The Dangers of an Active Life without an Interior Life: A Series

Irenaeus at Toronto Catholic Witness is posting a series of quotes from Dom Chautard's The Soul of The Apostolate. I cannot recommend this book highly enough! For anyone, and I mean anyone, who is involved in any sort of active apostolate it is a must read! It was St Pius X's 'bedside book'. Here are the first three parts

Part One

In what will be a multi-part series, I will be reproducing fairly lengthy block quotes from The Soul of the Apostolate, written in 1946 by Jean-Baptiste Chautard, O.S.C.O. Specifically, I will be lifting verbatim from the section describing what occurs to a soul when the interior life is neglected in favor of an active life, otherwise known as "An Active Worker with No Interior Life."

Here, Fr. Chautard is merely describing an active man with no interior life or a bare one at the very least, in simple terms.

To sum up such a one in a word; perhaps he is not yet tepid, but he is bound to become so. However, when a man is tepid, with a tepidity that is not merely in the feelings, or due to weakness, but residing in the will, that man has resigned himself to consent habitually to levity and neglect, or at any rate to cease fighting them. He has come to terms with deliberate venial sin, and by that very fact, he has robbed his soul of its assurance of eternal salvation. Indeed, he is disposing and even leading it on to mortal sin. 10 Such also is St. Alphonsus’ teaching on tepidity, so well expounded by his disciple, Fr. Desurmont. 11 Now how is it that, without an interior life, the active worker inevitably slides into tepidity? Inevitably, we say; and the only proof we need for this is the statement of a missionary bishop to his priests, a statement all the more terrifying by its truth, since it comes straight from a heart consumed with zeal for good works and filled with a spirit that goes clean contrary to anything that smacks of quietism. “There is one thing,” said Cardinal Lavigerie, “one thing of which you must be fully persuaded, and it is that for an apostle there is no halfway between total sanctity, at least faithfully and courageously desired and sought after, and absolute perversion.” 

Friends, does this describe us? Have we fallen into the heresy of good works? Are we on the way to becoming tepid, to the point where the Lord will spit us out of His Mouth? Or are we already tepid?

Part Two

Here, Fr. Chautard describes the seeds of the 'heresy of good works' found in a soul who is enamored with ideals but fails to take into account the 'nitty-gritty' of what really needs to be there for one's good works to bear good fruit.

First let us go back to the seed of corruption fostered in our nature by concupiscence, and the fight to the death that is ever waged against us by your enemies, within as well as without. Let us go back to the dangers that threaten us on every side. With this in mind, let us consider what happens to a soul that enters upon the apostolate without being sufficiently forewarned and forearmed against its dangers. Fr. (or Mr.) So-and-So feels within himself a growing desire to consecrate himself to good works. He has no experience whatever. But his liking for the apostolate gives us the right to suppose that he has a certain amount of fire, some impetuosity of character, is fond of action, and also perhaps, inclined to relish a bit of a fight. Let us imagine him to be correct in his conduct, a man of piety and even to devotion; but his piety is more in the feelings than in the will, and his devotion is not the light reflected by a soul resolute in seeking nothing but the good pleasure of God, but a pious routine, the result of praiseworthy habits. Mental prayer, if indeed he practices it at all, is for him a species of day-dreaming, and his spiritual reading is governed by curiosity, without any real influence on his conduct. Perhaps the devil even eggs him on by reason of an illusory artistic sense, which the poor soul mistakes for an “inner life,” to dabble in treatises on the lofty and extraordinary paths of union with God, and these fill him with admiration and enthusiasm. All in all, there is little genuine inner life, if any at all, in this soul which still has, we grant, a certain number of good habits, many natural assets and a certain loyal desire to be faithful to God; but that desire is altogether too vague.

Friends, are we guilty of heaping loads of idealism on the good works we imagine ourselves capable of without injecting a good dose of realism into our veins? Have we already sown the seeds of our own fatigue and defeat before we have even begun our good works?

Part Three

Here, Fr. Chautard describes the various assaults a soul invites - or, rather, inflicts - upon themselves when they undertake an apostolate without adequate interior preparation.

There you have our apostle, filled with his desire to throw himself into active works, and on the point of entering upon this ministry which is so completely new to him. It is not long before circumstances that inevitably arise from these works (as will readily be understood by anyone who has led the active life) produce a thousand-and-one occasions to draw him more and more out of himself; there are countless appeals to his naive curiosity, unnumbered occasions of falling into sin from which we may suppose he has hitherto been protected by the peaceful atmosphere of his home, his seminary, his community, or his novitiate — or at least by the guidance of an experienced director. Not only is there an increasing dissipation-, or the ever growing danger of a curiosity that has to find out all about everything; not only more and more displays of impatience or injured feelings, of vanity or jealousy, presumption or dejection, partiality or detraction, but there is also a progressive development of the weaknesses of his soul and of all the more or less subtle forms of sensuality. And all these foes are preparing to force an unrelenting battle upon this soul so ill-prepared for such violent and unceasing attacks. And it therefore falls victim to frequent wounds! Indeed, it is a wonder when there is any resistance at all on the part of a soul whose piety is so superficial — a soul already captivated by the too natural satisfaction it takes in pouring out its energies and exercising all its talents upon a worthy cause! Besides, the devil is wide awake, on the look-out for his anticipated prey. And far from disturbing this sense of satisfaction, he does all in his power to encourage it.  

Friends, has this happened to us? Have we abandoned ourselves to our natural energies, our natural gifts, and our concupiscence without nourishing our interior lives, which would also give us the graces to counter this concupiscence? Without turning to God first and foremost - or, if we do, has it been superficial and lacking the level of conversation appropriate to the One Who Created us? Have we succumbed to the devil and his willies in all of their forms?

This particular danger need not solely apply to brand-new apostolates - this can and does happen to apostolates which have been running for a number of years.