29 September 2012 

Dear Readers,

On the day when the Franciscan Family celebrates the memory of the impression of the stigmata of Saint Francis of Assisi, this great Saint spoke to us about the pure love of God, as expressed in the message you will read below.

Pure love descends from God, who generously bestows it upon us. It is the true and only love, giving life to all creation and making us children of God. We all feel a burning desire to be loved and to love with this love, yet we cannot always attain it. When pure love is absent within us, our lives experience a profound emptiness. As a result, we seek to fill this void in many human ways, but we are never truly satisfied.

We are all called to discover this love because it is already within us as a seed. God wants us to discover it, and He puts no obstacles between His Love and us. Indeed, we are the ones who create obstacles by nourishing our selfishness and our expectations.

Saint Francis shares with us his earthly experience of discovering pure love, which he regarded as the hidden treasure that marked his path as a faithful man. Thus, he transformed into an Alter Christus, another Christ on Earth, who bore in his flesh the image of the Beloved, crucified for love.

Saint Francis reminds us that pure love is the most sublime law of the Spirit. I believe that this message aligns closely with that of the Holy Spirit of 12 September 2012, which explains the laws of the Spirit. I believe that the words of Saint Francis clarify the message of the Holy Spirit, emphasising that God’s Love is near to all of us, to the individual and the couple, to a consecrated community as well as all humanity.

Let us also allow ourselves to be guided in the discovery that can change our lives, with the help of Saint Francis and all the Saints who, throughout history, have embraced and loved God’s Love by loving the neighbour with the same love.

I bless you and pray with you. May the Lord give you peace.

Stefania Caterina

Message of Saint Francis of Assisi of 17 September 2012

“I bless you, dearest brothers and sisters!

I would like to remind you of this: always remember that the supreme law of the Spirit is pure love. God loves us with His pure Love and we are asked to love one another with the same love: selfless, spiritual love that seeks neither to possess anything nor anyone and does not seek advantage. This is the most important law, without which you cannot understand the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, nor can you be people of integrity and live in communion.

Pure love is the first law that descends from God. You are all called to discover pure love. I have been called Alter Christus, another Christ, and I truly became another Christ because I had found pure love. This is the hidden treasure of which I spoke: God’s pure Love. I was able to understand the love with which God loved me. When I deeply understood this, I felt embraced and forgiven, and I began to love with the same pure love.ⁱ

Pure love descends from God and lives in every child of God. This love is the foundation of self-offering to God because without pure love self-offering to God is impossible. This is why many people struggle to understand what the offering of one’s life to God means, even though in words, they proclaim to belong to Him; this is because they lack pure love. Humans cannot offer themselves as a sacrifice without God; nor can they offer a sacrifice that pleases God if their heart is filled with ambitions, expectations, interests, even spiritual ones, such as wanting to save themselves or to ease their conscience. These are also personal interests.

Pure love is naked, it possesses nothing, just as Jesus was on the Cross. You are called to find this love, and you can only do so in total union with Christ. Only He communicates pure love to you and makes you understand it in all its depth. Only after you embrace and understand it, can you begin to love with the same love that makes you feel loved.

First, pure love will lead you to offer yourselves wholly to God. This will make you people of integrity. Indeed, if your love is pure, your offering will also be pure; naturally, the integrity of your person emerges, for God’s Love begins to work within your innermost self, making you righteous and driving evil away from you. Finally, pure love will lead you to live in communion with others. Without pure love, there is no true communion, only a bond based on interests, which has nothing to do with communion in God.

You can thus understand what happens among people, even among Christians: often, pure love is lacking, and, as a result, true communion is absent. People relate to each other out of interest or need. The time has come for the people of God to discover pure love; without this love, any doctrine, however holy, any work or sermon, is likely to remain useless, for they do not bear fruit.

The new creation will be founded on God’s pure Love. Human beings will not be renewed through magic, nor through a unilateral act of intervention by God, but by the pure love that will live in God’s people. This love will expel evil and lead all of humanity to become a new humanity, ready for the new creation. All Saints are committed to praying for the extraordinary instruments of these times and for the entire people of God so that they may discover God’s pure Love.

Selfish people fear pure love, as it leaves no room for selfishness. If one does not attain pure love, even in the spiritual life, one achieves nothing, despite beautiful words and good works, which, however, do not always reflect the love of God: every prayer, every word, and every action should be nothing but pure love, alive and acting through those who embrace this love. If you act without pure love, with no desire other than to expand this love, every work remains an end in itself, even when done in the name of God.

God desires that you discover His pure Love within you; all of Heaven shares this desire. Yet, no one can help you in this search unless you sincerely want to find and live God’s Love and are willing to stand face to face with this love in your spirit. Without your sincere desire, even the prayers of the Saints cannot help you.

The path you have to walk on Earth, which also serves as the help you can offer to others, is this: place yourselves before God with sincere openness of spirit to receive from Him His pure Love. God is discreet; He does not impose a gift on those who do not desire it. God never forces His way into the soul, not even with His Love. Instead, He remains at the door and knocksⁱⁱ; if you open the door to Him, He communicates His Love to you.

God’s pure Love gives life to all creation. This is why I have said that love is the first law of the Spirit. The law of love is this: God loved us, and we are called to love God, ourselves, and others with the same love. It is a universal law that governs all creation and is valid throughout the whole universe; this is the Law that will govern the new creation.

