.
No doubt an attentive observer will have connected up similar effects to the same kind of causes in any number of boarding schools, day schools, hospitals, clubs, even parishes, communities, and seminaries.
Listen to St. John of the Cross: “Let the men eaten up with activity,” he says, “and who imagine they are able to shake the world with their preaching and other outward works, stop and reflect a moment. It will not be difficult for them to understand that they would be much more useful to the Church and more pleasing to the Lord, not to mention the good example they would give to those around them, if they devoted more time to prayer and to the exercises of the interior life.
“Under these conditions, by one single work of theirs they would do far more good, and with much less trouble, than they do by a thousand others on which they exhaust their lives. Prayer would merit them this grace, and would obtain for them the spiritual energies they need to bring forth such fruits. But without prayer, all they do amounts to nothing more than noise and uproar; it is like a hammer banging on an anvil and echoing all over the neighborhood. They accomplish a little more than nothing, sometimes absolutely nothing at all, and sometimes downright evil. God save us from such a soul as this, if it should happen to swell up with pride! It would be vain for appearances to be in his favor: the truth is that he would be doing nothing, because no good work can be done without the power of God. Oh, how much could be written on this subject, for the information of those who give up practicing the interior life, and aspire to brilliant works which will put them up on a pedestal and make them the admiration of all. Such people know nothing at all about the source of living water, and of the mysterious fountain which makes all fruit to grow.”
Spiritual Canticle, Stanza 29.
Some of the expressions this saint uses are just as strong as the “accursed occupations” quoted above from St. Bernard. Nor is it possible to accuse him of exaggerating when we remember that the qualities which Bossuet admired in St. John of the Cross were his perfect good sense and the zeal he had for warning souls against the desire of extraordinary ways of arriving at sanctity, as well as the most precise exactness in expressing his thoughts, which are, themselves, of remarkable depth.
Let us attempt a study of a few of the causes of the fruitfulness of the interior life.
a. The Interior Life Draws Down the Blessings of God
b. It Makes the Apostle Capable of Sanctifying Others by His Example
c. It Makes the Apostle Radiate the Supernatural: the Efficacy of This Radiation
d. It Makes the Gospel Worker Truly Eloquent
e. Because the Interior Life Begets Interior Life, Its Results Upon Souls Are Deep and Lasting
f. Importance of the Formation of “Shock Troops” and of Spiritual Direction
g. The Entire Success of the Apostolate Depends on One Thing: An Interior Life Centered on the Blessed Eucharist
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