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.