The Soul of The Apostolate Quotes

“Bossuet has a sentence which is beyond the comprehension of an apostle who does not realize what must be the soul of his apostolate. It runs: “When God desires a work to be wholly from His hand, he reduces all to impotence and nothingness, and then He acts.” Nothing wounds God so much as pride.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Correct doctrine and good judgment will not be enough to preserve him from these aberrations, because the apostle without interior life, and, therefore without humility, will be at the mercy of his passions.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“A zeal that is not charitable,” says St. Francis de Sales, “comes from a charity that is not genuine.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Without mental prayer a person soon becomes either a brute or a devil. If you do not practice mental prayer, you don’t need any devil to throw you into hell, you throw yourself in there of your own accord.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“A man can suffer like a pagan, like the damned, or like a saint. If he wishes to suffer with Christ, he must try to suffer like a saint. For then, suffering is of benefit to our own souls, and applies the merits of the Passion to those of others: “I fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for His Body, which is the Church.”10”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Believe me,” St. Vincent de Paul said to his priests, “we will never be any use in doing God’s work until we become thoroughly convinced that, of ourselves, we are better fitted to ruin everything than to make a success of it.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Christ does all the work; we are only His instruments.”
― Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard O.C.S.O., The Soul of The Apostolate

“no human artistry, no matter how wonderful, can be compared to the action of Jesus on the soul.”
― Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard O.C.S.O., The Soul of the Apostolate

“Let the men eaten up with activity,” he says, “and who imagine they are able to shake the world with their preaching and other outward works, stop and reflect a moment. It will not be difficult for them to understand that they would be much more useful to the Church and more pleasing to the Lord, not to mention the good example they would give to those around them, if they devoted more time to prayer and to the exercises of the interior life.”
― Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“What does it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?”4”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Fidelity to mental prayer gives life to all our other pious exercises. By it, the soul will gradually acquire vigilance and a spirit of prayer, that is, a habit of ever more frequent recourse to God.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Oh Jesus, it is my desire that my heart acquire a habitual solicitude to PRESERVE ITSELF from every stain and to BECOME MORE AND MORE UNITED to Your Heart in all my occupations conversations, recreations, and so on.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Without Your grace, Jesus, I can do nothing.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Why do my resolutions bear no fruit? It can only be because my belief that “I can do all things” is not followed by; “in Him Who strengtheneth me.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“I want to annihilate myself before You. I want to sing my gratitude and my joy to carry out Your Will. I want it to be true, and no longer a lie, when I tell You that I love You, and that I hate what offends You, and so on.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“But if, after I have spent several minutes in stirring up my faith, I still remain cold to the truth presented to me—no use straining. I will simply turn to You like a child, my good Master, and tell You how sorry I am for this helplessness, and beg You to make up for it.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Mental prayer,” says St. Theresa, “is nothing but a friendly conversation in which the soul speaks, heart-to-heart, with the One Who we know loves us.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“The soul that pays attention to what is going on inside itself, and is sensitive to the presence of the Most Holy Trinity within it, acquires an almost instinctive habit of turning to Jesus in every situation,”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Let the following conviction become deeply impressed upon your mind; namely, that a soul cannot lead an interior life without the schedule we have referred to, and without the firm resolution to keep it all the time, especially where the rigorously fixed hour of rising is concerned.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Woe to the man who, in his work, wants to run things without really depending on God!”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Woe to the man who refuses to do the work to which he is called by God! Woe to the man who worms his way into an enterprise without finding out what God wills for him!”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“The efficacy of an apostolate almost invariably corresponds to the degree of Eucharistic life acquired by a soul.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“The little flock of Disciples chosen and formed by Christ Himself, and afterwards set on fire by the Holy Spirit, was enough to begin the regeneration of the world.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“salvation is completely tied up with sanctity. All or nothing. Burning love of Christ, or adoration of the world and allegiance to the direction of Satan. Sanctity or damnation!”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“What wealth there is to put into circulation in a child’s soul! The tree is just about to lean one way or another—and stay that way. For lack of spiritual direction to fit their age and dispositions, from childhood on, many of them become adults whom we will no longer be able to number among the fairer flowers of Christ’s garden.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“It would be an omission, and sometimes a grave omission, in a priest, bound by his duty as teacher and surgeon of souls, if he were to deprive them of this great supplement to confession, this indispensable source of energy for the spiritual life, which is spiritual direction.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“If the apostle has not humility, he will go to one of two extremes. It will be either a matter of careless and excessive familiarity, with all its free-and-easy licenses, or else of domineering over everybody else. The latter case is the more likely.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Never has there been so much preaching, and arguing, or such a spate of learned works of apologetics as in our day, and yet never, at least as far as the bulk of the faithful is concerned, has the faith been so dead.”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“Pius X declared that: “If our own spirit does not submit to the control of a truly Christian and holy way of life, it will be difficult to make others lead a good life.” And he adds, “All those called to a life of Catholic Works ought to be men of a life so spotless that they may give everybody else an effective example.”26”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate

“the apostle ought more often to have the torch of good example in his hands than fine words upon his lips,”
― Jean-Baptiste Chautard, Soul of the Apostolate