 You are called to be an apostle. Each one of us is. That was the firm belief of St. Vincent Pallotti. He spoke about this while living and ministering in Rome in the first half of the 19th century. Today, as a result of the teachings of the Second Vatican Council, particularly the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity (Apostolicam actuositatem), this understanding is now part of official Church teaching. In his day, though, it was not and considered by some as unacceptable. All the baptized, though, are called to be co-responsible for the mission of Christ and the Church. Each of us has charisms, gifts, and talents gifted to us by the Holy Spirit. We are universally called to holiness and also called to apostolate – living as “authentic apostles of Christ in the Church and in the world” (St John Paul II to the Pallottines, June 22, 1986). We are not meant to go forth alone, but instead for mission that is spiritually fruitful, we need to collaborate with other members of the Body of Christ, the Church. All that we do needs to be centered on Christ since it is his mission in which we share. “A true apostle looks for opportunities to announce Christ by words addressed either to non-believers with a view to leading them to faith, or to the faithful with a view to instructing, strengthening, and encouraging them to a more fervent life. ‘For the charity of Christ impels us’ (2 Cor. 5:14)” (Apostolicam actuositatem, 6). We are moved forth by Christ out of love for him and for our brothers and sisters. We are sent by him, because that is what an apostle is, one who is sent by Christ. We are sent to witness the charity or love of Christ in a world in need of his presence in both word and deed. As we celebrate the feast day of St. Vincent Pallotti on January 22nd, may we be in gratitude for this insight that he had about all being apostles that eventually became the official teaching of the Church. May we be in thanksgiving for the manifestation of this insight in the association that he founded, the Union of Catholic Apostolate. Even more so, let us live as apostles of Christ in all that we say and do. May the charity of Christ urge us on! In God, the Infinite Love, Fr. Frank
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  Dictum Meum Pactum These words, found on the coat of arms for the prestigious London Stock Exchange, are Latin for “My word is my bond.” Personal responsibility for what we do and say, so desperately needed in our world today - in our personal, political, and religious lives - is one of the many graces of conscience. “Conscience enables one to assume responsibility for acts performed.” (Catechism 1781). Even if we commit an evil act, conscience renders a “just judgement” as a testament to the “universal truth of the good,” the need for forgiveness, the good that must be done, and the virtue that must be “cultivated with the grace of God.” Over the years, I have learned to own what belongs to me and to not take what does not. Rooted in our dignity as human beings created in the image and likeness of God, and so precious in the eyes of God that he sent his only begotten son to die for us, for me, conscience asserts and relies on owning our own agency. I can do good. I can avoid evil. Jesus explores the importance of personal responsibility in the Sermon on the Mount when he teaches his followers about taking oaths (Matthew 5:33-37). People would make an oath before God to emphasize the seriousness of the pledge, the trustworthiness of the oath taker, and evoke God as witness and judge. As we can see in Jesus’ teaching, some modifications were made to soften God’s involvement - an oath taken not in God’s name but by “heaven,” or “earth,” or “Jerusalem.” Oaths were serious business, and people were trying to find a way to hedge their bets. Jesus, however, teaches us, his followers, to “Let your ‘Yes’ mean ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No’ mean ‘No.’ Anything more is from the evil one.” (Matthew 5:37) I believe there are three implications for our lives as Catholics in our world today. On a personal level, we cannot hide behind victimhood or authority. If my boss tells me to commit evil, I must avoid it. In a similar way, any evil done to me, or suffering I must endure, does not release me from personal responsibility for my own actions. As human beings, we tend to judge ourselves by the best of our intentions but others by the worse of their actions. We cannot cheat the system because we are poor or lie to our customer because the boss told us to. Politically, we must be truthful and claim the power of the truth. Father Guillermo Trevino, Jr, the pastor of St. Joseph Catholic Church in West Liberty, Iowa, provides an example of claiming the power of truth. His parishioner, Pascual Pedro, was callously deported to Guatemala. According to the Catholic Review, Pascual, 20, was registered with immigration and was going to his annual check in when ICE agents arrested him on a 7-year-old deportation order when he crossed the border at 13. He was given no due process, and he was quickly deported to Guatemala. Father Guillermo stood up to the powerful politicians who were saying falsehoods about Pascual. The Gazette, a local newspaper, wrote an editorial on July 9, 2025 - Bring Pedro back to make his case. Given the severe tactics being used by ICE agents, more of us may be faced with the challenge to claim the power of truth before elected officials who share our Catholic faith. Finally, we must be truthful and responsible in the Church. Pope Francis called for a Synodal Church. Pope Leo is committed to its implementation. “Synodality is the walking together of Christians with Christ and towards God’s Kingdom, in union with all humanity. (Final Document, 28) Everyone involved in the synodal process must assume their own responsibility, “offering their input honestly, sincerely, with an informed conscience and acting in good conscience.” (Final Document, 93b) For us to be a truly synodal church, where we cherish the blessings of communion, shoulder the responsibility of participation, and discover the fulfillment of mission, we need to trust one another - like soldiers in a fox hole. We need to know each other and trust that we have each other’s back. God’s great gift for us, as we face personal, societal, and religious challenges, is the sanctuary of conscience where we can be “alone with God whose voice echoes” in our depths. (Catechism 1776).
 Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the September 6th, 2018 edition of the Catholic Apostolate Center's eNewsletter.
It is no secret that the Church is facing turbulent times. The Catholic Apostolate Center would like to express deep and heartfelt sorrow to all victims of clergy sexual abuse. Our Director, Fr. Frank, will be offering a Novena of Masses for Victims of Sexual Abuse from September 7 to September 15 (Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows). We invite all to join us in prayer. It is important to care for those who are suffering and to remember self-care. If you or someone you know needs information, support, or resources regarding stress and trauma, we invite you to our Self-Care for Healthy Ministry Resource Page. There, you can find resources from SLIconnect, the education ministry of Saint Luke Institute. You will be directed to the following resources:
Please use the virtue of prudence to determine if a licensed and/or medical professional should be involved when dealing with stress and trauma. In these difficult times, the Church will move forward with an increased role of the laity, which will require greater co-responsibility and collaboration among the faithful with clergy. Our Collaboration in Ministry Resources unpack what healthy and fruitful collaboration looks like. On this resource page, you will find many talks, blogs, articles, websites, podcasts, and more, all aimed at maximizing the resources in the Church in a healthy and productive way for the salvation of souls. You can listen to our new podcast on co-responsibility by clicking here, and you can view our Collaboration in Ministry Resources by clicking here. Finally and most importantly, we must remember that our faith life is in Jesus Christ and through his Church. To properly orient ourselves, we invite you to study the message of Pope Francis in his third Apostolic Exhortation, Gaudete et Exsultate (Rejoice and be Glad). Pope Francis seeks “to repropose the call to holiness in a practical way for our own time, with all its risks, challenges and opportunities (GE 2).” We encourage you to visit our Gaudete et Exsultate Resource Page to read this timely exhortation, and to find media and other resources to help you distill the Holy Father’s call to holiness. A Facebook Live event with Fr. Frank is particularly helpful and can be viewed by clicking the image, or here. Visit our Gaudete et Exsultate Resource Page by clicking here. Yours in the Charity of Christ, The Catholic Apostolate Center Team  Prayer, fasting, almsgiving. At the heart of these Lenten pillars, we hear a call to go out and, as Pope Francis reminds us, encounter. In our prayer, we lift up the needs of our global family. Through our fasting, we empty ourselves, giving up something to make room for the needs of another. And in our almsgiving, we pour out our own gifts and resources so as to lift up those who are in need, near and far. Lent is a time to remember that we are all part of God’s one human family, and that means we have responsibilities to one another. And we come to understand and fulfill those responsibilities by building a culture of encounter. To build a culture of encounter, we must start from within ourselves, from our personal call to discipleship. God knows our true selves, desiring that we, too, discover the person God has called us to be. Through prayer, we encounter ourselves before God; we see ourselves as God sees us. And we realize that God delights in every member of our human family because God is truly present in each of us. Jesus reminds us, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” To love another, we must come to know our own selves, our own hurts and triumphs, our own joys and challenges. What begins as an interior encounter necessarily goes beyond ourselves, challenging us to live in solidarity with people we may never meet. How can we hope to go to the margins, to accompany those who are most vulnerable and in need, if we haven’t properly wrestled with our own vulnerability, our own need? Only then can we recognize that each person we encounter can share with us some unique insight about our world, about ourselves and, ultimately, about our God. We meet Jesus in the desert, a time of introspection and discernment before he begins his ministry. What has he gone there to accomplish? Luke tells us that Jesus “was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days, to be tempted by the devil.” There he fasts and prays—and the Enemy takes that opportunity to tempt Christ with those temptations we each encounter daily: material comfort, honor, and pride. Jesus responded by trusting in God, by emptying himself of pride and power and ultimately rejecting the invitations of the Enemy. We, too, can better understand where we are broken and turning away from whom we are called to be by following Jesus’ example and encountering