Rob Colquhoun

Here are a couple of quotations from the Soul of the Apostolate. This book is venerated as a classic- written by Dom Chautard in the nineteenth century- it tells us of the importance of the spiritual life before emarking on apostolic works. 

Let me consider a few of these venial sins: spiritual laziness preventing me from raising heart to thee; inordinate affection for creatures; haste and impatience; nursing a grievance, fickleness, effeminacy, love of ease; readiness to speak of other people’s faults without any reason; dissipation, curiousity having no relation to the glory of God; talkativeness, tattling, vain and rash judgements about my neighbour; vain self complacency; contempt of others; criticism of their conduct; looking for admiration and praise and doing things for these motives; showing off what is to my advantage; presumption, obstinacy, jealously, lack of respect for authority, grousing; want of motification in eating and drinking etc. What a swarm of venial sins or at least of deliberate imperfections may invade my soul and deprive me of the abundant graceswhich thou didst reserve for me from all eternity.

Soul of the Apostolate, p215-6, Dom Chautard, O.C.R., revised edm 1959, Burns and Oates (London).

“No work takes deep root, or is really solid and lasting, unless the apostle has created the interior life in other souls. Now he cannot do this, unless he himself is well nourished in his interior life.”

Soul of the Apostolate, p117, Dom Chautard, O.C.R., revised edm 1959, Burns and Oates (London).