In his Sept. 24 vespers homily at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, addressing a group of priests and religious, Pope Francis said:
We can get caught up measuring the value of our apostolic works by the standards of efficiency, good management, and outward success which govern the business world.
Not that these things are unimportant!
We have been entrusted with a great responsibility, and God’s people rightly expect accountability from us.
But the true worth of our apostolate is measured by the value it has in God’s eyes.
To see and evaluate things from God’s perspective calls for constant conversion in the first days and years of our vocation and, need I say, it calls for great humility.
The cross shows us a different way of measuring success.
Ours is to plant the seeds: God sees to the fruits of our labors.
And if at times our efforts and works seem to fail and produce no fruit, we need to remember that we are followers of Jesus . . . and his life, humanly speaking, ended in failure, in the failure of the cross.