Here's a glimpse of God's tapestry of grace, most of which was hidden from the eyes of those alive at the time.  Just a brief summary of critical spiritual happenings between 1531 and 1538 in Europe and Mexico when things were looking really bad for Catholics.
1535: King Henry VIII of England made Supreme Head of the Church in England, St. Thomas More is executed.
1536:  Henry begins the Dissolution and destruction of the monasteries in England, Wales, and Ireland.
Meanwhile, grace was at work in hidden ways that would bear great fruit:
1531:  Our Lady of Guadalupe appears to Juan Diego in Mexico
1533:  18 year old Philip Neri goes through a major conversion and moves to Rome.
1534:  42 year old Ignatius of Loyola and his six companions - including Francis Xavier and Peter Claver, make their first vows.
1535:  20 year old Teresa of Avila enters the Carmelite Monastery of the Incarnation.
1535:  61 year old Angela Merici, a single lay woman and educator of girls, founds the Company of St. Ursula.
1536:  A 60-something priest bribes a few boys off the streets of Milan with an apple and teaches them how to make the sign of the cross.  It is the unlikely beginning of the "Schools of Christian Doctrine or CCD and the beginning of mass education in Italy.
1537:  The Pope creates a Reform Commission dominated by members of the Oratory of Divine Love, a confraternity inspired by Catherine of Genoa, a  lay woman.
1538:  Charles Borromeo is born.  Philip Neri begins his evangelizing apostolate in the streets of Rome as a layman, starting conversations with people and raising spiritual topics.
And the rest is history . . .
Right now, God is raising up the apostles and saints of the 21st century whom He will use to respond to the needs and challenges of our time in ways you and I can't even imagine.  
God has already give all of us the abiding Presence of Jesus Christ and his saving work and his Holy Spirit and planted the seeds of charisms and astonishing vocations in the souls of all the baptized.  He doesn't skip generations.  NOW is the time to help those seeds germinate, grow, and begin to bear fruit.  As John Donne, the great English poet, put it, "God can bring thy summer out of winter though thou have no spring."
The great 19th century evangelist, Dwight L Moody, famously said that "the world has not yet seen what God will do with one man (or woman) wholly consecrated to Him.  And he would always add "By the grace of God, I will be that man."
What is at stake when we make disciples?  Every generation is given the graces, the apostles, the charisms they need for God's purposes in their setting.  We do not have wait for the culture to change because all the potential and emerging disciples and apostles already among us are natural culture-makers.  The fruit they are bearing and will bear belong in a real way to all of us and will change our lives and our culture and the lives of many generations to come.