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“I always tried to maintain myself balanced and in a same humour, without allowing myself to be dominated by sorrow, too much of joy, but remembering always Jesus, Mary and St. Joseph who had troubles” (Resolutions of the year 1850; in AEC p. 663).

GOOD HUMOUR

There were saints who have remained in people´s mind like masters of good humour. Among them a special importance is usually given to St. Philip Neri, the Florentine saint of the 15th century who began the Oratories in Rome. They were meeting places to pray and share the Word of God (more…)

“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). (more…)

“The love of God and selfishness are two contrary loves that resist one another; they are like water and fire. The blacksmith´s dirty water vessel…..will put off the hot iron. So also the divine love is puts off” (Unedited text, Mss. Claret, vol. XIII, p. 697).

UNSUITABLE LOVES

The love of God is not an idea, but an experience. Father Claret was an experienced person in this love which he compares to fire. For him, the fire of love is also a symbol of life: love creates and leads us to offer ourselves for others. For Jesus, “there is no greater love than this, (more…)

“My God, I want nothing of this world, nothing but your grace, your holy love and heavenly glory”

(Aut. 636).

FINAL GOAL

We are short sighted people. As life goes ahead, we lose sight of the scope and we adapt ourselves to small things. As we are losing the energy, we lose our dreams and enthusiasm to open up new ways; we find difficult to have higher visions; and besides, we give up the capacity to go up and consider the sky as our limit. We find difficult to accept changes and we become conformed to lower visions. (more…)

“Mary has to be the Mother of God himself. According to a philosophical principle there has to be a certain proportion between the form and the dispositions of the matter: the dignity of Mother of God is here like form and the Heart of Mary is the matter that has to receive this form. Oh, what a summit of graces, virtues and other dispositions are put together in that most holy and purest Heart” (Letter of Father Claret to a devotee of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, in EC, II, p. 1499).

MARY, MOTHER OF GOD

Before so many virtues and graces, these admirations of Claret´s soul are certainly (more…)

“Within a month I will not have a chaplain… As I see the Brothers liking very much to have a Priest form the Congregation and I too want like them, I ask you to send to me a Priest in consultation with the Consulters. I and the Brothers too will appreciate it”.

(Letter to Fr. Joseph Xifré, on 19 October, 1866, EC II, p. 1066).

TO LIVE IN THE FAMILY

In the 19th century all the bishops had a priest with them always. He was the one who was helping him to celebrate the Eucharist in the complicated ritual of that time; he used to be the secretary, etc. He was called “the chaplain”. (more…)

“All those who hunger and thirst not after justice or any personal merit, but simply for the favor of some job, post, or dignity, besiege my house every day and pester me with their ambitions and pretensions. I have to tell them all that it cuts me to the quick not to be able to please them, but that I have made it a rule never to meddle in these matters”

(Aut. 626).

AGAINST ALL THE “TRAFIQUING OF INFLUENCES”

In the agenda of Claret during his 11 years of stay in Madrid as royal confessor, there appears a time dedicated for the audiences; this is the time employed in receiving all sorts of persons who asked for an appointment with the holy archbishop. (more…)