ourselves through prayer and fasting. We may not go into a desert for forty days, but we can and should take the forty-day invitation of Lent as an opportunity to reorient our lives, examining how we are living in relationship with God and our neighbors. That might mean coming to terms with troubling or disappointing truths. Can we, like Jesus, radically reject the offering of power, of influence? We all want glory, praise, a pat on the shoulder, but as Jesus turned away from the Enemy’s offering, so too must we. And then, where do we turn? We go to the margins with humility and compassion. Only by encountering ourselves can we then encounter our neighbors and build up that culture of encounter. This Lent, let us commit ourselves to encounter one another anew, to encounter Christ anew. Let us commit ourselves to giving more readily and more freely—whether of our time, our resources, or our finances. Let us commit to forty days of transformation, ready to encounter Jesus in the desert, and to commit to bearing whatever fruits that encounter sows. Continue reflecting with CRS Rice Bowl by downloading their app or visiting their “Stations of the Cross Digital Retreats” page.
The call to holiness and the mission presented to the Church from Jesus Christ is certainly a challenging one. The fact that God created us with the ability to freely choose not only between right and wrong but between varied truths allows the members of Christ’s body, the Church, to live out the freedom given by God by our birth and baptism. The Catechism defines freedom as “the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility ... Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude” (1731). The ‘mission,’ so to speak, of Catholics in this day and age is to live the Gospel message and to promote a New Evangelization.
This does not mean that everyone is called to any particular vocation. However, everyone is called to a vocation. It is up to the individual, because of their freedom, to choose and discern where they are being called by God and for what purpose. Thomas Merton, in his book New Seeds of Contemplation, eloquently puts it: Our vocation is not simply to be, but to work together with God in the creation of our own life, our own identity, our own destiny. We are free beings and sons of God. This means to say that we should not passively exist, but actively participate in His creative freedom, in our own lives, and in the lives of others, by choosing the truth. To put it better, we are even called to share with God the work of creating the truth of our identity. Concrete personal reflection has never come easy for me, and there is a reason that people tend to hide their emotions. Reflecting on the meaning of vocation and what God is calling me to do conjures up memories of high school retreats of discovering where God is found in daily life. While structured experiences of faith exploration and formation are important in shaping the broad spectrum of faith, I have learned that is not all of what my faith encompasses. At the very first meeting with my spiritual director, he asked, “Who is Alex?” I began to spew answers such as student, friend, brother, and the like. What I wanted to avoid was the internal reflection on the self because I didn’t want to have to address the underlying feelings regarding vocation and personal identity. If we are indeed called to shape our own identity, then we very often have a choice. This could be a choice between choosing the truth over a falsehood or even between particular vocations. In discernment, it is my task to look forward, to look to the future. If I dwell on the things of the past, I will never adequately be able to say that I have done what God is calling me to do, whatever it may be. It is the Christian’s responsibility, my responsibility, to discern this vocation, whatever it may be, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. If we must seek the Creator “spontaneously,” as the Vatican II document Gaudium et Spes puts it, on their own accord and out of impulse, then it becomes clear that the mission of the baptized Christian is to seek God always and in all things. The Italian priest Saint Vincent Pallotti, patron of the Catholic Apostolate Center, wrote, “Seek God and you will find God. Seek God in all things, and you will find God in all things. Seek God always and you will always find God.” I have often found consolation in this prayer of Saint Vincent. It serves as a reminder to attune my heart and mind to God, in all things and at all times. Out of this freedom of choice and seeking comes a responsibility to act out of instinct and to lead others closer to Jesus Christ by first seeking the very God who created us. Alex R. Boucher is the Program & Operations Coordinator for the Catholic Apostolate Center. Follow Alex on Twitter at @AlexBoucher. |
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