How We can Grow in Our Union with God

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

Rome ("Città Nuova"), 25 july 2002 Commentary of the Word of Life: Forgive your neighbour the wrong done to you; then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven (Ecclus. 28:2).  This Word of Life is taken from one of the so-called deuterocanonical or apocryphal books of the Bible. It was written between 180 and 170 BC, by Jesus Ben Sirach, who was a wise man and a scribe, teaching in Jerusalem. What he taught followed a theme dear to the whole of the Wisdom literature in the Old Testament: God is merciful to sinners and we should imitate his way of behaving. The Lord forgives all our guilt because he ‘is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love’ (Ps 103:8)  He closes his eyes so as not to see our sins (see Ws 11:23), casting them behind his back (see Isa. 38:17). Indeed, writes Jesus Ben Sirach, since he knows how small and wretched we are, he ‘increases his forgiveness.’ God forgives because, like any father or