Jesus Caritas

We must love people as Jesus loved them and since that is what his name ‘Jesus Saviour’ means, we like him, must make the salvation of all people the work of our life. It is by loving people that we learn to love God.

I cannot say that I desire death. I used to desire it, but now I see so much good to be done, so many souls without a shepherd, that what I most want is to do a little good and work a little for the salvation of those poor souls. Still, God loves them far more than I do and doesn't need me. May his will be done. There s nothing really wrong with me, but the summer wears me down. I get feverish spells sometimes, headaches, sleepless nights. Nothing that lasts and nothing severe. It will go away when the hot weather does, in five weeks. I'm leading my usual life, but getting less work done.

Jesus wills that I work for the foundation of this twofold family. How? By prayer, by sacrifice, by death, by growing in holiness: basically, by loving him.

Set up home as Jesus of Nazareth, obscurely, poorly, humbly with hard work. Imitate as closely as possible the humble and hidden existence of the Divine Worker of Nazareth, living solely from the work of your hands.

I did not feel that I was called to imitate Jesus in his public life and preaching, but understood that I should imitate the hidden life of the humble and poor workman of Nazareth.

I was thirsting to lead at last the life I have been searching for these seven years, the life I glimpsed and guessed at when I walked the streets of Nazareth where Our Lords feet had trod, he the poor craftsman unnoticed in his lowliness and obscurity.

What I am dreaming of is something very simple and small in numbers, something to resemble those simple communities of the Church’s early days. To lead the life of Nazareth, working humbly and contemplating Jesus, a little family, a little monastic household, something very small and simple.

Jesus says to those who share his hidden life, make others holy by bringing me among them. Bring them the Gospel not by your words but by your example, not by proclaiming it but by living it. Make the salvation of all the one work of your life until Jesus Saviour, which signifies perfectly what I am, expressed perfectly what you are too. How to do that? Be all things to all people with a single desire at heart, to give them Jesus.

Let us stay with Him in the humble house of Nazareth, working people who live by exercising a humble trade, poor and lowly people who live disregarded, obscure, hidden and prayerful in the solitude and seclusion, the silence, forgotteness and communion with God, that poverty helps us so much to obtain.

We must imitate Jesus by doing our life's work for people's salvation in such a way that the word 'Jesus' - 'Saviour' - is the perfect expression of what we are, just as it signifies perfectly what he is.