Riccardi

Rome, 25 April 1976 How can we love Mary? By imitating her, by being the living Word of God just like her. “Now and again I feel, like a reproach, that I don’t love Mary enough, that I think very little of her. What do you think should we do so as to have true devotion to Mary?” Just the thought of speaking about Mary makes my soul tremble and my heart beat. This very topic surpasses our every intellect and instead of speaking it’s better to remain silent. Mary! The extraordinary one among all creatures, the lofty one to the point of being given the title and reality as Mother of God and therefore Immaculate Mary, the Assumed, the Queen, the Mother of the Church.Mary is closer to God than to human beings, yet she is a creature like us creatures, and this is how she is in front of the Creator. She has the possibility to be an inclined plane for us that touches heaven and earth. Therefore, even

Loppiano, 27 November 1975 In a confidential tone, Chiara shares the graces of light she had while contemplating nature « I have a special love for nature and I have often asked myself how my relationship with nature should be so that it is not a sentimental one but a relationship as God wants it to be. Can you tell us something about your relationship with nature? » Chiara: Right Markus, well then, let's talk as if there were just the two of us so that no one can hear us. In my spiritual life, in various moments, the Lord enabled me to feel this aspect of life more powerfully, this contact with nature. But it was a rather special meeting with nature, and I could relate several episodes. In these episodes, however, what the Lord showed me in nature was not primarily nature, but rather God who was sustaining nature, God who keeps nature alive, God who is beneath nature, God who gives to nature that beauty which is the beauty

Seoul, 2 January 1982 To completely fulfill our humanity, Chiara indicates to us two ways which are at the basis of every growth "Chiara, I feel that when I pray, when I meditate, when I love others, I don’t manage to do so in a very profound way as I should. What can I do to acquire a truly deep union with God?" So, you practically would like to know how to acquire a true union with God. Look, there is a double road; I have found two ways to reach this result. The first is embracing the cross and the cross goes downwards. The more a plant goes downwards with its roots the more it grows taller; the more we embrace suffering the more we go towards God Those very small plants in Japan really impressed me, they are dwarf plants, they are very charming, but we cannot deny that they are dwarfs. I heard that the roots are cut in order for them to be like that. This also

Mollens (Switzerland), 11 August 1987 Two women, two charisms, but only one root: the choice of God. So you would like a concluding speech, something that we always do on the feast of St. Clare. … When we were young like you, like the majority of you, we were always greatly struck by a phrase that Saint Clare told St. Francis when the latter practically drew her to follow his way. 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 God the