4.1.a. The Interior Life Draws Down the Blessings of God

I will inebriate the souls of the priests with satiety and my people will be filled with my blessings.
Inebriabo animam sacerdotum pinguedine et populus meus bonis meis adimplebitur (Jer. 31:14).

Notice the close connection between the two parts of this text. God does not say: “I will give My priests more zeal and more talent,” but: “I will inebriate their souls.” What does that signify if not: “I will give them very special graces, and for that reason my people will be filled with My blessings.”

God might have given His grace according to His good pleasure, without taking any account of the holiness of the minister nor of the dispositions of the faithful. That is the way He acts in the Baptism of infants. But it is the ordinary law of His Providence that these two factors are the measure of His heavenly gifts.

Without Me you can do nothing.
Sine me nihil potestis facere (Joan. 15:5).

This is the principle. The Blood that redeemed us was shed on Calvary. How was God going to insure its fruitfulness at the very start? By a miracle of the diffusion of interior life. There was nothing more paltry than the ideals and the zeal of the apostles before Pentecost. But once the Holy Spirit had transformed them into men of prayer, their preaching began at once to work wonders.
But God does not, in the ordinary course of things, repeat the miracle of the Upper Room. His way is to leave the graces for our sanctification to fight it out with the free and arduous correspondence of His creature. But in making Pentecost the official birthday of the Church, did He not give us a clear enough indication that his ministers would have to make the first step, in their work as co-redeemers, the sanctification of their own souls?

Therefore, all true apostolic workers expect much more from their sacrifices and prayers than from their active work. Father Lacordaire spent a long time in prayer before ascending the steps of the pulpit, and on his return he had himself scourged. Father Monsabré, before speaking at Notre Dame, used to say all fifteen decades of the Rosary on his knees. “I am taking my last dose of tonic,” he said with a smile to a friend who questioned him about this practice. Both these religious lived according to St. Bonaventure’s principle, that the secret of a fruitful apostolate is to be found much more at the foot of the Cross than in the display of brilliance. “These three remain: word, example, prayer; but the greatest of these is prayer,”
Manent tria haec, verbum, exemplum, oratio: major autem his est oratio.

cries St. Bernard. A very strong statement, but it is simply a commentary on the resolution taken by the Apostles to leave certain works alone in order to give themselves first of all to prayer, orationi; and only after that to preaching, ministerio verbi.
Acts 6:4.

Have we not often enough pointed out, in this connection, what a fundamental importance the Savior gave to this spirit of prayer? Looking out upon the world and upon the ages that were to come, He cried out in sorrow: “The harvest indeed is great, but the laborers are few.”
Messis quidem multa, operarii autem pauci. Rogate ergo Dominum messis ut mittat operarios in messem suam (Matt. 9:37–38).

What would He propose as the quickest way to spread His teaching? Would He ask his apostles to go to school in Athens, or to study, at Rome, under the Caesars, how to conquer and govern empires? You men of active zeal listen to the Master. He reveals a program and a principle full of light: “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that He send forth laborers into the harvest.” No mention of techniques of organization, of raising funds, building churches or putting up schools. Only “pray ye”—Rogate. This one fundamental truth of prayer, and the spirit of prayer, is something the Master constantly repeated. Everything else, without exception, flows from it.
Pray ye therefore! If the faint murmur of supplication from a holy soul has more power to raise up legions of apostles than the eloquent voice of a recruiter of vocations, who has less of the spirit of God, what are we to conclude? Simply that the spirit of prayer, which goes hand in hand, in the true apostle, with zeal, will be the chief reason for the fruitfulness of his work.

Pray ye therefore! First of all, pray. Only after that, does Our Lord add “going, teach . . . preach.”
Euntes docete . . . praedicate (Matt. 10:7).

Of course, God will make use of this other means; but the blessings that make a ministry fruitful are reserved for the prayers of a man of interior life. Such prayer will have the power to bring forth from the bosom of God the strength for an apostolate that souls cannot resist.
The voice of one so great as Pius X throws the following highlight upon the theme of this our book: “To restore all things in Christ by the apostolate of good works, we need divine grace, and the apostle will only receive it if he is united to Christ. Not until we have formed Christ within ourselves will we find it easy to give Him to families and to societies. And therefore all those who take part in the apostolate must develop a solid piety.”

Encyclical of H. H. Pius X to the Bishops of Italy, June 11, 1905.

What has been said of prayer should be equally applied to that other element of the interior life, suffering: that is, everything, whether from the outside or from within us, that goes against natural feeling.

A man can suffer like a pagan, like the damned, or like a saint. If he wishes to suffer with Christ, he must try to suffer like a saint. For then, suffering is of benefit to our own souls, and applies the merits of the Passion to those of others: “I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His Body, which is the Church.”
Adimpleo ea quae desunt passionum Christi, in carne mea, pro corpore ejus, quod est Ecclesia (Coloss. 1:24).

And St. Augustine, commenting on this text, says: “The sufferings were filled up, but in the Head only, there was wanting still the sufferings of Christ in His members. Christ went before as the Head, and follows after in His body.”
Impletae erant omnes, sed in capite, restabant adhuc passiones Christi in membris. Christus praecessit in capite. sequitur in corpore.

Christ has suffered as Head, now it is the turn of His Mystical Body to suffer. Every priest can say: I am that Body. I am a member of Christ, and it is up to me to complete what is wanting in the sufferings of Christ, for His Body, which is the Church.
Suffering, says Fr. Faber, is the greatest of the Sacraments. This acute theologian shows the necessity of suffering, and concludes what must be its glories. Every argument of the famous Oratorian can be applied to the fruitfulness of works by the union of the sacrifices of the apostle to the Sacrifice of Golgotha, and thus by their participation in the efficacy of the Precious Blood.