Perfect Life of Jesus: A Life of Perpetual Crucifixion
May you fulfill in me and in everyone … the perfect life of Jesus Christ, so that we may lead a life of perfect and perpetual sacrifice, perfect and perpetual crucifixion. (OOCC, X, p. 135; STA, 191)
St. Vincent Pallotti often prayed to God to fulfill in himself and in everyone the perfect life of Jesus Christ. For him, the perfect life of Jesus Christ is nothing but a life of perpetual sacrifice and crucifixion. The life of Jesus was a life of the cross. From his cradle to his grave, Jesus lived a life of suffering, deprivation and agony. The crucifixion was only the final act that completed his way of the cross here on earth. Though Jesus struggled to accept sufferings which came as the will of God at different times during his life, he did not flee from them. Jesus joyfully offered every one of his sufferings to God as the perfect sacrifice. Therefore, St. Vincent Pallotti while praying to possess the perfect life of Jesus in himself, in fact desired to possess a life of continuous sacrifice and crucifixion. By such a life he was able to identify with the sufferings of Jesus, which he lived through during his life on earth. Thus, St. Vincent desired that the life of Jesus’ way of the cross be accomplished in him. The desire to live a life of perpetual sacrifice and crucifixion in imitation of Jesus helped St. Vincent to accept the various sufferings of his life joyfully. Besides accepting the sufferings of his daily life joyfully in imitation of Jesus, St. Vincent also attempted to make the troubles of his daily life redemptive, by using each of them for the glory of God and the salvation of the humankind.
Do I desire to live the perfect life of Jesus here on earth? Am I content with living a life of perpetual sacrifice and crucifixion? Am I able to make my sufferings redemptive like Jesus?
Then Jesus shouted, “Father, I commit my spirit to you” and with those words he died. (Lk. 23: 46)