The story of redemption portrayed on the Cross helped her to anchor her soul in that mystery.

While both Clare and Francis left the world to pursue God insofar as they abandoned their status, wealth and security, never did they renounce the world for the sake of God.

We are rich in our poverty but we must possess poverty to know our wealth in God.

But she believed that God has come among us and revealed to us, in the poverty of being human, how to live united in love, to God and to another.

Poverty reminds us of the deepest truth of our human existence; that we are created by God and are dependent on God in an absolute sense.

We may wonder how to calm our minds enough to see the reflection of Divine Love. One way is to breathe slowly and breathe again slowly, and breathe again deeply.

Today the original Porziuncola Chapel rests in the center of a much larger structure, the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels, built hundreds of years after the death of Saint Francis.

the Porziuncola is the heart and center of Francis, the core of the Franciscan movement; it is the womb from which it grew. This is truly holy ground.

“I look on my whole life as giving, and I want to give and give until there is nothing left of me to give.”