Empty-handed

When I was young, it was often explained to me that in the apostolate the old principle was that “no one gives what he does not have“. Now – many years later – I am not so sure. I think Urs von Balthasar’s statement is more true when he writes that “the privilege of the Christian is to be able to give more, infinitely more, than he possesses“. Let me see if I can explain myself.

It was a woman who convinced me that it was not necessary to be saints to be apostolically effective. This is not a rant. Commenting with her that we priests should almost always keep quiet because we say “more” than we live; because there is an enormous distance – if not divorce – between our life and the message we preach… She answered me: “You priests don’t have to be perfect. That is not what the Lord has given you. He has invited you to preach the gospel, not to exhibit yourselves, necessarily cutting the gospel down to size, which is always very short”. That was not a crazy idea. Since then, I know that when I preach, I must speak about the gospel and not about myself, and do so with humility, knowing that the first recipient of the message that my lips speak is myself.

But that does not give me licence to be mediocre. Because then I would be like the custard to the flan: if it is made with rotten eggs, it will be inedible, no matter how good the custard is. A serious message requires the apostle to take prayer, study and methods of transmission very seriously. But in the knowledge that they are just that: methods.

Forty years of missionary life have taught me that one can give much more than one personally has. And this for an elementary reason: strictly speaking, in the world of grace, no man gives anything. God is the only one who can give, alone. And the experience of any priest or any Christian is that, if he does not put too many obstacles in our way, God gives through us things that we do not even suspect. The stream of God can pass through empty hands.

In the sacramental realm this is evident: what are my hands to absolve? What are my words to consecrate? Someone “works” within me so that it “comes out”, as wine comes out of the bottle without the bottle having engendered or manufactured it. And it also happens in other more mysterious areas: what Christian has not sown hope in days when he thought it was lost? How many times have we given joy to someone and walked away thinking that we were the ones who needed it most?

I don’t know if all this is heresy. But at least it is useful to me. Because if I have to wait until I am a saint to start talking to people about God, I would still be silent and God’s people would still be hungry.

 

Juan Carlos cmf

(FOTO: Yandry Fernández Perdomo)

 

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