How one is told about the Work

This preliminary relationship is indispensable, for the friendship gives us a chance to get to know the person we are dealing with. Once we see that they have the minimum conditions of selection, we can speak to them about the need for an ideal that is worth fighting for. And this ideal is nothing other than living our Catholic faith fully, which helps us also to achieve the betterment of society and the solution to all the human problems of this world of ours.

We will tell them that the way to achieve this is for every individual to improve his or her own behaviour, along with a renewed appreciation of the human virtues, which are so often neglected. And we will also tell them that, since fighting on one’s own is difficult, we need to support one another to persevere in the struggle. In this way we will learn what we need to know about the person, since someone who is unable to understand the Work is of no use for the St Raphael work.

How to evaluate their human qualities

Afterwards you have to consider especially the possible candidate’s human virtues, upon which one can always build spiritually, with the help of grace. He or she should be sincere, generous, industrious, upright, prudent, and optimistic. It is very difficult for superficial persons whose superficiality is already deeply ingrained to change through the classes of formation.

It is also necessary to take into account their intellectual level, their external appearance – so as to maintain the human tone of the Work – their reputation, their prestige among their friends and colleagues, and their ability to assimilate the ideas they are taught.

Keep in mind that if someone were to have a deformed idea of piety and were to maintain it as an untouchable dogma, they would find it difficult to fit in, because they would be trying to defend their own deeply rooted ideas about apostolate, and as a result the work with others would suffer.