From the works by Saint Anthony Mary Claret, bishop (L’Egosimo vinto, Romae 1869, 60; Autobiography, Chapter 34)
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| Bishop Saint Anthony Mary Claret mosaic, Church of San Pablo, Cordoba, Spain; |
The love of Christ stimulates and urges us to run and to fly with the wings of holy zeal. The true loving person loves God and his neighbor. The person full of true holy zeal is that same lover, yet to a superior degree, depending on the degrees of love; in such a way that, when the more one has love, the more by a greater zeal is one compelled to act. And, if one dos not have zeal, it is a certain sign that in his heart the flame of love and charity is extinguished. He or she that has zeal desires and procures, through all possible means, that God be always more known, more loved and served in this life and the next, since this sacred love has no limit.
The same is practiced with his or her neighbor, desiring and procuring that all be happy in this world and happy and blessed in the next; that all be saved, that no one be eternally lost; that nobody offend God and, lastly, that anybody find themselves in even a single moment in sin. This is just as we see it with the holy apostles and within anybody that is gifted with the apostolic spirit.
I say this to myself: a son of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is a man that burns in charity and who embraces all wherever he goes. He desires efficiently and procures, through all available means, to inflame the entire world in the fire of divine love. Nothing deters him; he delights in privations, he takes on fully all his works and tasks; he embraces sacrifices, is complacent with calumnies and is overjoyed in his or her torments. He thinks of nothing else but on how he will follow and imitate Jesus Christ when he works, suffers and procures always and only the most greatest glory of God and the salvation of souls.