You have sent me to work among men. O God … ordered me out among men. These men to whom I have been sent are of your choosing Lord … and I must not be their friend, but their servant.
O God, what strange creatures these men are. … They usually want everything but what I’m trying to bring. They want to tell me their little cares and worries … . What a disheartening mixture of the comical and the tragic, of small truth and big lies, of little trials that are taken too seriously and big sins that are made light of!
And what do these men
want of me? … they look upon me as some kind of celestial insurance agent, to
take out an accident policy for eternity, to make sure you that never break in upon their lives with the Omnipotence
of your Holiness and Justice.
How seldom does anyone
say, “Lord what do you want me to do?” How seldom anyone wants to receive the
gift of your grace the way it really is: austere and plain, for your honor, not
just for our consolation, chaste and pure, silent and bold.
These are the men you
have sent me … the field in which you … want me to sow the seed of your grace and
your truth …. I don’t mean to say that I am any better than they. I know my own
heart, and you know it still better. It’s no different from the hearts of the
men I must approach in your name.
When I complain to
you of the heavy burden of my vocation … I am acting like a small man who wants
to be consoled, who is always thinking of his own sorrows, who can't for a
minute forget his own troubles in his own comfort to lose himself in silent
admiration of what a great thing it is to spend one's life in unselfishly
serving you.
When you assigned me
the task of going out among men, you were only repeating to me your one and
only commandment: to find my way home to you in love. All care of souls is
ultimately possible only in union with you only in the love which binds me to
you and thus makes me your companion and finding a path to the hearts of men.
You are waiting to be
found in love, and that which is the heart and soul of true love of you,
prayer. If I had prayed more I would be closer to souls. For prayer… is not
merely a useful aid in my work for souls, the very first that last act of my
apostolate.
Lord, teach me to
pray and to love you. Then I shall forget my own wretchedness on account of
you, for I shall be able to do the one thing that lets me forget it: patiently
bear the poverty of my brethren into the land of your riches. Then… I shall
really be able to be a brother to them.
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