"Mission" of St. Anthony Claret THE "MISSION" OF ST. ANTHONY ...

THE "MISSION" OF ST. ANTHONY MARY CLARET by Father José María Viñas, CMF General Secretariat for Lay Claretians -- Rome, 1982 Translated by Joseph Daries, CMF THE "MISSION" OF ST. ANTHONY MARY CLARET I. An Extraordinary "Mission" As the l9th century begins to fall into historical perspective, the figure
of St. Anthony Mary Claret also begins to find its adequate setting within
it. The personality of Claret, made up of so many contrasts, itself begot a
set of the most contrasting circumstances: slandered and praised in his own
day, he was discussed and praised during the process of his beatification
amid the delays of the "devils advocate" and the urgings of the advocates
for his defense. These contrasts of light and shadow have done little to
help form an objective view of his mission and his real influence in the
Church. Nevertheless, the statements of Pius XI and Pius XII in the "moment
of truth" of Claret's beatification and canonization, for all the sounding
rhetoric of such occasions, are being repeated by historians in the cold
rigor of their discipline. Pius XI stated that, in the line of providential persons whom God sends his
Church in trying times, "among the great men of the l9th century, he raised
up Anthony Mary Claret."[i] Pius XII proclaimed that Claret had served the
Church "as one who did the utmost."[ii] Today, we find historians stating
that "Father Claret centers the Spanish l9th century with his holy and
apostolic life."[iii] "None was more illustrious than St. Anthony Mary
Claret" among those who devoted themselves to the rude task of bettering
customs and religiously instructing the people.[iv] The evangelizing
movement to recatholicize Spanish society "is bound to Father Claret, the
apostle of Spain."[v] Father Claret, who at first blush was called to be a popular mission
preacher, had an extraordinarv mission to fulfill in the Church, both
through his great gifts in the Spirit and through his manifold activities
in obedieence to that same Spirit. From within his missionary being --which
was consecrated to and conformed with Christ the Evangelizer-- he had a
prophetic vision of the world and the Church, and of the urgent needs of
his times. As a missionary he strove to give an adequate response to these
needs by using the most effective means, and he begot this same vision and
response in others: laity, religious and priests animated with the same
apostolic spirit as he was. II. Claret, "Apostolic Missionary" In the first "Life" of Anthony Mary Claret, written a year after his death
Don Francisco de Asís Aguilar, who knew the Saint well both as a close
friend and collaborator, assigned him as his first title, spelled out in
large letters on the title page of his biography, "APOSTOLIC MISSIONARY,"
setting his titles of Archbishop of Cuba and Trajanopolis in smaller
type.[vi] This is a quite significant fact, since "apostolic missionary"
describes the inmost, deepest and most authentic personality of Anthony
Mary Claret. Apostolic Missionary, in its original and juridical sense, meant a priest
sent by the Holy See to raise up the Church where it was not yet
established. It also meant a priest whom the Holy See recommended to the
Ordinary of an established Church, so that the latter could grant him a
canonical mission to uplift and re-evangelize the Church in his area.[vii]
Claret received the title of Apostolic Missionary "ad honorem" on July 9,
1841, but for him it was not just an honorary title, but rather a
definition of his being, an acknowledgement of his charism and a commitment
to the Church.[viii] For Claret, being an apostolic missionary meant being a continuer of the
mission of Jesus Christ, the Son sent by the Father, and of the mission of
the Apostles, who were sent by Jesus Christ into the whole world to make
God known as Father and to build up the Kingdom by means of the Gospel
proclamation. In the first place, it meant being sent on a universal mission. Hence,
Claret found the boundaries of a parish too confining.[ix] The same could
be said of a diocese, even one as extensive as Santiago, Cuba,[x] or of a
wnole nation, as he did in his post as confessor to Queen Isabel II.[xi]
His mission was universal in a geographic sense: "the salvation of all the
inhabitants of the world,[xii] but also in a personal sense, in that it was
aimed at hierarchy and laity, saints and sinners, evangelizers and
evangelized, poor and rich, learned and ignorant, kings and subjects. In the second place, it was an evangelizinq mission. The Word is, so to
speak, the first means of salvation. Among the elements of the apostolic
ministry --teaching, sanctifying and ruling-- Claret felt called to give a