Everything comes from God’s Love, from the Love that ascended the Cross for all of us. We are called to follow this example. In my earthly life, I often wept because I understood that God’s pure Love was not loved by people. I felt immense pain in my heart, for the rejection of pure love by others always brings sorrow to those who seek to live and communicate that love. I understood that the people, and often my friars as well, sought to fill the lack of pure love with other things: rules, structures, systems, and so on. The same happens today: other laws, dictated by personal interests, selfishness and fears, replace the sublime law of love. Even today, God’s Love is not loved; even today, many Saints suffer because of this rejection, just as I suffered. Loving God, ourselves and others with the same love by which God loves us is the supreme law, yet humans attempt to erase it through human precepts that hold no value before God.

My pain was not born of anger or disappointment: it was the zeal for God’s house. I was scandalised by how people refused to embrace pure love. At the same time, however, I always kept before my eyes the image of Jesus ascending the Calvary, crushed by suffering, mocked, insulted, and misunderstood. I realised that pure love had acted in Jesus unconditionally and freely, even when He was nailed to the Cross, unable to move even a finger.

My eyes were fixed on the Son of God, crucified for the sins of humanity; I never grew tired of meditating on His Passion seeking to enter into the mystery of such an immense Love. I finally understood that every person is called to embrace Christ’s Love and to elevate it to strengthen it through the Cross. The Cross would have no meaning for humanity, nor would it have had meaning for Jesus, if He had not elevated His Love for humanity to the highest power through the suffering of the Cross. Christ’s pure Love was sublimated in His suffering, just as in the power of miracles and the triumph of the resurrection, because pure love always acts, no matter the circumstances. God’s Love works in each one of you, in every situation: in times of success or failure, strength or weakness, when you are admired or vilified. God’s Love is the greatest manifestation of His power, one that knows no obstacles.

May God’s pure Love be the lighthouse that illuminates your life! Do not let people, with their limitations and sins, disappoint you. Offer all your pain to God and let His pure Love fill you and put your heart aflame. In every trial, do not take your eyes off the Lord’s Cross, for the Cross will act with power; it will make your love sublime; it will purify it more and more, to the point where all pain, offered to God on the Cross of Christ, will be transformed into redeeming love, rising stronger after every trial. 

This love set my earthly life aflame and continues to burn in my spirit. It is the love that transformed me into His Beloved. The stigmata I bore on my body were only the outward sign of my deep union with the crucified Christ. The love I desired to give to the people of the Earth, to my friars, and to all the poor who came to me seeking light and comfort was nothing less than the sublime love of Christ. From the Cross, Jesus looked down at His Mother, at John, at the women, at the repentant thief, and at those who had crucified Him, with the same pure love. It is the same love with which He gazes upon each one of you.

Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, remember that the suffering you offer to God becomes a precious gift for your sanctification and for the salvation of many. On Earth, suffering is present everywhere, and its weight often destroys people. God does not desire any of this, but humanity, cold and indifferent to God’s Love, separated from its Creator, generates suffering within itself, nurtures it in its very womb and gives birth to it with every moment. You who believe in Christ have His Love in you; you have the power of His Cross, which is the symbol of salvation and victory over evil in the entire universe. Put this power into action, and you will see how it bears great fruit in you and around you!

The children of God on Earth live in an environment that is hostile to God, and they suffer; yet, they can elevate their suffering and transform it into redeeming love. This is a precious pearl, offered by the true Christians of the Earth to their Lord, and it is admired by the universe. Indeed, the faithful humanities of the universe admire those on Earth who offer their lives to God, following Jesus Christ, who sacrificed Himself here.

Over the centuries, many children of God on this planet walked the path of Christ to the end, sublimating God’s Love through the Cross. I walked this path myself, learning to sublimate suffering through the Cross of the crucified Christ. Do not forget that the Cross in itself would have no value without the crucified Jesus; therefore, in all your crosses, seek Jesus, for He is present on all of them and transforms them into resurrection if you remain united with Him.

If there was no sin on Earth, God’s pure Love could circulate freely within every man and woman, and among all the people; they would walk beside the Creator to govern creation, as it was meant to be from the beginning. However, the Earth’s condition is grave because sin reigns in the hearts of too many people. Nevertheless, in this situation the Sacrifice of Christ is at work, sublimating the suffering of the Earth, lifting it up to the Father, in the Holy Spirit. In this way, God destroys corruption and leads humanity towards the new creation.

All of humanity will have to walk the path that Jesus walked, purifying itself of sin through the Cross to reach resurrection. The new creation will be the resurrection of all humanity, the ultimate triumph of the Son of God, who will offer the entire creation to the Father, in the Holy Spirit, and finally submit Himself to Him. In Jesus Christ, all of God’s children and creation itself will triumph for humanity triumphs when it submits itself to God. Submission to God never means servility or slavery because God does not dominate but lovingly governs, leading people on the path to happiness.

This is the spirit in which I lived, the spirit of the Franciscans: to desire and embrace God’s pure Love; to live the pure love that seeks nothing for itself; to love all living beings with this love, letting oneself be transformed by the love of the Beloved. From this, perfect joy and the highest poverty come forth.

I hope you may be able to live in this way; may you encounter God’s pure Love, and may you protect it within you as the most precious treasure. This is my prayer for you, dear brothers and sisters, together with Saint Clare and all the Saints born in the bosom of the Franciscans, and I bless you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”