Perseverance—and thick skin!—required for apostolic work

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Dec 03, 2024

Reading Fr. Joseph Fessio’s biography (see my brief review) caused me to reflect on my own experience of the personality traits we must develop if we are to achieve any success in the apostolate. Fr. Fessio has met a great deal of opposition over the decades, and sometimes that opposition has derailed his plans. But he has never wasted time on either righteous denunciation or sterile self-pity. His response to every failure has been to move on quickly to new endeavors which might bear greater apostolic fruit.

Based also on my own more limited experiences with what we might call the ups and downs of Catholic mission, I now suppose that this same sort of thick-skinned determination is essential to every commitment to the apostolate. Perseverance in apostolic work can frustrate our abilities, tax our energies, and challenge our self-image. I don’t say that those who follow Christ should consider themselves immune to criticism. To the contrary, they must be ready to respond honestly to criticism through an ongoing spiritual and practical assessment of their attitudes, their ways, and their means.

But if the first goal of anyone who seeks to follow Christ must be a serious prayerfulness, the second is to take advantage of that prayerfulness to understand the following three things: (a) When we should change our attitudes or demeanor and when we shouldn’t; (b) When we need to abandon a particular approach to our apostolate and when we don’t; (c) When we must abandon one apostolic effort in favor of another and when we mustn’t.

All of these decisions must be made in prayer; many of them should be made with the benefit of trusted advisors. Failure may be a result of our own inadequacies, correctible deficiencies in our tactics, or the impossibilities of either our project in general or the present circumstances in particular. In all of these cases, my title’s “thick-skin” requirement comes into play. What others think of us does not serve our purpose unless it increases our self-knowledge so that we can become more clear-sighted and effective apostles. It certainly shouldn’t change our mood.

The helpfulness test

There is never a good reason to waste time in blaming, criticizing or even resenting those who oppose our work. This is not a matter of the old childhood adage, “I’m rubber, you’re glue; whatever you say bounces off me and sticks to you.” Rather it is matter of a faith in God that realizes it is His job to sort out good motives from bad in our opponents, and our job to recognize whatever good possibilities remain in the situation…and to either persevere or move on.

When it comes to apostolic work that is not performed out of obedience to a religious superior—that is, when it comes to plans and purposes of our own making—the whole point is to maximize the good for others. If we can see that proper apostolic benefits are being received through our labors and our programs, and that a continuation of these labors and programs is feasible and improvements are possible, then criticism ought to be used to purify and improve rather than to restrain our efforts.

Whether we are really as stupid, misguided, or out of step as our critics say we are need not concern us in the least unless we are stupid, misguided and out of step when it comes to God’s will. And that determination must be made in prayer and through advice from other sound Catholics, especially the priests to whom we turn for confession and spiritual direction.

At the same time, if we find that we are not able to accomplish the good that we have undertaken to accomplish, it is time to recalibrate. This question arises constantly in our own apostolate here at CatholicCulture.org. When we began our Internet apostolate in 1996 and improved and expanded it substantially in the early 2000s (see our brief history), we were among the earliest Catholic efforts available online to large numbers of people throughout the English-speaking world. But nowadays, the sound Catholic presence on the Internet is both broad and deep, and features many organizations that are far better funded than our own.

Recalibration

The need to evaluate the possibilities, the promise, the criticisms and the distractions never diminishes. Some organizations have proven very effective at raising large sums of money, but provide little or indifferent Catholic service. Others do remarkable things with very limited funds. What can be said of organizations can also be said of individuals. All of us must constantly review our scores on the helpfulness test. Just as it is useless to curse the darkness, it is even more useless to complain that too many people either take our work for granted or don’t take it at all.

Indeed, such evaluations miss the point entirely. It isn’t what the critics say that matters unless the critics have a legitimate criticism. It isn’t what those who ignore us think if they are willfully ignoring us at their own peril. The important question is whether we are accomplishing anything, and if so what, and on what scale—and can it be improved, or must it be abandoned.

To put this another way, what is important is not that this or that proposed work should succeed or fail, but that more people are drawn to Christ and the Church, and that more people in the Church ask what they can do to strengthen their own faith and the faith of others. The whole point, as St. Paul says, is that all things must be put in subjection to Christ. For “when all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to everyone” (1 Cor 15:28).

Every Catholic is called by baptism to be part of this great work. The only questions that matter for any of us are whether we are participating in this work of God and whether we can participate more fully and more effectively. It is the same for you, for me, for any effort or project or apostolate which bears the Catholic name. Worldly judgments do not matter, but interested assessments can be enormously helpful. The effective apostle recalibrates often, wastes no time on complaints and recriminations, flinches rarely and not for long, and if he hears criticism, uses it to be even more effective.

We are all sinners and we are all fallible, but Our Lord has put the matter very bluntly: “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” [Lk 9:62]