You might think that after His long period of inactivity at Nazareth Our Lord would be chafing, at least a little, at the delay. The world was in sore need of what He had come to give it. He has now only three years left in which to labor and preach and win all men to His way of life. Surely He will make haste to get into the center of the fray at once.
But He does not hurry. Or rather He hurries, but not to engage yet in active work. The world must wait still longer while Jesus is "driven" by the Holy Spirit into the desert. Forty precious days more He allows to pass by, and all He does is pray and fast! What an indictment this is for those who imagine that feverish agitation is synonymous with the true apostolate! There are socalled apostolic men and women who are perpetually in motion; they are persuaded that all their rushing about is done for the sake of souls. It may be that they are correct in thinking this; God grant that they are!
Is there any test they can apply? Yes, there is, and we discover it when we follow Jesus into the desert. Far removed from the haunts of men, knowing perfectly what the position is, Jesus stays here and prays. Prayer is the second foundation stone He thus lays for the future apostle. Contact with God in a life of prayerful union with God gives a ring of conviction to the apostle's voice that can be compensated for by no amount of natural talent. Prayer gives a forcefulness and an influence before which the walls that sin has raised round about men's souls collapse and fall in pieces. The incontestable proof of this, apart from the teaching and example of Our Lord, is the lasting results that the saints have secured, and only the saints, in the work of genuine conversion of souls.
"Whether we take Saint Bernard or Saint Teresa," writes Miss Hilda Graef in her Way of the Mystics, "or Saint Catherine or Saint Francis de Sales, there they are, wrapt in ecstasy, spending whole nights in prayer, telling the world that union with God is the only thing worth living for, and succeeding, as a kind of byproduct, in founding and reforming Orders, directing European politics, and exercising an influence not easily to be gauged on hundreds and thousands of men and women, not only of their own, but also of future times."
Catholic Action should rise up out of prayer as the flower from the root and stem. Activity that pretends to be a substitute for prayer is counterfeit and deceived if it imagines itself to be genuine zeal for souls. It is only an outlet for one's natural desire for change and excitement, or it is _ more dangerous still _ a source to feed pride and conceit and engender a boastfulness that is abhorred by God.
Jesus, not all of us can preach or write or organize or go out on the foreign missions; not all of us have the talent and the learning to defend by subtle argument the truths of our faith. It is good to realize that such handicaps need bar nobody from being a true apostle. Work undertaken ostensibly for You, unless it is the overflowing of the interior life, is a body without a soul. Prayer is the soul of the apostolate and I surely would rather be a living soul than a lifeless body.