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Legion HANDBOOK D10944_1 26/02/2014 15:53 Page 284

284 CARDINAL POINTS OF THE LEGION APOSTOLATE CHAPTER 39
all of its work consists in the approaching of persons with
intent to bring them nearer to God. Occasionally, this will be
met by resentment or lack of understanding, which will show
itself in various ways, less deadly than the missiles of warfare,
but—as experience shows—less often faced. For the thousands
who brave the hail of shot and shell, hardly one can be found
who will not shrink from the mere possibility of a few jeers,
or angry words, or criticism, or even amused looks, or from a
fear that he may be thought to be preaching or making an
affectation of holiness.
“What will they think? What will they say?” is the chilling
reflec tion, where instead should be the Apostles’ thought on
the joy of being deemed worthy to suffer contempt for the
name of Jesus. (Acts 5:41)
Where this timidity, which is commonly called human
respect, is allowed free play, all work for souls is reduced to
triviality. Look around and see the tragedy of this. Everywhere
the faithful are living in the midst of great communities of
unbelievers or non-Catholics or lapsed Catholics. Five per
cent of these would be won by the first serious effort which
presented the Catholic doctrines to them individually. Then
that five per cent would be the thin end of the wedge to
conversions on a great scale. But that effort is not made.
Those Catholics would wish to make it. Yet they do nothing,
because their powers of action are paralysed by the deadly
poison of human respect. For different people the latter
assumes different labels: “common prudence,” “respect for
the opinions of others,” “hopelessness of the enterprise,”
“waiting for a lead,” and many other plausible phrases; but all
of which end in inaction.
It is told in the life of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus that when
he was about to die, he enquired of those about him how
many un believers there were in the city. The reply came
quickly: “Seventeen only.” The dying bishop meditated a
while on the figure stated, and then remarked: “Exactly the
number of believers whom I found when I became bishop
here.” Starting with only seventeen believers his labours had
brought faith to all but seventeen! Wonderful! Yet the grace of
God has not been exhausted by the passage of the centuries.
Faith and courage could draw on it as freely to do the same
to-day. Faith is ordinarily not lacking, but courage is.