privileged place, by vocation and in an integrating way, to the first. But
he understood this teaching, this magisterium, as evangelization and as
prophetism: the teaching of the Word that converts and transforms. Hence,
whenever it was up to him, he relinquished both the exercise of government
and the practice of a stable ministry of sacramentalization to others. His
was a missionary, and hence, itinerant, form of evangelization.[xiii] In the third place, it was an evangelizing mission of witness, according to
the lifestyle of Jesus and the Twelve. Itinerancy involves poverty, and
Claret felt called to live poverty in a concrete way, closely hewing to the
letter of the Gospel: he travelled on foot and without provisions and, in
order to be totally free to evangelize and in order not to be a burden to
anyone, he did not accept money for his ministry.[xiv] In Cuba, where the
distances were too great for walking, he went on horseback, but only a
small one, "that I sold as soon as I finished the missions, so as not to
rob the poor for its keep."[xv] At the beginning, he lived this mission as
a solitary pioneer. Later, the Lord granted him the grace of living it with
companions, in the style of the evangelizing community of Jesus and the
disciples.[xvi] This way of understanding apostolic mission was not the fruit of his
studies, but of an experience of the Spirit, of a charismatic reading of
the Gospel, and of personal conformity with Jesus Christ the Evangelizer.
It was the result of much searching prayer, and Claret's response to it
could only have come about through a great deal of prayer and docility to
the Spirit. As a missionary, he felt possessed by the Spirit, who had anointed him to
evangelize the poor and heal the brokenhearted.[xvii] This possession was
so full and intense that he felt like an instrument --an arrow, a trumpet--
in the hands of the Lord. The force, the impulse, the breath, the thunder
came from Someone Else.[xviii] His spirit was the charity of Christ which
drew him to intimacy with the Father or impelled him into the highways and
byways to look for strayed sinners.[xix] He knew from the Gospel, from his awareness in the Spirit and from the life
he lived, that Christ the Evangelizer is a sign of contradiction, and
therefore that work, slander and persecution are so to speak the coat of
arms of an apostle.[xx] Claret was to earn his coat of arms through
slanders, falsifications of his writings, caricatures, mocking songs,
allusions in the theater, and also through threats and attempts to
intimidate him that went as far as the spilling of his blood in a savage
attack.[xxi] A Chapter-book of the Cathedral of Tarragona has left us this evocative
picture of the apostolic missionary in his early days: "Anthony Claret, an
apostolic missionary, is giving missions from town to town wherever he is
called and his prelates send him. He is thirty-eight years old, a truly
apostolic man of very great zeal and fervor, tireless and extraordinary. He
always travels on foot: he accepts no money or gifts under any pretext. His
work is unthinkable, since from four in the morning until the time he
retires, he hardly has time to say his prayers and take some necessary nourishment,
since he goes from the confessional to the pulpit and from the pulpit to
the confessional."[xxii] III. A "Missionary" Vision One characteristic of Claret that has received considerable attention was
his ability to capture the soul of the people, to enter into communion with
them and so to speak merge into them. This ability was the result of his
human kindness and his apostolic zeal.[xxiii] His evangelization did not
have its starting point in some sort of laboratory style of self-
sufficiency which dictated a method and programs; rather, it began with a
vision of reality that looked at things through the eyes of the heart, set
afire with apostolic zeal. When Father Claret looked at townspeople, the first thing he saw and sensed
was the hatred between brothers and sisters that had been unleashed by the
question of the succession to the Spanish throne, but which also had deeper
roots. The consequences, besides deaths, burning and looting, were fear,
sadness, disgust, and psychological illnesses.[xxiv] He saw that, despite it all, the people were keeping the faith, although it
was a rather unenlightened faith, owing both to the general rate of
illiteracy and to a lack of catechists and adequate catechisms.[xxv] These
same believing people were sinning because of the "three concupiscence"
that were fed by the impassioned climate of war.[xxvi] Besides this, the
clergy, who should have been ministers of mercy and pardon, were influenced
by a baroque