Today we celebrate the feast day of St. Clare of Assisi 2002, which has always been commemorated from the beginning of our Movement, not only at the Center, but wherever the Movement is present around the world.
Today, as in other years, we remember St. Clare and we’ll compare a detail of her journey towards God with our journey.

To look at Jesus as in a mirror in order to imitate him

One concept that regards this saint, and that we have not yet emphasized, is one we could express in this manner: “The mirror, the mirrors.”
It is the image of the mirror which calls to mind precisely what St. Paul says in his letter to the Corinthians: “All of us, then, reflect the glory of the Lord with uncovered faces; and that same glory, coming from the Lord, who is the Spirit, transforms us into his likeness in an ever greater degree of glory” (2 Cor 3:18).

In her letters to Agnes of Prague, which are part of several writings in which she speaks of her own need to be radically faithful to the Gospel, Clare invites the sisters to look at Jesus as if they were looking in a mirror, a mirror that in its humanity reflects back divinity.
She wrote: “Fix your eyes on the mirror of eternity, (Jesus) … and be totally transformed in the image of his divinity.” (FF 2888)
“And since this vision of him is … a spotless mirror, bring your soul to this mirror every day and constantly search out your own face there so that you may be adorned … with all the virtues as it should be for you as daughter and beloved spouse of the high King.” (FF2902)

Saint Clare was inviting Agnes to look to the Spouse and also to imitate him, making the same choices he made, his same actions, his same gestures.
“If you suffer with him,” she continues, “with him you will reign; if you weep with him, with him you will rejoice; if you die on the cross of tribulation in his company, with him you will possess … for all eternity, the glory of the heavenly kingdom …; you will participate in the eternal goods … and you will live for all ages to come.” (FF2880)

By imitating him Agnes becomes that Jesus in the mirror. But then, having become such, she can in turn be a mirror for the sisters.

An uninterrupted chain of mirrors from Jesus to the world: the Franciscan Movement

St. Clare says that this is how one creates an uninterrupted chain of mirrors from Jesus to the world.
Jesus is the mirror of Francis.
Jesus and Francis are the mirror of Clare.
Jesus, Francis and Clare are the mirror of Agnes.
Jesus, Francis, Clare and Agnes are the mirror for the first sisters who, in turn, become mirrors for the future ones.
The future sisters, looking at the first sisters, become the mirrors for those who live in the world.
Those who live in the world become mirrors of Jesus for everyone.

Thus by perfectly reflecting Christ, Francis and Clare, the first friars and the first sisters, have given birth to the Franciscan Movement: one of those ecclesial realities that from time to time bring back into the Church the Gospel in its radicality, to give it new life, to renew it, to reform it.

The demands of the charism of unity: to live unity in order to live Jesus

For us too, even though we are small and unworthy, we too have been invested with a similar task: to give life, to develop, to spread in the world a charismatic reality. It has happened to us too to perform a duty which is to live and help others to integrally and radically live the Gospel, looking at Jesus as if in a mirror.
The very first notes we have about our Ideal of life at its onset, affirm: “We need to be another Jesus.” Therefore we are asked to mirror ourselves in him.
To achieve this we see that Saint Francis and Saint Clare were given a charism, that of poverty by the Holy Spirit. We have been given the charism of unity.
And it is precisely through unity that we can be another Jesus, be Jesus. Remember the definition of unity given in a letter written back in 1947: “Oh, unity, unity, what divine beauty! We have no words to describe it: it is Jesus.”
Yes, it is Jesus. So then we began to understand that by loving one another, we would accomplish unity and Jesus would be in our midst… and in each one of us.
To live unity was and is synonymous with living Jesus, and in this way the whole Gospel.

Unity: soul and aim of the Gospel

One day a small but significant light along our journey clarified this new aspect for us.
The words of the Gospel seemed like newly sprouted plants on a large plot of land. We realized that each plant’s little root was set deeply in Jesus’ last will and testament, in the unity which lay beneath the whole plot of land. And the root received life from it.
It was a 3D image of how we should consider Jesus’ last will and testament and its relationship with the other words of the Gospel, and how to live one word, unity, and all the others.
We better understood that unity is not a particular virtue. In fact, it’s not listed among the virtues. It is not only Jesus’ highest word. It’s not just the fundamental theme of his testament. Unity is the soul of the whole Gospel, of the whole Scripture. It is aim that the whole Gospel tends toward. And, because it is the effect of charity, we could also say that it’s the summary, the synthesis of the Gospel.

We saw that we needed to live the words in view of unity.
Yes, because it is not evangelically correct to live poverty for the sake of poverty, but for the love that leads to unity, or obedience for the sake of obedience, but everything needs to be in view of unity. The same could be said for every beatitude, as well as for the ten commandments, and for that which the first Testament requires, the Testament Jesus said he had come not to abolish but to complete.

And now we understand why the Holy Spirit urged us to put into practice each month a different sentence of the Gospel so that in time we would make it to live them all. They open up unity like a fan. And we can mirror ourselves in them so as to become like Jesus, another Jesus, and in this way reflect him to others.
We could ask ourselves today: are we in some way a mirror of Jesus? Do we mirror Jesus for the others?

To mirror ourselves in the Gospel in order to become a mirror of Jesus

In this regard I’d like to mention one of our dreams from the early days.
We used to say: “If, for some absurd hypothesis, all the Gospels were destroyed, we would like to live in such a way that people, seeing our actions, seeing Jesus in us, could re-write the Gospel: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ (Mt 19:19); ‘Give and gifts will be given to you’ (Lk 6:38); “Do not judge’ (Mt 7:1); ‘Love your enemies’ (Mt 5:44); ‘Love one another’ (Jn 15:12); ‘For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them’ (Mt 18:20).”

Well lately we realized, with gratitude to God, that if we haven’t yet reached this goal at least we are on our way.
I could tell this was true, when we were working on collecting the so-called fioretti for the book the St. Pauls Press asked us to prepare, to present some evangelical episodes of the life of the Movement. They reveal the effort we have made to align ourselves, to look at ourselves, we could say, in the mirror of the Gospel, and how the Lord consequently intervened just as he promised.
Now, since we’re celebrating, let’s read some of them so as to give praise to God and thank those who, by living them, used the Gospel, Jesus, as their mirror and now, through the fioretti, can become a reflection of him for many.
May Jesus make us all mirrors of him and of the Gospel so as to be a mirror for many others.

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