10 August

Aug 10, 2018 | Claret mit dir

“When they came to get my regular clothing they also took the Bible I had brought. I asked for it and was told, “Very well”. But the fact is that I never saw it again until the day I had to leave because of sickness; only then was it returned to me”
Aut 151

A SINGULAR TEST

Why did they take the Bible from Claret in the Jesuit Novitiate in Rome? He entered the novitiate as a priest and took with him his personal Bible, pocket-sized and with small letters which he read every day. But the young novices had no personal Bible. The appreciation Claret had for his Bible been notable, and the superior or the formator removed this “singularity”. They submitted the novices to “tests” of obedience, the common life and personal detachment. Claret tells us that it pained him to find in his cell “all the books he needed, except the Bible”.
This deprivation of the Bible deeply affected Claret, as he still remembered it after 23 years when he wrote the autobiography. Perhaps with this Claret teaches something more than his love for the Word of God: the self- emptying he was submitted to while he was searching for his place in the Church. Surely, it happened to him, like as for certain saints whom God, from time to time, “conceals” himself, leading them -by the dryness of the desert – to a greater inner purification.
Jesus of Nazareth was not a scribe or doctor of the law but he knew the Jewish Bible so well that even his enemies recognized him as a Master. At school and in the worship of the synagogue he was initiated in the Scriptures. The Gospel of Luke says that, at the age of twelve, in the temple of Jerusalem, he amazed the doctors by his questions on religious topics (cf. Lk 2.46 -47), and that, at the beginning of his preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus read from the prophet Isaiah and astonished his town people with his interpretation of the chosen passage (cf. Lk 4.14 -30).
For us, the person and the cause of Jesus, Christ and Lord, is the heart of the entire Bible. Claret, in his habit of Bible reading, was passionately seeking Jesus and the prophets who announced him and the Apostles who followed him.
What knowledge does each of us have of the Bible, and what do we look for and find in it?

Kategorien

Archiv

21 December

“I never tired of being in church before the image of Our Lady of the Rosary, and I talked and prayed so trustingly that I was quite sure the Blessed Virgin heard me. I used to imagine a sort of wire running from the image in front of me to its heavenly original....

20 December

“If something pains or disturbs you, suffer it patiently thinking that the Lord has placed it so. If you are able to give alms, do it for the love of God, thinking of the neighbours and particularly in the poor who are the image of Jesus. No day should pass without...

19 December

“With regard to the slanders unleashed against me, I am not sad; I am very happy in the Lord” Carta a D. José Caixal, 10 de marzo de 1865, en EC II, p. 864 FORTITUDE IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY “Fortunate are you, when people insult you...., because you are my disciples”...

claretian martyrs icon
Clotet Year - Año Clotet
global citizen

Documents – Documentos