Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. – 1 Corinthians 11:1
The entire Christian life can be described as the imitation of Christ.
Not outward mimicking, but taking on his whole life: his mind, character, and way of being.
St. Paul gives us the spiritual principle behind this imitation: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
To imitate Christ is to participate in his very life, such that he now acts in and through us.
There is a kind of “commutative property of imitation” in play: Jesus is the perfect image of the Father and perfectly “imitates” him; Paul strives to imitate Christ, and he then tells his followers to imitate him in order to imitate Christ and so come to the Father. Paul says to the Ephesians: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children” (5:1).
To the Philippians, he says: “What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, do; and the God of peace will be with you” (4:9).
He writes to Timothy, “Now you have observed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions, my sufferings…” (2 Timothy 3:10-11).
Paul is always acting as a father. “For though you have countless guides in Christ,” he says to the Corinthians, “you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me” (1 Corinthians 4:15-16).
We can see how close Paul puts the relationship between imitation and fatherhood.
The practice of imitation demonstrates the importance of the saints.
Christians are all imitating Christ, but the Gospel accounts of what Jesus said and did are fairly limited.
In order to help us know how to imitate him, Jesus has magnified and multiplied himself through the saints.
The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote: “Christ plays in ten thousand places / to the Father through the features of men’s faces” (“As Kingfishers Catch Fire”).
We don’t love the saints just because they were good, admirable people; the same thing might be said of national or folk heroes.
We love the saints because we see and love Christ in them.
As we imitate the saints, we are imitating Christ and participating in his divine nature.
Christ’s fatherly example is especially important for men since he came among us as a man.
As we continue this exercise, we will pay special attention to imitating Christ as the perfect man and perfect father.
Let us take the exhortation from Hebrews as an inspiration on the road ahead: “And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness in realizing the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Hebrews 6:11-12).
