It all started with an offering.
The Apostleship of Prayer was founded in 1844 in Vals, France, out of a simple and deeply evangelical desire: to offer one’s life united to the Heart of Christ. A group of young Jesuits, filled with missionary zeal, were studying philosophy while dreaming of proclaiming the Gospel in distant lands. The periodic arrival of missionaries increased this desire: they recounted their experiences, the needs of the Church, and the cultures they encountered. Those stories inflamed hearts, but also caused a certain frustration: the young men wanted to leave immediately, yet they still had many years of study ahead of them.
In this context, Father François-Xavier Gautrelet, their formator, offered an insight that would mark the spiritual history of the Church. On December 3—the feast of St. Francis Xavier—he told them that they could be missionaries from that very moment, uniting their studies and daily lives to the universal mission of the Church through prayer and offering. That simple warning became a true inspiration of the Spirit: the young men began to live their studies as a mission, discovering that they were already participating in the apostolic work of Christ and the Church.
Soon this spirituality of offering transcended the walls of the school. The students shared with farmers and families what they were learning: that every person could offer their life, their work, and their suffering to collaborate with the mission of the Church. In a few years, this proposal spread rapidly throughout France and beyond. Father Henri Ramière dedicated his life to spreading it, and Pope Leo XIII officially embraced it, entrusting it to the Society of Jesus and sending monthly prayer intentions to guide the hearts of the faithful toward the needs of the world.
At the heart of this work was a simple gesture: offering the day to God who offers himself for us. Many Christians began their day in this way, uniting their lives to Christ’s Eucharistic offering, turning the day into a kind of lived Mass, an act of love that made the ordinary extraordinary. An offering nourished by prayer with the Gospel and discerned through an examination of conscience at the end of the day. This allowed them (and still allows us) to recognize how they responded to so much love received.
This quiet momentum transformed the lives of millions of people. Without large structures or social networks, the Apostleship of Prayer helped people discover that everyday life, when offered in response to Christ’s love, takes on a new and profound meaning. Today, the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network is the heir to that fire born in Vals. It all began with an offering, and everything is renewed when we offer our lives again to the open Heart of Jesus, “who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal 2:20).
Miguel Melo SJ