Walking with Jesus
When we believe in Jesus Christ and strive … to imitate him … [He] grants to us the grace of being destroyed of our every deformity … Then Jesus enters into us and continues his life within us. (OOCC, III, p. 37)
St. Vincent Pallotti visualizes Christian life as “walking with Jesus.” In this journeying with Jesus, a person’s self-centered living gets destroyed slowly and his life with God begins flowering. The first condition to begin this journey is to believe in Jesus. The second condition for this journey is the humble and confident striving to imitate Jesus. Thus, when a person begins a life of imitation of Jesus in faith and love, Jesus showers on him the grace of destroying all of his shortcomings and deformity. This destruction involves the emptying of a person’s egoism in totality. It calls for the removal of the “old man” and the putting on of the “new man.” When a person makes a personal effort to remove all that is evil within him, Jesus purifies the person from every form of selfishness. In doing so, Jesus effects the destruction of all that is unholy in the person. When a person receives the gift of destruction of every evil, he experiences an attraction to Christ and a desire to give himself fully to Jesus. At this stage, a person is sensitive to the wishes of Jesus, responds to him positively, collaborates with him, and enters into an experience of genuine companionship with Jesus. The thoughts, words, and deeds of Jesus influence the thoughts, words and deeds of the person, and he becomes “fixed in Christ.” When this happens, the person is transformed into Jesus, so much so that Jesus lives and acts in the person. In this manner, the life of the person becomes a “walking with Jesus.”
Do I consider my Christian life as “walking with Jesus”? Do I imitate the life of Jesus in faith to begin such a journey? Am I ready to die to myself and live for God? Do I fix myself in Christ, and allow Jesus to transform me and to live in me?
Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people; and walk in all the ways I command you, that it may be well with you. (Jer. 7: 23)