true apostolate

Our passage over this earth can never be a matter of indifference as far as others are concerned. We help others to find Christ or we separate them from him. We enrich others or we impoverish them. And we come across so many of these others - friends, workmates, members of our family, neighbours... who seem to go after material goods as though they hungered for them, material goods that only serve to lure them away from their true Good who is Jesus Christ. They journey through life like men who are lost. If the guide of the blind is not to become blind himself (cf Matt 15:14), it is not enough for him to know the way from hearsay or from coming across mere references to it. If we are to help the people around us, it is not enough for us to have a vague and superficial knowledge of the way. We need to walk along it ourselves and to have first-hand knowledge of the obstacles that lie in our path and have to be surmounted. We need to have interior life, to enter daily into personal conversation with Jesus. We need to know his doctrine ever more deeply; to struggle with still more determination to overcome our own defects. The apostolate is the result of a great love for Chri