Riccardi

Rocca di Papa, 4 June 1987 Demanding questions and answers full of hope. (by Tavares Manoel – Vatican Radio Brazilian Program). Chiara, in what way does Mary help Christians, especially the youth, to fully respond to their vocation? Chiara: One of the problems today for Christians, which means all lay people, is that they don’t know how to reconcile their spiritual life with life in the midst of the world, with being in the midst of the world (...) Transcription Audio in italian

Trent, late 1943 – early 1944 Chiara, who was from Trent, inspired the souls of these young women who read her letters, which she signed using her simple Third Order name, Suor Chiara (Sister Clare). “God,” she writes, “Here is where the adventure begins.” “The word that God wanted me to express was himself: God.”  This letter is a luminous documentation of it. Ave Maria! My Dearest Sisters,I would like to be next to each one of you, speaking with my heart in my hand, with the delicateness of God, telling you in words that cut to the depths of the soul what is taking place in my heart. Sister, beautiful soul, also for you the Almighty has marked out a plan of love.You too can live for something great in life. Believe it: God is in you!Your soul in grace is a focal centre for the Holy Spirit, the God who sanctifies.Look inside you, search for God, your God, who lives in you.Oh, if you only knew whom you have

Roma, April 25, 1988 Commentary of the Word of Life: Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action (1 Jn. 3:18). John the Evangelist wrote these words. He was putting his communities on guard against certain people whose words spoke highly of faith in Jesus, but who did not follow faith through with practice. Indeed, they considered practice to be useless and superfluous, as if Jesus had already done everything. Their faith was empty and sterile because it took away from the work of Jesus the indispensable contribution he asks from each of us. Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. Love in action. True faith, says John, is faith that gives proof of itself by loving as Jesus loved and taught us to do. Now, the first characteristic of this kind of love is its concreteness. Jesus did not love us merely by giving wonderful talks. Rather, he was in our midst doing good, healing all, being fully available

Rome, 1961 A reflection on art and the artist. The purpose of art is somewhat obscure, almost mysterious, perhaps simply unknown. Certainly it does engage reason alone.Yet art, in a manner equal to science, has always produced more or less beautiful expressions of itself, because the imagination, its mother and origin, is a marvellous human talent and gift like memory, affectivity and reason, and it too has flowered in works: in “works of art,” even spontaneously. The true artist is a great person. Everyone says it even though few are art critics, but everyone admires and is fascinated by “beauty.”The artist in a certain way is like the Creator.True artists possess their skill almost unconsciously and use colours, musical notes, stone as we use our legs to walk. Their point of concentration is in the soul, where they contemplate an impression, an idea that they wish to express outside themselves.Hence, within the infinite limits of their human littleness before God, and thus within the infinite difference between the two “created” things