The Office of the Passion was rooted in the practice of seeing each of the required hours of prayer as parallel to the chronology of the hours of Jesus’s suffering. Thus, the one praying entered into the mind of Jesus, seeking to identify with him as he prayed the psalms during his ultimate humiliation. The one praying could follow him in spirit from Gethsemane to the Holy Sepulcher. Each hour consisted of a psalm with antiphons and short prayers as a framework. Each psalm came from the biblical psalter, but Francis rearranged the verses to reflect how he imagined Jesus would pray at each of those hours. Thus, the psalms are filled with lament, with expressions of fear, of desire to be spared, to be protected from one’s enemies. At the same time, they proclaim trust in the loving will of the Father, and confidence in ultimate salvation. Clare’s writings often include the metaphor of a mirror. In Francis’s body she beheld a stark mirror of the Passion. She then taught the sisters how clearly they must pattern their lives on that of Jesus. He had to become their Mirror.
—from the book Light of Assisi: The Story of Saint Clare
by Margaret Carney, OSF
