Chiara Lubich invites us to look at Jesus as if he were a mirror, just as St Clare of Assisi did when writing to her sisters in religion. This mirror reflects divinity in its humanity. Today we can ask ourselves: are we, in some way, mirrors of Jesus? Are we this for others? In St Clare’s letters to Agnes of Prague*, that form part of several writings in which she speaks of her need to be radically faithful to the Gospel, she 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). Saint Clare was inviting Agnes to look to her Spouse, and also to imitate him, making the same choices he made, doing his same actions, his same deeds. … Today, we could ask ourselves: are we in some way a mirror of Jesus? Do we mirror Jesus also for others? In this regard I’d like to mention one of our dreams from the early days of the Movement. We used to say: “If, for some absurd hypothesis, all Gospels were destroyed, we would like to live in such a way that, by seeing how we behave, people would in some way see Jesus in us and could therefore re-write the Gospel”: … ‘Love your neighbour 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’ (Cf 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).”

Chiara Lubich

The Mirror – Feast of St Clare,  Berne, 11 August 2002 * A religious sister in St Clare’s Order