Vigils Reading – Office for Vocations

THE CALL OF THE APOSTLES

By Fr Romano Guardini

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What are “Apostles” really? Frankly; the impression we get from the New

Testament hardly permits us to claim that these men were great or ingenious in

the worldly sense. It is difficult even to count them “great religious

personalities,” if by this we mean bearers of inherent spiritual talents. John and

Paul were probably exceptions, but we only risk misunderstanding them both

by overstating this. On the whole, we do “Apostles” no service by considering

them great religious personalities. This attitude is usually the beginning of

unbelief. Personal importance, spiritual creativeness, dynamic faith are not

decisive in their lives. What counts is that Jesus Christ has called them, pressed

his seal upon them, and sent them forth.

“You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and have appointed you

that you should go and bear fruit”. Apostles then are those who are sent. It is

not they who speak, but Christ in them.

In his first Corinthian [letter] Paul distinguishes nicely between the

instructions of “the Lord” and what he, Paul, has to say. The Lord’s words are

commands; his own, suggestions. Each apostle is filled with Christ, saturated

with thought of Christ; the Lord, whom they represent, is the substance of their

life. What they teach is not what they have learned from personal “experience”

or “revelation,” it is God’s word, uttered upon God’s command: “Go, therefore,

and make disciples of all nations teaching them to observe all that I have

commanded you”. To this end alone have the apostles been called, and their

very limitations seem an added protection to the truth they bear.

When Jesus says: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that

you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and have revealed

them to little ones”, it is an outburst of jubilation over the unutterable mystery

of God’s love and creative glory. Spiritually, the apostles are seldom more than

“little ones;” [and it is] precisely this [that] guarantees the purity of their role as

messenger.

To be nothing in oneself, everything in Christ; to be obliged to contain

such tremendous contents in so small a vessel; to be a constant herald with no

life of one’s own; to forego once and forever the happy unity of blood and heart

and spirit in all one does and is—something of the trials of such an existence

dawns on us when we read the first letter of St Paul to the Corinthians, of that

Paul who experienced so deeply the simultaneous greatness and

questionableness of apostledom: “For I think God has set forth us the apostles

last of all, as men doomed to death, seeing that we have been made a spectacle

to the world, and to angels, and to men.”