CALL TO HOLINESS - part 2

Imitate Jesus

 

When we stay with Jesus for a long time, and watch him in prayer and contemplation, we begin to know him well. He is pure of heart, meek and humble, forgiving, patient, full of unlimited loving-kindness toward all.

How shall we imitate Jesus?

Jesus himself gave the answer: humility and love.

 

First: “Learn from me, meek and humble of heart.” Matthew 11:29

 

Second: “Love one another as I have loved you.” John 13:34

At the last supper, when Jesus got down on his knees and washed the knotty feet of the twelve apostles, he said: “I have given you an example to do likewise.” Imitate Jesus: Be a humble servant to one another; for service is both love and humility at the same time.

Humility

Jesus thirty years of silent life in Nazareth was an example for our benefit to teach us humility. This thirty year period of Jesus’ silent life is described in one sentence: “He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.”

Blessed Charles de Foucauld that “going down to Nazareth” means humility, abjection: “Jesus descended with them and came to Nazareth. Throughout his life he descended, by becoming flesh, by becoming an obedient little child, by becoming poor, abandoned, exiled, persecuted, tortured, by always putting himself in the last place.”

“He went down, he humbled himself – his life was one of humility. His life was one of lowliness: the place he took was the lowest of all. Jesus went down with them to live their life with them, the life of the poor laborer, living by working. They were obscure, and he lived in the shade of their obscurity. He was subject to them…his life was one of submission.”

“Everyone who wants to be perfect must live in poverty, imitating with the utmost fidelity to Jesus’ poverty at Nazareth. How clearly He preached humility at Nazareth by spending thirty years in obscure labors, and obscurity by remaining so completely unknown for thirty years … and obedience.

“How little esteem He showed of the things of this world, of human greatness, and the ways of the world, of everything the world holds dear; nobility, wealth, status, knowledge, cleverness, repute, honor, worldly distinction, good manners.” 

“I should imitate as faithfully as possible this hidden life of Jesus.”

“Everyone who wants to be perfect must live in poverty, imitating with utmost fidelity Jesus’ poverty at Nazareth. How clearly he preached humility at Nazareth.’

“Imitate Jesus in his hidden life. Be as small and poor as he is… Work for our daily bread farming, gardening. Pray at night, work by day, love and contemplate Jesus unceasingly with all my heart, in poverty, holiness, and love.”

“Silently, secretly, like Jesus in Nazareth: obscurely, like him, pass unknown on earth like a voyager in the night; in poverty and in toil, humbly, with charity, like him; defenseless and mute before injustice, like him; letting myself, like a lamb, be shorn and immolated without resistance or protest; imitating in everything Jesus in Nazareth and Jesus on the cross.”

Love and Charity

 

After teaching us humility for thirty years, then, for the next three years of his public ministry of miracles of healing, he taught us love and charity: Holiness is love of God and love of people.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your soul, and all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself,” Jesus said. “This is my commandment, that you love one another.” “Love one another as I have loved you.” 

Blessed Charles said: “It is not necessary to teach others, to cure them, or to improve them: it is necessary only to live among them sharing the human condition and being present to them in love.”

“Be loving, gentle, humble, with all human beings; this is what we learned from Jesus. Not to be aggressive with anyone. Jesus taught us to go out ‘like lambs among wolves’.”

We must never be the ‘boss’ of another person. We must never make anyone afraid; never make anyone cry. 

Jesus’ example: “he went about doing good.”

“I’m called to live is through prayer and penance and the practice of Gospel virtues – love, fraternal and universal love, sharing my last piece of bread with every poor person, with every visitor, and welcoming each person as a beloved brother or sister,” Charles de Foucauld said. 

“I should carry on in myself the life of Jesus, think his thoughts, and repeat his words, his actions. May it be that he lives in me. I must be the image of the Lord in his hidden life: I must proclaim by my way of life, the Gospel from the rooftops.”

Let us focus attention on the poor.

“Let us not worry about those who want for nothing, those who people think of. Let us worry and be concerned about those who lack everything, those who nobody thinks of. Let us be friends that have no friends.”

“There is no statement in the Gospel, I think, that has made a greater impression or transformed my life more than this: ‘All that you do to one of these little ones you do it to me.’ When one thinks that these words are of eternal truth with what strength one is moved to seek out and love Jesus in the ‘little ones’, these sinners, these poor, and bring all the spiritual resources one has for the conversion of souls, all one’s material resources for the relief of temporal destitution.”

Mother Teresa called this teaching “the five-fingered gospel: You Did It To Me.”

To imitate Jesus is to be pure of heart; to willingly forgive; to feed the hungry; to welcome strangers; to give drink to the thirsty; to clothe the naked: to shelter the homeless; to teach children and youth; to visit the sick, elderly, and prisoners; to comfort those who are burdened.

CALL TO HOLINESS - part 1

“God calls all souls he has created to love him with their whole beings, here and hereafter, which means that he calls all of them to holiness, to perfection, to a close following of him and obedience to his will,” Charles de Foucauld said.

 All people are called to holiness, to be saints, to be contemplatives.

“Every Christian must be an apostle; this is not a counsel, it is a commandment. My apostolate must be an apostolate of goodness. On seeing me, people should say to themselves, since this man is good his religion must be good,” Charles de Foucauld said.

