WE need to be familiar with this Christian duty. We have to do apostolate, and we need to see to it that the zeal for it is always nourished, stoked and fanned to its most intense degree.
Before ascending into heaven, Christ told his apostles: “All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Go, therefore, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…” (Mt 28,18-19)
While addressed directly to his apostles, these words are meant for all those who want to follow Christ. To do apostolate is part of a Christian’s duty. It’s part of a Christian’s identity.
A Christian is always an apostle. No one is excused from it.
We have to understand that these parting words of Christ represent his culminating and ultimate desire for our redemption. We can say that all he did in his earthly life—his preaching, doing miracles, his dying—get somehow summarized in this one great desire of God.
That’s because the divine work of human redemption continues. It cannot stop. This time though, it is done with our cooperation, since if we are incorporated into him through baptism and in the Spirit, we can’t avoid getting involved in God’s plans and actions.
The realization of this crucial aspect of our Christian life gives meaning and perspective to our whole life and everything contained in it. It puts our life in the right orbit.
Our life can’t simply be a life in pursuit of personal sanctity without doing apostolate. These two go together inseparably, mutually affecting each other to put us in the right track in our life.
This joint God-and-man effort is also in keeping with our dignity as persons and as children of God. As persons, we need to see to it that we get to be responsible also for our whole life, for attaining its true fullness of purpose.
And that’s nothing less than to participate in the life of God, since more than persons, we are children of his, meant to live with Him.
Thus, to do apostolate engages our intelligence and will in their proper way. It’s how we can best use our freedom and our loving. It’s how we can be truly responsible for our life.
In short, if these distinctive human faculties and activities are not used for apostolate but rather for some other human purpose, we would be misusing them. No matter how noble these human purposes are, if the apostolic dimension is missing, we would be misusing these God-given powers.
That’s also why many of us are deeply entangled with problems of the flesh and of the world, now knowing how to get out of them. Without the apostolic purpose in life, our powers can go sooner or later on a self-destructive mode.
To do apostolate also corresponds to a most basic reality about ourselves. We are never alone, meant to live our life in isolation from the others. Like it or not, conscious of it or not, we live with others. We are somehow responsible for one another.
Therefore, we need to sharpen our awareness of our apostolic duty, since left to our own devices, we would rather give our complete attention solely to ourselves. This tendency is a consequence of our sinfulness. But originally, before man’s fall, we tend to love and care for one another.
To develop this apostolic concern therefore entails sacrifice. We should not be surprised if in pursuing it we are challenged, faced with difficulties and asked to do self-denials and other forms of sacrifice.
We just have to hold firm on our Christian conviction, together with the continuing petition for God’s grace and the generous discharge of our human effort, that to do apostolate is the will of God. He is bent in accomplishing it. It’s his first concern to contend with the difficulties. Ours is simply to cooperate.
We have to continually ask ourselves if our thoughts and desires bear an eminently apostolic character. If not, let’s immediately do the necessary adjustments and corrections.
We have to embark also on a life-long effort to acquire apostolic skills—how to make friends and deepen that friendship, how to pursue full blast the supernatural apostolic goal of our life while respecting our natural conditions, etc.
The apostolic zeal should be revved to the max!
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