I felt very bad. It was not a matter of life or death, but I felt very uncomfortable. I was beginning my life as missionary and I decided to concentrate on my `meditation´, nourish and convert it into one of the important moments of my daily life. However, I was never satisfied; when it was not the imagination that played tricks, it was there I felt the drowsiness annoying me. Seldom did I feel satisfied with the amount of time spent for meditation, until I found a text of Fr. Gustavo Alonso, an Argentinean Claretian who served his brothers as Superior General from 1979 to 1991.
He says, “We can say in nutshell that for Claret meditation is not an elaboration of ideas or convictions; it is mainly looking and studying Jesus to get identified with Him and do like Him”. I felt relieved and an enormous happiness. My great problem was my incapacity to put the ideas in order, to go from one to another in order and rhythm which I thought that I was proposing to me. It was there I found my error. In the school of Claret, I was not invited to place myself before God to deduce idea after idea, remembering them well in the perfect syllogism, but to look at and study Jesus “the original” and allow his Spirit to conform me to Him.
What beautiful words of Claret! One who has tried sometimes to learn to draw a picture or write will understand this problem. With how much care and delicacy one has to look at each stroke, each angle and each form. And all on a sudden, the mystery appears, while we try to learn and it is here, in fact, Jesus himself is drawing and perfecting his work in us. Place yourself to look at “the original”; his Spirit will go ahead doing his work.
Do you feel it necessary to look at Jesus and growing in conformity with Him? In what do you notice your thirst for him? What qualities or virtues of Jesus inspire you more?