The Soul of the Apostolate

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Abp. Lefebvre recommended this.

pt. 4, § "F. IMPORTANCE OF THE FORMATION OF “SHOCK TROOPS” AND OF SPIRITUAL DIRECTION":

With his deep understanding of the needs of the Church, Pius X often saw things with a most remarkable clarity. An interesting conversation of the Holy Pontiff with a group of Cardinals was reported in the French clerical publication, “ L’Ami du Clerge.” The Pope asked them:

“What is the thing we most need, today, to save society?”

“Build Catholic schools,” said one.

“No.”

“More churches,” said another. “Still no.”

“Speed up the recruiting of priests,” said a third. “No, no,” said the Pope, “the MOST necessary thing of all, at this time, is for every parish to possess a group of laymen who will be at the same time virtuous, enlightened, resolute, and truly apostolic.”

ref:14.16-17:

“Idlers?” Dom Sebastian concludes, “Are these true religious, or these truly interior and zealous priests idlers? Nonsense! Let the busiest men of affairs in the world come and take a look at our life, and see how their labors compare with ours!”

Who does not know this from experience? There are times when we might be inclined to prefer long hours in some exhausting occupation to half an hour of serious mental prayer, to an attentive hearing of Mass, or to the careful and intelligent recitation of the Breviary.34

34 Quotation from Dom Festugiere, O.S.B.: “Whatever the difficulties of the active life may be, only the inexperienced will deny the gruelling trials of the interior life. Many active workers, pious men, admit that what costs them the most, in their life, is not so much action as their prayers of obligation. It is a relief for them to go to work.”

pt. 1 §5 "Reply to a First Objection: Is the Spiritual Life Lazy?" (ref:14.3): there are some "souls whose egotism deludes them into thinking that laziness will foster piety", an "apathetic brood" who don't realize their "responsibilities of an existence that God willed to be active and which the devil, in collusion with nature, makes barren by inaction and lack of ambition": quietism.

ref:21.17, pt. 2 "Union of Active and Interior Lives" (§2 "Good works should be nothing but an overflow from the inner life.") §4 "The active and interior lives are completely interdependent.":

The inmost cause that moves the soul to active works is nothing else but the overflow of its charity: proper abundantiam divini amoris. Therefore, it is not a matter of excitement, or caprice, nor of the craving to get out of ourself. Indeed, it is a source of suffering for the soul. Sustinet , it “endures” the privation of the sweetness of the life of prayer; “ a dulcedine divinae contemplationis . . . separari. [II-II q. 82 a. 2 "Whether the active life is of greater merit than the contemplative?" co.] Furthermore, the sacrifice is only temporary: accidere—interdum—ad tempus , and it is only for a purely supernatural end—the fulfilling of God’s will, and giving Him glory. Finally, what is sacrificed is only a part of the time to be given to prayer.

ref:22.9: "'Americanism,' […] envisage[s] a mixed life in which contemplation is strangled by activity."