Dear Friend of Claret,

From his birth, he was fascinated with the mystery of Christ. He was so taken with his presence in the Eucharist that for the last nine years of his life the two of them became one flesh, and burned with the same zeal for lost souls, and the same love for the human race.

When St. Anthony was born two hundred years ago, the day before Christmas Eve, a marvelous intimacy with the Word-Made-Flesh, that finally bore great fruit in his life and endures until today in those touched by his spirit of devotion and zeal for souls, took hold of him.

As a small boy, he spent hours before the Blessed Sacrament in the church of his native town and, in the end, they became one flesh in the miracle that preserved the sacred species in his heart from one communion to the next for the last nine years of his life.

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with their endless war and turmoil, are over and done with. The 21 st century looms. Claret survived modern industrialization and its push towards political and intellectual independence. Our world edges toward globalization, pluralism, and postmodern secularism.

Claret was born to evangelize the corridors of the Spanish Empire in which he moved.

We are called to evangelize the imperial highways of our own day. His century was bent on warfare. Our own war-torn age is hungry for justice and peace.

The dynamic of our task is one of discipleship and mission. Like Claret, we must learn to feel God’s passion and action in our time from Jesus. Once we catch fire, it drives us to bring others into the same mystery: “to know you and make you known, love you and make you loved, serve you and make you served,” as Claret put it.

This drive to evangelize is born out of a deep sense of prayer rooted in the fact that as a boy he would spend a large amount of his free time in prayer in the presence of Jesus whose presence was so deeply internalized that he was able to live in deep mystical union with the Blessed Sacrament for the last nine years of his life.

When we embrace God where he has put us by birth and migration, and learn to cherish the heritage of faith provided by our family of birth, once we have come to know ourselves fully through personal choices, and the One who creates us through spiritual conversion, then we will be compelled to take the truth and beauty of this way of being, and share it with others, who may or may not have discovered the presence of God in their own lives.

Claret’s voice spoke a WORD his listeners already knew, and immediately recognized. His preaching brought people together for a common task, and called them back to the brotherhood and human community that they had forgotten.