Sometimes we wonder how easy it would be to burn for an ideal if we were perhaps Francis Xavier, turning to God in India. However, we forget that even Francis Xavier endured one day after another, facing feelings of helplessness and discouragement as each twenty-four hours brought him just as many defeats and disappointments as victories, so even for him an hour consisted of a whole sixty minutes filled with ordinary everyday things. We forget that he had to deal with limited people and their mundane interests, and all of this day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. When Xavier tried to proclaim the gospel, how often must he have asked himself whether it was even possible to reach all those millions of people around him? How often must he have felt disgusted when people rejected his teachings? How often must he have been unhappy with all the surrounding evil and how often must he have felt powerless in his attempt to confront it?
The Kingdom of God indeed began on earth with Christ's coming, but the world did not visibly change after his birth. Twelve Galilean fishermen were tasked with proclaiming the good news throughout the world – and how hopeless this task must have seemed even to the bravest among them at Pentecost! Two thousand years later, the Kingdom of God is still as small as a mustard seed, and priests – just like the apostles of old – must face the impossible task of bringing people who have never known faith or who have lost it under the weight of life or the flood of propaganda to listen to the joyful message of salvation and God's love and to believe in it. This good news touches individuals through the action of God's grace and according to God's providence, not through grand idealistic campaigns or miraculous transformations overnight. Every day of our lives, God sends us people and opportunities in the expectation that we will act. He does not expect more from us, but he will not accept less either. And we do not live up to our promise and commitment to the priestly mission if we do not recognize God's will in every situation and at every moment of each day.
(Walter J. Ciszek SJ /1904–1984/, He Leads Me, Chapter 14)
