Each young worker, English, Muslim, Buddhist young workers, each has an eternal destiny and that is the missionary aim of the Church.
And we must see it more and more clearly still, we priests especially. Each young worker, and all the young workers have an eternal destiny and a vocation in their daily lives, not when they are in the Church, but in their daily lives; there they have their eternal destiny They come to Church to find the light, to find the power, the help of God, to bring their eternal destiny into their lives. They have their eternal destiny in their daily life, their environment, in their home, in the street, the factory, the warehouse, the mine, there! And they come to Church to find life for that life. And we must give them that; we may be satisfied that they come to Church, that they have received Communion at Easter, but after? They have an irreplaceable apostolate in the Church, in their daily lives, in the ordinary facts of their daily lives, in their relation with their parents, in their relation with their brothers and sisters, in relation with their comrades, in their relationships in workshops, on the bus, in the street and in the factory, there they have an irreplaceable mission for the Church.
They are the first and immediate apostles of their comrades.
The Pope told me many times, I cannot be in the factory and Bishops and priests cannot be in the factory, but I, and the Bishops and priests must make apostles. Every Christian worker must be an apostle in the factory; not just if he has the time, if he will accept it as an honour. No, he must, and if we do not make him an apostle, we priests are not doing our priest’s task. We must educate them to the apostolate It is not a luxury it is an essential That then, is the fundamental basis of their dignity, it is the fundamental basis of their rights and of their duties, that divine mission that they received from God.
Where do they exist? Where do they live? Where must they work? Will they love a girl? Where will they be married? The solution is always this, that they have a mission in marriage, they have a mission in their relation with the girl, they have a mission in their work, in their homes, in the streets, in the reality of their daily lives.
They have there an irreplaceable mission, all of them, but they do not know it. And that is a necessary collaboration to accomplish the plan of God in the creation and in the redemption. Almighty God is unmighty without the collaboration of the young workers, and working girls, and Christ might remain on His Cross till the end of the world, and it would be a failure without that collaboration.
We must see the plan of the creation and the redemption – we priests – we must see that we may not separate the first truth of faith from the second truth of experience, it is opium if you do not see the reality.
Source
Joseph Cardijn, Quaerite Primum (Joseph Cardijn Digital Library)