Love
God from the depths of your heart,
and Jesus His Son who
was crucified for us sinners.
Never let the thought of
Him leave your mind.
These words written to one of her spiritual protégés form the leit-motif
of St. Clare’s spirituality.
They are a concise summary of her approach
to prayer, to a personal relationship with God and especially to a vibrant
and life-giving identification with
JESUS, crucified for us sinners.
Clare’s devotion to the Passion was the formative power in her spiritual life. I. Brady If she could exhort her Sisters never to let the thought of Christ Crucified leave their minds, it was simply because she had found in this method of mindfulness the key to a deeply contemplative, truly holy life.
In beholding
JESUS, crucified for
us sinners, Clare of Assisi gazed on the summit of all virtues:
love, patience, poverty, obedience, humility, self-sacrifice, meekness,
generosity, kindness, abandonment.
The Cross was the focal point for Clare’s
imitation of Christ.
Beholding JESUS, crucified for us sinners, increased the ardor of Clare’s sisterly love, as she plumbed the depths of the ineffable charity of the One who for our salvation emptied Himself even to death on the Cross.
Beholding
JESUS, crucified for us
sinners, expanded her awareness of the reality of sin.
The fruit of Clare’s gazing upon Christ
Crucified was an intensification of her spirit of compunction, manifested in
her ardent prayer and unceasing penance for the conversion of sinners.
Beholding
JESUS, crucified for
us sinners, enabled St. Clare to enter into the mystery of holy
compassion and take her place at the foot of every cross, wherever Christ
was suffering in one of the members of His Mystical Body.
Beholding
JESUS, crucified for us
sinners, raised the Seraphic Mother to the heights of mystical
love, as the Cross became for her the sign of life and healing, the sign of
joy and unspeakable delight.
I. Brady
Her sublime and steadfast gazing on the
Word made flesh also made St. Clare more tender and loving towards those
with whom she lived.
How can we reach the heights of beholding
JESUS, crucified for us sinners? And where does this holy
beholding lead us?
The Seraphic Mother gives us the answer. As we BEHOLD JESUS, crucified for us sinners, we must also cultivate a deep desire to IMITATE HIM. We need to see with the eyes of faith that every event in life offers us the opportunity to unite ourselves with Jesus, crucified for us sinners, recalling St. Clare’s assurance that if you suffer with Him, you will reign with Him. If you weep with Him, you will rejoice with Him; if you die with Him on the cross of tribulations, you shall possess heavenly mansions in the splendor of the saints.
Gazing upon Jesus Crucified, St. Clare
discovered that His sorrows, pains and sufferings had become
her sorrows, pains and sufferings.
She also found that her weaknesses,
infirmities and sufferings had been taken up into His perfect sacrifice.
And she tells us where this imitating,
suffering, weeping and spiritual dying will lead:
Because of
this you shall share always and forever in the glory of the kingdom of
heaven,
in everlasting treasures instead of those that perish, and you shall
live forever.
