Dear Friends,

As many of you know, for the past few days, Australia's youth have been hosting Catholic youth from all over the world to play, laugh, exchange stories about their lives, pray, and seek guidance.

Yes, Australia is seen as a country not noted for its religious practices. However, I couldn't help but be inspired and to find great joy in the happiness of the young people, their beautiful music, their hymns sung with obvious faith. According to the July 20th New York Times, 100,000 from Australia welcomed the Pope, and another 100,000 from foreign countries joined them.

We do not need to count ourselves, but those numbers tell us something about our young people's willing to sacrifice time, energy and money to gather in the name of Christ.

But youth need leaders, and Cardinal Cardijn from another nation, another time, is still able to provide that leadership today. We thank God for his holiness and beg him to intercede for all our young people. If you missed the two articles on him the first time around, and even if you didn't ,we hope you will be inspired today. His message is easily worth a second look.

Cardinal Joseph Cardijn’s lay apostolate

originally published here on February 12, 2005

The lay apostolate has been around since Jesus spoke to the folks sitting on a hillside, and sent them back home to love and serve one another, day by day.

While this site has given a great deal of space to the short-comings of Opus Dei, it is with a sigh of relief that we turn to a real lay apostolate, Gospel simple, Spirit led, described by Boniface Hanley, O.F.M., in his book, Ten Christians.

On a Sunday in 1935, in Heysel Stadium, Brussels, Cardinal Joseph Cardijn repeated Christ’s message to 100,000 cheering Young Christian Workers: “I bless you. I send you back to your homes, your places of work, your parts of the world, with one watchword: ‘Conquer!’”

Vintage Cardijn. Vintage Christ. With that sea of young people before him, Cardijn could have used them to inflate his ego, to build a financial empire (a la Opus Dei), to enrich his political power within the Church and beyond.

Instead, with complete detachment, he set the young people free to bring Christ wherever they went. For many years, I thought he did so because he believed deeply in the goodness and strength of the young people.

Of late, it seems to me that behind his trust in them was his boundless trust in the Holy Spirit, prompting them to live the Gospel message with confidence and independence. On that memorable Sunday, the girls stood before their leader in simple cotton dresses, the boys in cheap suits, reflecting the poverty of the world-wide recession. But they were rich in faith and in joy, for they had been well taught to value what Christ valued.

Cardijn knew about poverty, hard work and sacrifice from when he first helped his father, Henry, carry coal. He learned his faith by sitting with the rest of the family and listening to his mother, Louise, tell stories from children’s literature and the Bible after the supper dishes had been put away.

When leaving home to do some shopping, Louise would give Joseph some pennies with the suggestion that he might want to share a few with the poor. When he did so, she would say, “Joseph, that’s good. Do that all your life.” And he did.

The boy was convinced he wanted to be a priest, and went off to study in the minor seminary. During vacation time, he returned to his proud parents, but resentful friends, who felt the “little priest” had betrayed them, had joined with those who seemed indifferent to their plight at factories, mines and mills, where children of seven and eight worked long hours.

There and then, Joseph promised God and himself that he would spend his priesthood at the side of the working poor.

Upon his ordination on September 22, 1906, Cardinal Mercier sent him to the University of Louvain to study social doctrine under Professor Brant, who, often at his own expense, sent his young scholar on a tour of Europe to learn first-hand the suffering of the working class.

Despite Joseph’s wish to be at the side of the workers, Mercier assigned him to teach literature and math to middle-class boys, and it wasn’t until 12 years had passed that the young priest was sent to the Royal Parish of Our Lady of Laeken, Brussels, named such because the king and queen’s palace is close to the church.

Not far away, however, was the working-class district where 13,000 underpaid and overworked factory hands were crowded into unhealthy tenements. Daily, the priest would walk along with the workers to the factories, while he asked them about conditions, their families, and how they were getting along. No questions would he ask about going to Mass or receiving he sacraments. Establishing mutual trust was first on his spiritual agenda.

At the factory doors, Joseph would be turned away. He decided that if he couldn’t carry Christ’s message of caring and healing to those inside, he would find and train those who could, and he began his lay apostolate with women.

“They have to be able to do it themselves; they have to fly on their own wings,” insisted Joseph, as he began to build the core members of what would become a world-wide lay apostolate, the Young Christian Workers. He offered the young people a solid spiritual foundation, and set the example by beginning each day with an hour of meditation before Mass.

Education was essential. They would study Scripture, theology, sociology, encyclicals, the tenets of Karl Marx, whatever would prepare them to enter Christ’s work force, ready to spread the faith, even in Communist territory. Their plan of action followed three steps: Observe the situation. Judge what can be done according to the Gospel. Act upon the judgment.

Meetings were open to all, with no use of foreign words to create elite groups – nothing mysterious whatsoever. The same plan of action is used by the apostolate throughout the world.

I’ve used it with second graders, whose mothers couldn’t quite believe the sight of made beds, cleaned up rooms, and dishes washed without prompting. Observe, Judge, Act is a good plan for every member of the family, from five to ninety-five.

It can place one in dangerous spots, however. When, in August of 1914, the German army marched across the Belgian plains, Cardijn led his followers in gathering food, medicine, clothing and fuel for the soldiers and families.

Fearlessly, he shouted out against Germany’s unjust aggression and deportation of Belgian workers to German war factories; and was entenced to 13 months in prison. His mother was so distraught, she had a nervous breakdown, which added to Cardijn’s sufferings.

After serving half his sentence, he was released, and immediately organized a young ladies’ group to report on the movement of the munition trains. The Germans broke up the ring and Cardijn was sentenced to 10 years of hard labor, which ended with Germany’s surrender within the year.

Immediately, the leader returned to his task of forming lay apostles, but ran into resistance by priests, politicians, businessmen and even Catholic trade unions. An informed, independent laity frightened them.

Cardijn confronted his objectors, saying: “You neither know nor trust the workers you profess to serve.” Despite the problems, within 10 years, Cardijn’s Young Christian Workers could be found all over Europe, Africa and Asia.

A few years later, in the spring of 1940, the Germans again invaded Belgium. Cardijn was nearly 60 years old, but once more he led his young people in opposing the invaders by helping other young men and women escape from labor battalions, and kept them from being sent to German factories. They also helped downed Allied flyers and Jews to escape to freedom.

Again, Cardijn was sent to prison, and upon release, returned to work against the occupation. In August of 1944, the retreating Germans tried to take him as a hostage, but he escaped through a window.

Back he went to the apostolate, tirelessly reminding members of the clergy and the hierarchy: “If the layman is not permitted to assume his proper role, the Church will completely lose its grip on Europe.”

In 1950, Pope Pius XII made him a bishop, and in 1965, Pope Paul VI appointed him a cardinal. Honors didn’t stop his work. The movement spread to North and South America. When concluding a long series of lectures, a priest said, “Cardinal Cardijn, you must be very tired after all that.”

Cardijn answered, “An old man is always tired, but a good priest is never old.”

After surgery for gallstones and kidney stones, Cardijn’s health failed to improve. On his death bed, July 14, 1967, a nurse asked him, “Is there anything you need?”

He answered, “No, thank you, Sister. Everything is right just as it is.”

Indeed, everything was right just as it was, as it is this day when clergy and laity pray and work together to bring Christ’s message to a hungry world.

May Australian’s youth and their leaders inspire us to look closely at Christ and His message, as powerful and true this day as when He spoke to the crowds on the seashore.

Amen.

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