Vigils Reading

From the writing of

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… We are reviled and we bless, we are

persecuted and we bear it, we are maligned and we entreat, we have become

as the refuse of this world, as the offscouring of all, even until now!”