A Conference given to professors and students at the Catholic University in 1940

All sanctification consists in knowing Christ and in imitating him. The entire Gospel and all the saints are filled with this ideal which is the Christian ideal par excellence. To live in Christ; to be transformed into Christ… St. Paul tells us: “I had no thought of bringing you any other knowledge than that of Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” (1Cor 2,2)… “I live now not I but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2,20). The task of all the saints is to achieve the Pauline ideal to live the life of Christ, in the measure of their capabilities and in accord with the graces given to each. To imitate Christ, meditate on his life and follow his example… The most popular book in the Church after the Gospels is the Imitation of Christ, but in how many different ways this imitation has been understood!

Erroneous ways of imitating Christ

1. For some, the imitation of Christ is reduced to a study of the historical Jesus. They search for the historical Christ and stay with this. They study him. They read the Gospel, investigate the chronology, study the customs of the Jewish people… And their study, more scientific than spiritual, is cold and inert. The imitation of Christ for them is reduced to a literal copy of his life. But it is not this. No: “The spirit is life giving; the letter kills” (2Cor 3,6).

2. For others, the imitation of Christ is rather a speculative affair. They see in Jesus a great Legislator; one who solves all the human problems, the sociologist par excellence; the artist who delights in nature, who is pleased to be with the little ones… For some he is an artist, a philosopher, a reformer, a sociologist and they contemplate him, admire him but do not change their lives because of him. Christ remains only in their intelligence and in their sensitivity, but has not pervaded their lives.

3. Another group believing that they imitate him, concern themselves only with the observance of his commandments, being faithfully observant of divine and ecclesiastical law. They are scrupulous in the practice of fasting and abstinence. They contemplate the life of Christ as a prolonged duty and our lives as a duty that prolongs that of Christ. To the laws given by Christ, they add others to fill the voids, in such a way that all life becomes a continuous set of obligations and duties, a rule of perfection in total ignorance of liberty of spirit.

The focus of their attention is not Christ but sin. The essential sacrament of the Church is not the Eucharist, nor baptism but confession. Their only concern is to flee sin. For them the imitation of Christ means to escape bad thoughts, to escape all danger, limit the liberty of the world and be suspicious of evil intentions in all the events of life. No, this is not the imitation of Christ that we propose. This could well be the attitude of the pharisees but not that of Christ.

4. For yet others the imitation of Christ is apostolic activism, a multiplication of efforts to give direction to the apostolate, a continuous movement to create ever more works, to multiply meetings and associations. Some situate the triumph of Catholicism purely in political attitudes. For others the accent is on torchlight processions, monster meetings, the founding of a periodical… I say that these things are not necessarily the answer. All things are necessary but these are not what is essential to Catholicism.

B. The True Solution

In the first place, our religion does not consist in a reconstruction of the historical Christ; nor a purely metaphysical, sociological or political Christ; nor is it only a cold and sterile struggle against sin; nor is it primarily an attitude of conquest. Neither does it consist in doing what Christ did, our civilization and conditions of life are so different!

Our imitation of Christ consists in living the life of Christ, in having this inner and outer attitude that in all things we are conformed to Christ, doing what Christ would do if he were in my place.

The first thing essential if we are to imitate Christ is to be assimilated into him by grace, which is participation in the divine life. Consequently, one should esteem above all else baptism which initiates us into divine life, the Eucharist which sustains it and gives us Christ and penance for its recovery when lost.

Possessing this life, we must endeavor to put it into action in all the circumstances of life through the practice of all the virtues which Christ practiced, in particular charity, the virtue most loved by Christ.

The historical incarnation necessarily restricted Christ and his divine-human life to a limited space and time. The mystical incarnation which is the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, does away with all restrictions and amplifies itself to include all times and places where there are baptized. The divine life appears throughout the world. The historical Christ was a Jew and lived in Palestine in the time of the Roman Empire. The mystical Christ is Chilean, French, German, African… and lives in the twentieth century… He is a teacher, a merchant, an engineer, lawyer, worker, prisoner or a king… He is all Christians who live in the grace of God, aspire to integrate their lives in the norms of the life of Christ, in their most secret aspirations. And to aspire always to do whatever one does as Christ would do it were he in one’s place. To teach engineering, the law… as Christ would do it… to perform surgery with the delicacy of Christ… to treat one’s students with the gentle, loving and respectful firmness of Christ, to interest oneself in them as Christ would were he in one’s place. To travel as Christ would travel, to pray as Christ used to pray, to behave in politics, economy, in your domestic life as Christ would.

This supposes a knowledge of the Gospels and of Church tradition and a struggle against sin, it includes metaphysics, esthetics, sociology, and an ardent spirit of conquest… But not a primal dependence on them. If one fails, humanly speaking, if success does not crown the apostolate, one must not grow impatient. The only defeat consists in failing to be Christ because of apostasy or sin.

This is the Catholicism of a Francis of Assisi, of Ignatius and Xavier and of so many young and not so young who live their daily lives as married couples, teachers, single men and women, students, religious, athletes, politicians, with the criterion of being Christ. These are the beacons that convert souls and save nations.