We pray with Christ for the needs of the world and of the Church. We
are concerned over the salvation of the world because in baptism we
receive life from God and participate in Christ's Filiation: we are
"sons and daughters in the Son", we are his members, we form his
Body. We are bound to the Church because we are cells belonging to
the living organism of which Christ is the head; we have received the
same mission that Christ received from the Father: "You are the
light of the world" (Mt 5:14), "Go out to the whole world, proclaim
the Good News to all creation" (Mk 16:15).
The Church possesses different charisms for the accomplishment of
this mission, but prayer is a valid means for all people. Active
apostles, like Saint Francis Xavier, and contemplative nuns, like
Saint Therese of the Child Jesus, prayed and so were apostles and
evangelizers. Christians who remain in their homes and missionaries
who go out to distant places can be apostles for the rest of the
world, through their prayer, which becomes one with the prayer of the
risen Christ.
This is why the members of the AP offer each day in union with
Christ, who offers himself to the Father in the Eucharist for the
entire world, and why they particularly commend the Holy Father's
intentions. These reflect the most urgent and important needs of the
Church and the world and reflect the concerns of the universal
Pastor, the successor of Saint Peter, from his vantage point, from
which he can see the universal panorama of the Church and the world.
They are the concerns and anxieties of the Heart of Christ!
In entrusting these intentions to the AP, John Paul appears
implicitly to repeat his message to the AP at the audience of June 1,
1992: "God manifests himself through the Heart of Jesus asking to be
understood in his absolute will to love, to forgive, to save; through
the Heart of Jesus God teaches us that the Church, in her ministry
and in her teaching, must always be loving and sensitive, and never
aggressive and oppressive, though she must always condemn evil and
correct errors; through the Heart of Jesus God makes us understand
that we must participate in his work of salvation through the
'apostolate of prayer' and the duty of reparation. Justly, therefore,
the Movement of the 'Apostleship of Prayer' has these three ideas and
goals: the proclamation and witness to the infinite treasures of the
Heart of Jesus, who only wishes to love his creatures and be loved by
them; the constant awareness of the true presence of Jesus in the
Eucharist, maintaining the devotion to the Eucharist alive and
profound through Holy Mass, Communion and the adoration of the Most
Holy Sacrament on the Altar; the commitment to reparation, as Jesus
himself expressed it in his message to Margaret Mary, even through
sacrifice and suffering."
(Excerpted from Prayer and Service, [December, 1994] published by the
General Secretariat of the Apostleship of Prayer, Rome)
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The Apostleship of Prayer is a union of the faithful who, by their
daily oblation, unite themselves with the Eucharistic Sacrifice in
which the work of our redemption is continuously accomplished. By
this vital bond with Christ, they cooperate in the salvation of the
world.
But this bond with Christ the High Priest necessarily requires an
intimate bond with him through personal love. For this reason, the
Apostleship of Prayer has given singular importance to devotion to
the Heart of Jesus.
Each Sunday, the celebrant leads the people in offering themselves,
with Christ, to God the Father. It is important that they extend this
self-offering throughout the week embracing all their day-to-day
activity--their prayer, their work in the home or office, their joys
and recreation, their tensions, headaches and sacrifices. This is how
the laity 'consecrate their world to God'.
The Apostleship of Prayer is a form of spirituality that helps them
to do this in a simple, concrete way. It gives them a technique--the
Daily Offering, and it gives them a motive--the love of the Sacred
Heart of Jesus. It presents them with a practical way of living life
in union with Christ and making him truly present in the world. And
they will adopt this way of life readily because of the compelling
need they feel to respond to God's love; a love he has revealed in a
visible, human fashion in the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
That is why Pope Pius XII called the Apostleship of Prayer 'the sum
total of Christian perfection' and 'the most perfect form of
Christian life'. It is why Pope John Paul II said the practice of the
Daily Offering is 'of fundamental importance in the life of each and
every one of the faithful'.
"That graces may flow more abundantly from devotion to
the Sacred Heart, let the faithful strive to join it closely with
devotion to the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of God."
-- Pius XII
The AP was born in 1844 out of the apostolic restlessness of a group
of Jesuit seminarians at Vals, France. These young men, destined for
the missions of America and India, were impatient with their dull
routine of study and eager to get on with their work as missionaries.
Their spiritual director, Fr. Francois Xavier Gautrelet, in a
conference to them, pointed out that the end they desired--the
salvation of souls--was a supernatural end and that supernatural means
were the best and quickest way to accomplish that end. Thus, their
prayer, study, work, recreation, headaches, offered in union with
Christ's sacrifice as renewed in the Mass, would advance the work of
the missions as much as their direct work in the field.
The idea quickly caught on and was spread to others; and thus was
developed an apostolic spirituality of prayer and activity. This soon
was formalized into what we know as the Morning (or Daily) Offering,
to help people unite their daily lives to the oblation of Christ for
the intentions close to His Heart.
