Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
In this, our last reflection on Franciscan spirituality, truly last reflection, we're going to close by speaking about the spiritual fruit of the apostolate. Last time we spoke about how Saint Francis discerned his call to be an apostolic man, but he became an apostle by the will and investiture of God after having matured his apostolic vocation in prayer and contemplation in the fire of his mind and his heart with his whole being sublimated, thanks to contact with the Most High. He had a very strong attraction for a purely contemplative life, but it was overcome by him because of the clear will of God, who wanted Francis to be an apostle.
Francis found the exuberance of love for his beloved couldn't exhaust itself in a virtue that was solitary, only in prayer. The fire had to be brought into the world to ignite the blaze. The ascetics in the beginnings of mystical intimacy found in solitude were completed in Saint Francis's missionary work for the extension of the kingdom of Christ. So in the incandescence of divine love, the seraphic father became apostolic. He's the man who, as Saint Bonaventure says, having his heart always set on heaven, looked to bring everyone else up there with him.
The apostolic genius is always an overcoming of egocentric inclinations and inferior movements. It's the action of a creature which has been renewed and continues to renew himself by virtue of God's grace, an action which irresistibly transforms itself into a loving devotion of the supernatural life to one's neighbor. Union with God realized in the soul overflows and pours out into a seraphic love for humanity. That's the apostolate, essentially. That's the consignment that Saint Francis left to his followers.
The apostolate then is a fruit of the union with God, a fruit of our incorporation into Christ, of the seraphic love that burns in the Franciscan heart, a fruit of the poverty, humility, and suffering which have strengthened the heart by its fusion with Christ. It's a mature fruit on the branch by means of the sap which comes from the vine who is Jesus. The apostolate is life with a small L that's generated from life with a capital L from Jesus himself. It's a warm ray, which emanates from the Son of Justice, who is Jesus.
And yet with surprising superficiality, one gathers in the apostolate that which is most external and flashy but less substantial, namely the material activity, the works, the writings, the organization, even the economic means. All the agitation and management only have worth if they are an expression of an interior flame ignited by grace. Only if they're the union of the branch with the vine, which is an indispensable condition for fecundity. The most profound cause of the apostolate is hidden to those who only look on the surface of life. Those who draw clear water don't think of the mysterious underground passages that the water has to cross through in order to gush out clear and fresh. Just like the one who picks a flower doesn't think of the patient work of the roots that assimilate and nourish the flower.
The apostolate isn't improvised. It's not an activity that's natural to man. Quite the contrary, the apostolate is again the result of a long interior activity in which grace and our free will come together to renew us and focus all our vital energies towards a goal that's clearly understood and firmly willed. The apostolate is a creature mystically incorporated into Christ, penetrated by his spirit, which has at its center the loves and the desires of Jesus Christ himself. From the heart of Jesus that so loved men and came to this world to bring fire, the flame of love is lit in the heart of the one that loves Jesus and is united to him. So the apostolate is Jesus himself living and working.
It's the redemption that goes out to souls that are waiting for it, and it's brought by the brothers and sisters of Christ himself. It's a blazing fire, life which is transmitted and multiplied. Essentially, it's Jesus being born in the hearts of other people. The apostolate is formed at the feet of our Lord in intimate prayer, an assiduous meditation that feeds love and strengthens our union with him. It's only then that it becomes light for the minds, bread for the hungry, life for those who are dead to grace. This can happen only through contact with Jesus, who is the light, who is the living bread from heaven, who is the life itself. Every life that is to come must first be enclosed in a life that's already in act.
The fullness of the life of Jesus, inhabited in the innermost parts of the heart, permits the disciple to be almost like a mother to other souls, generating them to the life of grace. And in this way, life is perpetuated because God wills that life is born only from life, and life is perfected not just by being closed in upon itself, but it's perfected by communicating itself to others. The soul, therefore, perfects its union with Jesus and his life of grace by communicating that grace and that life to others, which is the apostolate, essentially.
But no one can be a continuer of the work of Jesus without drawing from his energy, which is the source of every apostolate, and from which, like a hidden source in the deep, springs forth the waters of life. The seraphic soul shows its true face in this light, the union to Christ and the apostolate. Every one of its activities has this double character to it. The seraphic soul thinks, loves, wills, studies, teaches, walks, works, prays, suffers, fights for a single goal, to continue the redemptive work of Jesus in the world.
Let's ask our Lady for that grace to have a life and a love for her Son living and dwelling within us so that we can share that life and that love with all those who the Lord has brought into our lives: family, friends, co-workers, other people, people we don't even know, all those who become our spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ through the apostolate and through the grace of our Lord.
Praise be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.