The reading from the handbook today had these interesting and important sentences: "The Church was founded to spread the kingdom of Christ over all the earth for the glory of God the Father, to make all men partakers in redemption and salvation and through them to establish the right relationship of the entire world to Christ. Every activity of the Mystical Body with this in view goes by the name of "apostolate."" This quote reveals to us something once quite well known by now mostly forgotten. It speaks of "apostolate" in the same sense that Dom Chautard used it when he wrote the classic book The Soul of the Apostolate. For those who have not read it, the point of the book was to illustrate the balance that must exist between prayer and apostolic work. According to Chautard, in order for the apostle to be effective and fruitful in his apostolate, he must spend a great deal of time in the work of mental prayer. For Chautard, the truly important part of apostolic work was the prayer that preceded and followed the work. For Chautard, apostolate means apostolic work, work that extends the Kingdom of Heaven in this world. There is in Chautard, and in the handbook for that matter, no confusion with the concept of "ministry," a term which, in Chautard's day was used solely for the exercise of ordained ministries within the Church and for the needs of the Church. In our contemporary circumstances, we often meet examples of lay people with the Church, who say, "I have a ministry that does this or that." In Chautard's terms, what they mean is "apostolate." The difference between the two has been effaced to the detriment of the life of Church.
Chautard's concept of fruitful apostolate had its root and fruit in prayer, and not just superficially so. In this image, what we should have in mind is the roots of a tree going very deep into the earth's water table, gaining support and stability, because, regardless of how large the tree may appear to be above ground, most of its existence, structurally and nutritively speaking, is below the surface of the earth. Yet, at the same time, its growth upwards towards the light of the sun is crowned by the glory of its fruit, the end product of the tree's whole being. For Chautard, this fruit is prayer as well. Prayer prepares for the work, but the work inevitably leads back to prayer, for this is the practical manifestation of the truth enunciated by Christ Himself, "apart from Me, you can do nothing." In truth, for those engaged in much apostolic work, Chautard observes as well as many others, a wondrous overlapping and blending begins to take place between the apostle's prayer and work. Like a log in the fire, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish where prayer end and work begins or vice versa. A good example of this can be seen in the life of the Russian-Canadian mystic Catherine Doherty. Catherine knew very well what work was. She founded the community, which she called Friendship House in Toronto in 1932, a work she continued in Harlem, NY in 1938. Friendship House in time morphed into the Madonna House apostolate, which today has hundreds of members in several countries. Despite the hard work of establishing and sustaining these foundations, Catherine's intuition was that most of the "work" was done in prayer, and that, even more importantly, at a certain point, the work itself became pervaded by prayer. Thus, Catherine would speak of simple tasks in terms of apostolic work. She testified that there is "apostolic sweeping," "apostolic dishwashing," and any other mundane work that can be imagined could also, potentially be "apostolic." How could this be? Through prayer. It was prayer that was rarefying and sanctifying merely menial work, making use of it to extend the Heavenly Kingdom.
What can we take from the insights of such a one as Chautard in the areas of prayer and work in the apostolate. First of all, we have to remember the necessity of having our roots in firmly, completely immersed in prayer. Effectiveness and fruitfulness depend on this and this alone. This point is a bitter and hard pill to swallow for a Church that is so contemporarily busy (just like society at large is busy), engaged in a host of projects that amounts to the heresy of "salvation by programs." Secondly, we should learn to take the fruit of our apostolic work to prayer as well, for just as we derive the strength for our fruitful work from God, we also turn over the fruits of our work to Him, for Him to judge their worth under His all-knowing but also all-loving eyes. It all belongs to Him. We are unprofitable servants. At best, we only do what we ought to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment