It is the same with animals. Working with animals is not something you learn from a book. It takes years. As someone once said about working oxen, "You must learn to think like an ox—but faster."

But at the same time as you have to think faster, you have to work slower than you would like. You must have patience; you must submit yourself to the nature of the animal. The animal cannot change; you must.

We have little chicks at the farm. If you are not attentive, they will die. If the heat lamps go out, for example, they will die and die quickly. This is the discipline, the asceticism of farming. It is a discipline of the Spirit, an absolute and constant listening to the Spirit.

We have a program for young men discerning priesthood, a pre-seminary formation. These wonderful men used to work on the farm every afternoon.

In my heart, my word to them was: "Why wait? Why are you saving your energy? Give yourself. Unless you learn to give yourself totally, you will miss something essential. Unless you learn to live beyond your resources, here, now, today, you may go all through life and never experience the daily joy and happiness of living in dependence on God."

It’s not a question of working hard, though it includes working hard. It’s a matter of living in such a way that you are living, not out of your own resources but out of God’s power and love.

If and when that happens, we can say with St. Paul: I live now not with my own life but with the life of Christ who lives in me (Gal. 2:20).

—Based on Apostolic Farming, pp. 82–83, available from Madonna House Publications.