Imitation of Jesus: A Necessity for Cooperation in His Mission
If all Christians must imitate our Lord Jesus Christ, how much more those who wish to cooperate in the continuation of his mission need to imitate Jesus. (OOCC, II, p. 4)
According to St. Vincent Pallotti, every Christian is called to follow the footsteps of Jesus Christ for two reasons: first, imitation of Jesus is the essence of Christian life; and second following the path Jesus walked in his life is a sure road of Christian perfection. If each Christian is called to imitate Jesus, reasons St. Vincent, then those of us who are called to cooperate in Jesus’ mission have an added responsibility to imitate his life. This is because the cooperators in the mission of Jesus should be in touch with every aspect of the life of Jesus. A true cooperator in the mission of Jesus should encounter Jesus personally to understand the various dimensions of his personal and apostolic life. The best way to arrive at such knowledge of Jesus is to imitate his life. The more a person attempts to live the very life of Jesus, the more he would be able to know the ‘who’ and ‘what’ of Jesus. The more he knows about Jesus and his mission, the more he would be able to cooperate in his mission. For this reason, St. Vincent Pallotti gives the life of Jesus Christ as the fundamental rule of the Society he founded. Thus, for St. Vincent, the obligation of the cooperators to imitate Jesus stems from their apostolic vocation. The more one imitates Jesus, the Apostle of the Eternal Father, the greater the cooperator in the mission of Jesus he becomes.
Do I acknowledge the imitation of Jesus as the sure path to Christian perfection? As a cooperator in the mission of Christ, do I recognize my added responsibility to imitate the life of Jesus? Do I accept Jesus as the fundamental rule of my Christian living?
And you became imitators of us and of the Lord … so that you became a model for all the believers. (I Thes. 1: 6– 7)