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13 March

Mar 13, 2018 | Claret With You

“For several days I had been feeling very fervent and full of longing to die for Jesus Christ. The love of God seemed to be the only thing I knew how or chanced to talk about, both to the members of my household and to outsiders who came to visit me. I had a great hunger and thirst to suffer trials and shed my blood for Jesus’ and Mary’s sake. Even in the pulpit I would remark that I desired to seal the truths I was preaching with the very blood of my veins.” – Aut 573

TO GIVE ONE’S LIFE FOR THE CAUSE OF JESUS

“The heart has reasons that reason doesn’t understand”, said one great thinker. There are issues that only the heart understands.  Of course, those in love know this very well.  In this situation no amount of sacrifice, deprivations, works are enough, no matter how rough and hard they are.  The “pains” of love are not pains when the love is real.

The romantic songs repeat the same old story: “To die of love”… “You are my life”… The problem arises when we move from the words of the songs to the reality of life.  In the family, can anyone say to husband, to wife, to children, to parents, without lying …you are my life”?  And not just for a short period but for always and all time?

Claret was on fire with love.  His was not the romantic love, nor the platonic love, but very real love.    Those who knew him or those who came close to him experienced this fire and were consumed by it.  It is the scriptural saying that “from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks”. (Mt 12, 34).  Claret expressed it verbally, and above all he showed it with his works and his entire life, that he was encouraged by a great love for God and his contemporaries, a love that overwhelmed him completely.  His desire to seal with his blood the truths he was preaching was nothing more than the consequence of being wholly and madly in love with the cause of Christ.

When love is put to the test in the gestures of our daily activities, in the details of the attention we pay to those who surround us, in the haste to serve our brothers, in the attention given to those who knock at the door of our mercy, then we can consider ourselves also of being inflamed by the love of God.

On the contrary when we lack delicacy, obligation, self-giving, consideration, loveliness, tolerance…, then the divine love is not burning in our hearts.

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