Thursday, October 9 : Venerable Madeleine Delbrêl

It is not we who look for an apostolate: it looks for us; God, in loving us first, makes apostles of us. How could we share bread, a roof, our heart with the neighbor who is our own flesh and not be overflowing with the love of our God for him, if that neighbor does not know him? Everything is miserable without God; we cannot tolerate wretchedness for someone we love, least of all the greatest. Not be apostolic? Not be missionaries? But then what would it mean to belong to this God who has sent his Son so that the world might be saved by him… and how? However, we don’t “think” about being apostles; we think of being – in God’s hands, in the body of Christ, under the moving of his Spirit – the Christ we wish to become; the Christ who is never love without being light; and there is no light except at the price of light. We imitate him, badly, but without stopping; we enter into him, dissimilarly but tenaciously; how could we not be, at least in will, apostles? in all our being disposed as, missionaries? (…) How could we not preach the gospel if the Gospel is under our skin, in our hands, our hearts, our heads? We are obliged to say why we try to be what we want to be, why we try not to be what we don’t want to be; we are obliged to preach since preaching is to say something publicly about Jesus Christ, our Lord and God, and one can’t love him and be silent.

Roman Extraordinary (Tridentine) Daily Readings – rosary,team