“Jesus is the way we have to fallow, the truth we have to believe and life we have to live. This is the doctrine preached by the apostles and the Fathers of the Church and the ministers of the Word of God have preached and will preach” (L´egoismo vinto, Rome, 1869, p. 47; retranslated into EE p. 406).
THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE
Essentially, Jesus is all for Claret. (Auto. 755). For him, he is not a person of the past, but a loving friend, a permanent companion of the journey and the Lord at whose service he entrusted his life. He was mad after knowing “the most holy will” of Jesus and fulfilling it (Auto. 445 & 754). To follow the footsteps of Jesus and work for the glory of God, his only Master, Claret offered all his energies foregoing any sort of worldly transitory value (cf. Auto. 199). When the participants of his mission praised the wisdom of his preaching or the heroic value of his unending hours in the confessional, he preferred to change the conversation and give glory to God, the only one to whom belongs the glory (cf. Is 42:8). Claret nurtured the virtue of humility with a special care (Auto. 34).
In the situation of an almost constant persecution, Claret proposed to live his conformity with the gentle and humble Jesus (cf. Mt 11:29). In imitating his great master, he proposed in the same way, never to complain the persecutions instigated against him (Auto. 650), but to bear them in silence for the salvation of his persecutors themselves.
He adopted the itinerant style of Jesus as a way of life, “I am ever more deeply impressed at the thought of Jesus moving from town to town, preaching everywhere” (Auto. 221). Claret was poor and itinerant not only in the physical or material sense, but in flexibility and attitude of being uprooted to leave the places, ways of life and practices with an ever universal look. The apostolic charity, he was telling, “urges and impels me; it makes me run from town to town” (Auto. 212). Neither his own security enslaved him, but applied to himself the words of Paul, “I am not afraid of any of these things, nor do I esteem my life more than my soul; and I would gladly risk everything to fulfill the ministry of preaching the Gospel, which I have received from God our Lord” (Auto. 201).
How do you live your following of Jesus in your daily life? What are those attractive traits of your life you try to personalize as means of fidelity to your christian vocation?