At first sight it would seem, to the wise and prudent of this world, that Our Lord's commission is quite fantastic. These men whom He is sending forth are for the most part illiterate; nearly all of them are simple fishermen who have remained outside the schools of learning and have none of the savoir faire of the cultured people about them. They have no money, no ways and means of enlisting the interest and patronage of the wealthy and the influential. The world around them is steeped in sin; materialism is the gospel of the day.
Yet this handful of men is expected to make its way into the homes of rich and poor alike and win them to a belief in Christ, Who was crucified as a criminal. Not merely a belief either: they must live their lives according to the hard sayings of Christ's gospel _ practicing mutual love one of the other; subduing the flesh by selfdenial, denying the heart its natural cravings to seek satisfaction in sinful pleasure which abounded. Why, they would be laughed out of court, this poor, sorry little company of apostles! What chance could they possibly have of making the slightest impression on such a world?
A very little consideration is enough to see how strikingly accurate is this description when applied to the world we live in. Once more all flesh has corrupted its way; God is ostracized from His own world; men have decided they can run the world very well without Him.
That is the world we live in, and that is the world which Christ's Vicar bids us go all out to win completely to Christ and obedience to His gospel. Once more it may seem impossible, more especially when, here at this place of my prayer, I recount the very many handicaps from which I suffer. I am a sinner. I have done evil in His sight. I am, perhaps, no great scholar. I have to think much about the material side of life, providing for my family, earning my daily bread by a life of toil.
A piece of common clay in the hands of Christ opened the eyes of a man born blind. "My thoughts," He says, "are not your thoughts nor My ways your ways, for, as far as the heavens are exalted above the earth, so far are My thoughts from your thoughts and My ways from your ways." When Our Lord wanted to spread the devotion to His Sacred Heart all over the world, He chose a humble, unknown French nun. When He would teach a proud world that it was wrong, that it must find its way back to God by its votaries becoming "as little children," the instrument was a young girl who died in a Carmelite convent at the age of twentyfour.
Beyond all question, the instrument to be used by Our Lord for the work of saving souls must make use, and full use, of every natural talent given by God. But, in my prayer this morning, Our Lord would prove to me that the possession of such natural talent is no guarantee of a successful apostolate, and the lack of such natural talent is no reason for hanging back and thinking that one is unfitted for the work.
Jesus, if You deign to Use Me, a sinner, a person of little natural gifts, not learned, not skilled in the ways of approach to the great ones of the world, not very tactful perhaps, not blessed with remarkable powers of judgment, but still desirous of making of my life something worth while, if, O Lord, You can find work for me to do in Your vineyard, here I am; send me!