The Dangers of an Active Life without an Interior Life: Part Fifteen

Today's excerpt from Dom Chautard is again rather short:

That admirable Jesuit, Fr. Lallemant, takes us right back to the first cause of these disasters when he says: “There are many apostolic workers who never do anything purely for God. In all things, they seek themselves, and they are always secretly mingling their own interests with the glory of God in the best of their work. And so they spend their life in this intermingling of nature and grace. Finally death comes along, and then alone do they open their eyes, behold their deception, and tremble at the approach of the formidable judgment of God.”

How often have we seen this? This secret "mingling of [one's] own interests with the glory of God in the best of [ours or others'] work"?

Too often. For we are imperfect creatures who struggle constantly against the promotion of the self against God, and - both by the devil and ourselves - we are deceived into thinking we are doing something for the glory of God when we are actually doing it for our own selfish human-oriented interests.

Our primary goal here on Earth to attain our own salvation. That is something which we can term selfish, but it is something we must do. Our own apostolates must ALWAYS be geared towards attaining our own salvation. But it is when we begin to focus on things - material, social, economical, and so on - that will neither aid our salvation nor help our apostolate (that is, God will not allow those things to be carried with us into the next life) in any way that it becomes problematic. 

Have we done this? Have we allowed ourselves to become deceived, be it by ourselves, others, and the devil, onto lines of thinking which are disastrous? Have we allowed our concerns for whatever material, social, and economic benefits our apostolate brings to cloud its true purpose: the attainment of our particular eternal salvation?

If we have, do we want to become like those who, at death's door, opened their eyes to their deception and foolishness?

If you have answered "no," it is not too late to question the depths of one's deception and folly.