August 11, the liturgical feast of Saint Claire of Assisi, calls to mind both the first follower of Francis and Chiara Lubich. United by their love for God—despite living in different eras—these two great women share profound commonalities regarding the Christian message and the ability to transcend the conventions of their times.
In 1987, in highlighting God’s shared preferential choice, Chiara Lubich thus sheds light on what characterises those who live inspired by the charism of unity:
“When we were young like you, like the majority of you, we were always greatly struck by a phrase that Saint Claire told St Francis when the latter practically drew her to follow his way and St Francis asked her: ‘My child, what do you want?’ One could expect all kinds of answers, like: ‘I would like to follow you in the way of poverty, I want to become a nun, I want to enter a convent,’ and so on. Instead she truly got it right. ‘My child, what do you want?’ and she answered: ‘God’. She wanted God, because she was choosing God as God had chosen her.
It’s the same choice that we also made at the beginning of the Movement, we made only one choice: God! Beyond the bombings and everything else, God emerged. We believed in God and we made him the ideal of our life. We see that this choice is always new because this choice of God makes us put aside nearly all those riches that we perhaps accumulate without even realizing it. Perhaps we are rich of the focolare, rich of material things, rich of our studies; we are rich perhaps of our relatives, or the priesthood or other things.
Our ideal which is Jesus Forsaken, who is nothing, who made himself nothing, makes us put all of this aside so as to put God first and do all the rest as the will of God. This is what Saint Claire reminds us again today. She did it by choosing the way of poverty; we do it by choosing the way of unity, always having Jesus in our midst, the Risen One and Jesus in us through our love for Jesus Forsaken.”
Mollens, 11 August 1987
Photo credit: CSC Audiovisivi
