Clare Of Assisi Quotes

Love Him totally, who gave Himself totally for your love.

Love that cannot suffer is not worthy of that name.

We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God's compassionate love for others.

Totally love Him who gave Himself totally out of love for you.

Our labor here is brief, but the reward is eternal. Do not be disturbed by the clamor of the world, which passes like a shadow. Do not let false delights of a deceptive world deceive you.

Never forget that the way which leads to heaven is narrow; that the gate leading to life is narrow and low; that there are but few who find it and enter by it; and if there be some who go in and tread the narrow path for some time, there are but very few who persevere therein.

Happy the soul to whom it is given to attain this life with Christ, to cleave with all one’s heart to him whose beauty all the heavenly hosts behold forever, whose love inflames our love, the contemplation of whom is our refreshment, whose graciousness is our delight, whose gentleness fills us to overflowing, whose remembrance makes us glow with happiness, whose fragrance revives the dead, the glorious vision of whom will be the happiness of all the citizens of the heavenly Jerusalem. For he is the brightness of eternal glory, the splendour of eternal light, the mirror without spot.

Fix your heart on the image of the Divine Substance

What you hold, may you [always] hold, What you do, may you [always] do and never abandon. But with swift pace, light step, Unswerving feet, So that even your steps stir up no dust, May you go forward Securely, joyfully, and swiftly, On the path of prudent happiness, Not believing anything, Not agreeing with anything That would dissuade you from this resolution Or that would place a stumbling block for you on the way, So that you may offer your vows to the Most High In the pursuit of that perfection To which the Spirit of the Lord has called you. —Clare of Assisi “The Second Letter to Agnes of Prague” Prayer

I suppose there is no more counterintuitive spiritual idea than the possibility that God might actually use and find necessary what we fear, avoid, deny, and deem unworthy. This is what I mean by the “integration of the negative.” Yet I believe this is the core of Jesus’s revolutionary Good News, Paul’s deep experience, and the central insight that Francis and Clare lived out with such simple elegance.

Francis and Clare would retire to the woods near Assisi to converse with each other. The villagers of Assisi, seeing a red glow over the forests ran with buckets of water to douse what they assumed was a fire. Instead, they found Francis and Clare, seated in a clearing, rapt in conversation surrounded by a holy fire. The icon shows the fulfillment of Christ's promise in the gospel: "Where two or more are gathered in my name, I am there with them". The figure of the Risen Christ is in their midst, blessing and connecting them from within a red mandorla of seraphs.

Remember that the time of labour and suffering is short, and that, on the contrary, the reward which awaits us is eternal. Saint Clare of Assisi.

Every spiritual seeker is a prisoner of time. . . .We are all of us prisoners of the time in which we live. That is a place of commonality where she [Clare of Assisi], in her time, and we in ours, can meet in friendship. And more than friendship, it is where we can reclaim life—our true life—amid a world gone amuck.

We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God's compassionate love for others

There is no greater sorrow than to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.” - Dante “We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become.” - St. Clare of Assisi “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” - William Congreve

We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become. If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing.