140. Fourth Monday of Easter
Meditations no. 186 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
The right order for proselytism: beginning with our supernatural family.
In the Gospel of todayâs Mass Jesus Christ talks to us about the Good Shepherd. He himself is the Good Shepherd, who gives his life for his sheep, and wants us to do the same: I am the door; if anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. Commenting on this passage, our Father taught us that all of us share in the mission of the Good Shepherd, because everyone in the Work is at the same time a sheep and a shepherd.
There is no sign, no mark that better distinguishes a Christian than the love that he has for his brothers and his zeal for the salvation of all souls, says St John Chrysostom. Proselytism has an order of priorities. Charity must be practised in a special way among those who have a bond of fraternity, because they are children of the same Mother, the Work. We need to seek many souls for the Work. However, more important still is to look after our brothers or sisters with a lot of love and affection, to help them maintain and improve their self-giving. We are in Christâs sheepfold, and as St Augustine says, I wish to save the sheep who are outside, but I am more afraid of any danger to those who live on the inside. It would be false proselytism if we were to seek to win new vocations while neglecting our brothers or sisters. It would be equally false to take great pains over the way we treat people outside the Work, while failing to practise still greater charity towards the members of our supernatural family.
You support me, my children, our Father said on one occasion, and I support you too, so that you may be good and faithful. In the Work, we must each be united with the others so that we donât fall, and so that we are strong with the strength of the others, relying on one another in order to be good and faithful. We each have the duty of supporting and helping the others. Proselytistic zeal? Good, marvellous! But if we donât try to make our brothers or sisters better and more faithful, then I donât believe in such proselytism.
It is much more efficient apostolically to take care of the fishermen rather than the fish. Our brothers or sisters come before anyone else. The first expression of proselytism is to help one another to persevere and become saints.
Responsibility for each otherâs perseverance.
My brethren, the Apostle St James tells us, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and someone brings him back, let him know that whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
If one of you should stray⌠there is that possibility. Without the help of God and of our brothers or sisters, which of us could feel secure in our way? And what a great responsibility there is upon us to help someone who weakens at a given moment! We should show more love and affection to whoever needs it most. A mother showers more love on a child who falls sick. A mother does not abandon her sick child, nor a loving brother his brother, even though the illness is contagious.
Not only the Directors, but all of us are responsible for the perseverance of the others; and it is vitally important that we each take care of those who have been entrusted to us, being very attentive to anyone who is faltering. It is the best service we can offer to the Church and the Work: I am a servant of the Church and primarily of her weakest members, since we are all members of the same body, writes St Cyprian. Without doubt, it is the best apostolate. The finest proselytism is that of making sure that you do not lose any of your brothers or sisters, our Father said.
We would have a great deal to answer for if we ever failed to realize that one of the others was lagging behind. This is something which should be noticed at the outset, like realizing that someone is ill. And if it would be a crime just to leave a sick person to die, it would be much worse to allow someone to lose their way. If I ever saw a child of mine waver, wrote our Father, and waver to the extent of losing their earthly happiness, and perhaps their eternal happiness too, I wouldnât excuse from sin the people who had lived with them, for having failed to give them all the support they needed to persevere, support they had a right to.
If at a given moment someone were to feel the temptation to abandon the way that they had seen clearly one day, we would have to apply all the means necessary to bring them back to life: praying for them, and, with the greatest respect for their freedom, taking care of them so as to help them persevere. Anything else would not only be a lack of charity, but also of justice, since we are in a way responsible for their vocation.
Our Lordâs teaching is clear. He talks to us about the Good Shepherd and the thief, who comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. As good shepherds of one another, if we were ever to see anyone falter, we would have to intensify our prayer, our mortification and our faithfulness to our day on guard, and shower care and affection on that brother or sister of ours.
Prayer and help for one another, through fraternal correction and other signs of true charity.
We exercise our mission as a good shepherd of the others primarily by way of fraternal correction. He who looks after his own comfort and not the good of Jesus Christ ⌠keeps quiet, and doesnât correct. You are a hireling: you saw the wolf coming and you fled! Perhaps you answer: See, I am here, I have not fled. You fled, because you have kept silent.
These words of St Augustine find an echo in something our Founder told us. When one of my children loses his or her way, those who lived with them take a good part of the blame because they did not help them. On an excursion to a mountain or in the snow, if someone strayed from the path and got lost, the others would do anything to try to find them, theyâd go and look for them, ready to face any obstacles or sacrifice. Theyâd expose themselves to a hundred thousand dangers, and theyâd do everything they could to bring them back safe and sound. Anything else would be despicable. Well, that is exactly what you must do for your brothers or sisters, and for other people too. It is a duty of justice: firstly - I repeat - towards your own brothers or sisters. Help them, encourage them. Go on!
This is why we have fraternal correction, as the first Christians did. We didnât invent it In the spiritual life, as Iâve often told you, we donât have to invent anything. We have the same means as the Apostles and the first Christians had: faith, which God gives us, and hope and charity, which are all supernatural virtues. After that, doctrine, sacraments⌠And the sacrament of penance, which results in spiritual direction and leads us to be sincere.
In this way we will go forward, all of us: we cannot leave anyone behind on the road. When someone gets left behind, I feel as if I have left a piece of my skin there caught on a rock. And I suffer. I feel it was my fault, and I beat my breast: Forgive me, my God. Often it was not my fault, but the fault of those who were living with that person and did not help them.
When I was young, I had great devotion to the forty martyrs of Sebaste, those soldiers who were made to stand in a pool of freezing water. When they were at the point of death, they said: âForty of us have entered into battle, and we ask for forty crowns.â We used to read this story in the breviary. One of them got out of the water, but then the Holy Spirit moved the soul of one of the guards, and he got in and took his place, to be a witness of Jesus Christ. Therefore, you should do likewise.
It is true charity, real affection, that drives our prayer and the way we treat others. True charity doesnât think of the sacrifices, but leads the good shepherd to give his life for his sheep every day. Charity towards your brothers, said our Father. This charity will lead you to help them to persevere in their vocation, which is the most splendid gift that God has given us. It will lead you to use your talents so that each of us will be saints, and will have a solid interior life.
If you know that one of the others is delaying the meditation, or forgets to go to Confession on the right day, why donât you help them? âLook, shall we go and do the prayer?â âHow about coming to Confession? Todayâs our dayâŚâ If we notice that someone finds mortification difficult, surely we can make it a little easier for them with a kind word and our own good example?
We must do our utmost to help each other to persevere and be happy. May each of you be truly concerned for the others, in order to make their lives, the way of God on this earth, pleasanter. May no one in the Work ever feel alone, but may all feel sure that they are understood; that if they weaken, they will be forgiven and offered a hand; and that as a remedy for their own weakness, they have the strength of everyone else,â including the strength of our Mother, Holy Mary, Virgo potens, Virgin most powerful.