Wanted: Apostles to transform the world!
Do you sometimes entertain doubts about the value of a materialistic lifestyle, which seems to be the goal of so many people today? Well, St Anthony did and he acted on those doubts. It was the year 271, when the twenty-year-old well-to-do Egyptian heard the invitation to the rich young man to follow him. Anthony responded to the Gospel by giving away his wealth and moving into the desert to live a life of solitude marked by prayer, penance and doing good works for others. His decision occupied him for the next eighty-five years of his life. Many were inspired to follow his example. Such was his influence that he is now seen as the father of monasticism.
Now travel forward in time to the twentieth century, to 1903 and meet another twenty-year-old, a Belgian, studying to be a priest. He kneels beside the death bed on which his father lies and vows to be the bearer of God’s Word to the young workers of the world. Joseph Cardijn chose a life of prayer and penance and doing good works amidst the activity of a world gone mad with the power of technology. He was still a teenager when he experienced rejection from young workers who were once at school with him. They had rejected the Church and its moral standards.
In the third of his 1948 Godinne series of lectures, which he titled The hour of the working class, Fr Joseph Cardijn stressed that all workers and their leaders “need supernatural life, the influence of Christ, of grace and of the presence of Christ, and the development of the life of Christ in them.” His vision and his faith is grounded in the Gospel story recounted by Mark (3:7-12), which is the Gospel reading for today’s Mass. People in great numbers followed Jesus to listen to him and to be healed.
The presence of evil in the world was not foreign to Jesus. It has been here from the beginning. Evil existed even in the Garden of Eden. Cardijn was convinced of the power of evil in the lives of workers. He was even more convinced of the power of good and knew in faith that God will triumph over evil. And that is made evident in the story told by Mark. Jesus healed the sick and those possessed by evil spirits. Evil proved powerless against the power for good present in Jesus. Cardijn, like every apostle before him, knew the power of Jesus in their lives and placed their trust in him.
The change that Cardijn sought continues today. The world needs Christ, but so many people ignore him. The last action of Jesus was to send his apostles to preach the Gospel and to baptise people. He worked through Fr Joseph Cardijn to form apostles in the twentieth century to continue his work. And here we are in the twenty-first century and we still need apostles. Unlike so many in today’s world, apostles do not work alone, but together. We are meant to be like God, who is Trinity. So, are you ready to act as one of his apostles? With whom will you share God’s word? And who will you involve in your action? What will your action look like? And how will you keep your focus on Jesus?
Author
Pat Branson
Read More
Joseph Cardijn, The Hour of the Working Class (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)