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.”