But what exactly is holiness? How can be become holy? Blessed Charles answers the question, saying we learn holiness from Jesus himself; and it has three stages:

    (1) to “come” to Jesus;

    (2) to “stay” with Jesus and to “watch” Jesus;

    (3) to “imitate” Jesus.

We must come to Jesus, sit with Jesus, observe Jesus, listen to Jesus in silence, stay in company with Jesus for a long time, until we hear him in the silence and solitude of our hearts. We must follow Jesus where he leads. We must take Jesus by the hand and walk with him, and never let go.

In the Gospels we often see Jesus calling: “come to me”, “come follow me”, “he that comes to me I will not cast out,” “let the children come to me,” and “when I am lifted up I will draw all things to myself.”

“Come to me and learn from me for I am gentle and humble of heart,” Jesus says. “Those who come to me I will in nowise cast out.”

Again and again he says “come to me… come to me… come to me.” Never does he utter an expression of rejection, “go away”.

We come to him, stay with him, we stay with him and watch him, and learn to love him, and to be transformed by that love.

 

When we come to Jesus, we leave the self, the ego, behind. “Whoever comes after me must deny himself and take up his cross daily, and follow after me,” Jesus said.

Charles de Foucauld calls this loss of ego “abasement” of the self: “Abasing ourselves is most powerful way of joining Jesus and doing good for souls. When we are able to suffer and to love, we can do much, all that is in our power to do in this world. We feel that we are suffering. but we do know that we want to love, and to want to love is to love. We find that we do not love enough. We shall never love enough, but god, who loves us more than a mother, has told us he will not reject the one who comes to him.”

Come to Jesus

“Watch and imitate him. Jesus himself suggested this very simple method of achieving union with him and perfection to his apostles," Foucauld said.

 “All perfection is to be found in the presence of God and of Jesus and in the imitation of Jesus. It is perfectly obvious that anyone doing as Jesus did is perfect. So we must throw ourselves wholeheartedly into imitating him (a task sweeter than honey to the loving heart, as an urgent need for a loving soul a need that becomes more compelling as love becomes more ardent) and watching him, the divine Spouse (a task to less sweet or indispensable to love).

“Anyone who loves, loses and buries himself in the contemplation of the beloved.”

 

A cave where Jesus meditated in Galilee

Come to Jesus in the Scriptures

After we “come” to Jesus, we must “stay” and “abide” with him.

Young apostle John saw Jesus by the Jordan River and followed him. Then Jesus turned and spoke to him “come and see (where I stay).” John followed him, and “stayed with him”. “It was about four o-clock in the afternoon.”

We can find Jesus in reading the scriptures, especially the four Gospels. “We must read and reread the gospels without stopping so that we have the spirit, deeds, words, and thoughts of Jesus before us so that one day we may think, talk, and act as he did,” Charles de Foucauld said.

  

“The Gospel showed me that the first commandment is to love God with all ones heart, and that everything had to be endured in love; ….. each of us knows that the first effect of love is imitation… I therefore had to imitate the hidden life of the poor, humble workman of Nazareth.”

  

“When one loves, one longs to be forever in converse with the beloved whom one loves, or at least be always in his sight. Prayer is nothing else. This is what prayer is: Intimate intercourse with the Beloved. You look at Him. You tell Him of your love. You are happy at his feet. You tell him you will live and die there,” Foucauld said.

Stay with Jesus and Watch Jesus

We can also “stay” with Jesus in prayer and meditation. 

 

The shepherds were the first to see Jesus, because they were “watching” in the night, keeping “alert” and “vigilant”, “guarding their sheep,” that is guarding their wandering minds.

The starry heavens opened to them and they were illuminated and heard the angles. They ran to see to the manger and they “saw Jesus”. They returned to their fields of meditation, “rejoicing for what they had heard and seen.”

Charles de Foucauld said we can encounter the living Jesus is to “stay” with him, and to “watch” him. This means to spend time “patiently enduring” and “abiding” in silent prayer, and “watching” in meditation and contemplation.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus asked his disciples to “abide here” and “watch with me”. When he came back and found them sleeping, he asked them, “could you not even abide awake with me for one hour?”

The words “abide” and “stay” and “watch” and “awake” seem to have deep meaning to Jesus.

Over and over again during his public ministry, Lord Jesus urged his disciples to “Be watchful! Be alert!” (Mk 13:33). “Watch therefore.. do not sleep. I say to you and I say to all: WATCH!”

“Beware that your hearts do not become drowsy from carousing and anxieties of daily life…Be vigilant at all times and pray…” (Luke 21:34…)

 

The Sea of Galilee, viewed from Jesus' meditation cave.

“Be watchful! Be alert!” (Mk 13:33)

“Watch therefore…do not be sleeping…What I say to you all: WATCH!” (Mk 13:37)

“Wait here and keep awake with me…Why are you sleeping. Keep awake and pray.” (Mt 26: 36, 41)

Jesus was teaching his disciples and friends to “abide” and endure patiently with him, focusing their attention on him, leaving the world behind, adoring and loving him. He comes into their hearts and fills them with his presence and light.

When we watch with Jesus, we are struck by his withdrawal into obscurity and silence and solitude. We are impressed by his silence and his presence; by his stillness in contemplation in communion with the Father.

“And getting up very early, going out, he went into a desert place, there he prayed.” Mk 1:35

When we follow Jesus, we find ourselves following him into the desert, into the silence of the night.

 

A cave where Jesus meditated in Galilee

part 2: Imitating Jesus