Apostleship of PrayerHistory of the Apostleship of Prayer
John L. Vessels, SJ
Part One The Apostleship of Prayer was born in a seminary at a time when in France most seminarians, most religious, all dreamed of being missionaries. It was a missionary period in the church, in fact the fruits of which the church today is still enjoying. Japan and some of the other countries of Asia were opening themselves to Christianity after centuries of having slammed the door on it. Africa had never really been evangelized until one hundred years ago, and young people all over Europe were on fire with this idea of being apostles of Jesus Christ, of being missionaries of Jesus Christ. Missionary activity and apostolic activity were one and the same; apostolic activity was a little bit broader in the sense that All the activities associated with spreading the message of Christ, where as the missionary word was going far away, going to another country, another land, another people, another culture and telling them about Jesus Christ.
This fire inflamed many young people: even the lay people regretted the fact that they could not be missionaries, and so they prayer for missionaries. The only way they could be associated with the missions was to pray for the missions. The Jesuits of the Toulouse Province had just taken on a new mission in southern India. The Jesuit Scholastics studied their philosophy and theology in the seminary at Vals. These young men had become so excited about hopefully being sent to India that they all wanted to qualify. Hence, they were all trying to learn as much about India as possible, believing that those who had prepared themselves well would be sent. So it was only a question of going to the library and finding all the material they could on India, culture, religions, languages, geography, history, etc. As it may so easily imagined, the more time they spent in studying about India, the less time was spent into studying their philosophy and their theology. And this was quite disturbing to their professors and lecturers. So much so that their spiritual father, Father Gautrelet exhorted them on the feast of St. Francis Xavier, 1844, to return to the study of philosopher and theology. He put it quite bluntly: "Your mission is not India, your mission is the classroom you're going to this afternoon! Your mission is philosophy or theology. Your mission is to PREPARE yourselves to be sent. The worst preparation for being a missionary is to do your own will and not the will of God. If you want to be a missionary, be a missionary today! Be a missionary in this seminary! Be a missionary by doing God's will TODAY!"
Then, Father Gautrelet continued: "I'll give you a practical suggestion as to what you might do to make yourself a missionary today a little more clearly and make sure that you are an authentic missionary today; When you get up in the morning you offer your day to God. You add one more prayer to your morning prayers. Let your first prayer be, 'God I give you this day; you gave it to me, I give it back. You have given me everything I am and everything I have. You have given me my mind, my body, my time, my energy, my health, my friends, my family, my faith, everything! And I want to give it back. I desire to make a return of love for love, everything I am and have, you have given them to me out of love and I desire to give it back out of love. I desire to use it as you would have me use it. So here it is, Lord. The programmes is already made, to certain extent: my study schedule, my work schedule, my recreation schedule. I just long to do your will in each of these activities, with each person who comes into my existence, any person whose existence I go into during these activities today. I want to be the instrument of you peace and your love and your justice and your faith, your truth, your life!"
The young Jesuit Scholastics began to make this morning offering. In this prayer they found that they were really focussing on doing God's will rather than their own will in every little thing that they were doing during the day. As they began to take this prayer more seriously, and rearranged, modified, their prayer lives to a certain extent to where this was becoming an important focus of their prayerful attention to God, they noticed, immediately almost, that two other aspects of their prayer lives were being enriched and helped by this stress on a morning offering.
First realized that the Eucharist began to be so much richer. Mass began when they woke up in the morning and they said this offering, "Lord, I give you this day, to do with it what you want." Jesus lived in the hearts of each of them and they began to realize this, that the heart of each of them was a chapel where Jesus Christ celebrated. Jesus Christ lived in the heart of each of them and each of them was a chapel where Jesus celebrated continually the Eucharist and his sacrifice on Calvary, with the full collaboration of each one each morning.
When they went to the chapel after finishing their meditation, this was an on-going prayer that they had already begun with the saying of the morning offering. The Eucharist in the chapel was a coming together in Jesus' name, not just for each of them but for the whole community. Thus there was a movement from individual prayer to community prayer, uniting with the prayer of the whole Church. Thus the eucharistic attitude of sacrifice and offering with which the day had begun had reached its fullness, its prayerful peak in the celebration of the Eucharist and in the communion with Jesus, head and heart. They listened to the Word, learned what the head of this body wanted its members to do during the day or was doing through them and received the strength to act as Jesus.
To be continued
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