CONFORMITY WITH CHRIST, THE EVANGELIZER
For Claret, Jesus was, particularly in his phase of popular missions in Catalonia and the Canary Islands, a model to imitate even in the very small details. For example he relates in number 387 of the Autobiography, “It is well known that modesty is the virtue that teaches us to do all things in a fitting manner. Because we should do all things just as Jesus Christ did, I used to ask myself in every situation, and still do, how Jesus would have acted. How carefully and with what purity and rightness of intention He did everything: preaching, eating, dealing with all sorts of people, praying! Thus, with the Lord’s help, I resolved to imitate Jesus Christ in all things so as to be able to say by my actions, if not in so many words, like the Apostle, `Be imitators of me as I am of Christ´”.
In fact many traits of behaving like Jesus are proper to that period and its social and religious situation, but our attention on him will lead us to an intuition to develop our way of developing our daily tasks. As Claret wrote in his little book entitled Los siete Talentos de la Oración (The Seven Talents of Prayer), “The one who meditates has to behave as the one who learns to draw a picture or writes looking at the original and then going ahead copying it on to the paper. Thus he will have his look on the original, who is, Jesus Christ and will be copying his virtues” (El Colegial, p. 137). But it doesn´t mean acquiring the same form of Jesus, but allow him to give each one of us the form he wishes. It doesn´t mean imitating him externally in some of his features of virtues, but to search how to be united with him, to get identified and conformed to him.
In his resolutions of 1866 (AEC p. 714) Claret offers us some similes that can help us to understand better how our imitation of Christ should be.
“The simile of photography: (which was becoming widespread at that time), that is the image of Jesus is printed in my heart having it always present. Simile of magnifying glass: it will be my inner and concave heart which receiving the sun who is Jesus will converge the rays in the soul as a focus and thus it will burn in the divine love as a Seraphim”.
