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INTRODUCTION
This work is a conference written by Fr. William Ferree, SM, which presents a working program for “apostles.” [1] It points out the two methods of attack at hand today: study of the ideal and total effort. The body of the conference points out that a mission so grand as ours will demonstrably fail; but in the economy of salvation, that failure is the sacramental veil of success.
1. Our mission is universal
Anyone who reads Father Chaminade’s writings attentively will discover that he proposed to himself a mission so vast that almost all his followers—including ourselves—have come to the conclusion that he was indulging in a sort of rhetorical exaggeration. They, and we, have been driven to this conclusion by the fact that a literal interpretation of his words is obviously out of contact with reality as the whole of human history reveals it to us. Unless Father Chaminade left us some extraordinary means of action which men before us did not possess, it was demonstrably absurd to want to be taken literally in a statement such as this: “There is no question of saving the souls of a few public sinners; what we want to do is to attract and convert the world which has gone wrong almost in its entirety.”
Yet the propagation of a really universal mission is so constant in his work that we cannot legitimately take refuge in a figurative explanation of such statements. We must face the fact that he meant what he said.
Was he simply mistaken, then, in his appreciation of the extent of his mission—and of ours; or did he really leave us some extraordinary means of action which renders possible what is otherwise only a naïve delusion: the effective conversion of the whole world?
2. The means to achieve this mission
My own growing conviction is that he left us the means: that the marvelous combination of doctrine and organization and means of action which are revealed by an analysis of his writings and his various foundations really do constitute something distinctly new and almost unbelievably dynamic in the Christian apostolate. Furthermore, Father Chaminade himself seems to have been clearly conscious of this even in the recognized imperfection of his work brought on by the petty struggles of his subordinates and the concessions he had to make to their incomprehension. “I am so convinced,” he wrote in 1824, “that we have found the means of reestablishing Christian usages (in present terminology: “of reconstructing a Christian social order”), of propagating the spirit of religion, and of setting up powerful barriers to the seduction and corrupting torrent of secularism and materialism (“philosophism” as it was called in Father Chaminade’s time) that I will not allow (our Institute) to be changed substantially, or even modified.”
3. “Universal” taken literally
Thus we can see not violent rhetoric, but a cold statement of fact in Father Chaminade’s words: “Our work is grand, it is magnificent . . . it is universal . . .” And indeed, the more we study this work, the more profoundly we can realize how grand and magnificent it is. At almost every step of the study we find new revelations of its tremendous solidity and power. If we have any heart for a high ideal, we must surely consecrate ourselves body and soul to ours; and in the enthusiasm of that consecration we will want to spend for it the last ounce of our energy.,
And this is as it should be, for no other form of consecration is worthy of so high an ideal as this.
Success in Such a Mission
1. It will never succeed
But in that same enthusiasm, we will be tempted to think that so great an ideal, enforced by so marvelous a system, must almost infallibly succeed in its eventual realization; and this is not as it should be, for it exposes us to a disappointment even greater than our enthusiasm. We are here face to face with the most agonizing problem that faces the apostolic heart; it has the formal command of Christ (to which it has consecrated its whole existence) to go and baptize all nations; and at the sa