Friday 11 January 2019

On Sapphires and a Diamond

The following excerpt comes from The Soul of the Apostolate, written by Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.C.S.O. in 1946.
A jeweler will prefer the smallest fragment of diamond to several sapphires; and so, in the order established by God, our intimacy with Him gives Him more glory than all possible good, procured by us, for a great number of souls, but to the detriment of our own progress. Our Heavenly Father, “who devotes Himself more to the direction of a soul in which He reigns, than to the natural government of the whole universe and to the civil government of all empires,” 48 looks for this harmony in our zeal. He prefers sometimes to let an enterprise go by the board, if He sees it becoming an obstacle to the charity of the soul engaged in it. But as for Satan, he, on the contrary, does not hesitate to encourage a purely superficial success, if he can by this success prevent the apostle from making progress in the interior life: so clearly does his rage guess what it is Our Lord values most highly. To get rid of a diamond, he is quite willing to allow us a few sapphires.
Friends, on this Friday after the Epiphany, let our thoughts turn to our labors.

Are we amassing sapphires at the expense of a tiny fragment of a diamond?

Sapphires?
Or a diamond?

Are we forgoing our interior life in pursuit of our active life - otherwise known as the heresy of good works - when we should give our interior life utmost priority?

If we have, it is not too late to turn to Our Lord.

Source: https://www.olmc-mission.org/soul_of_the_apostolate.pdf.

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