Memorial of Saint Clare of Assisi, Virgin

First Reading: Ezekiel 2:8 — 3:4

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 119:14, 24, 72, 103, 111, 131

Gospel: Matthew 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

Daily readings: https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/081126.cfm

God reaches out a hand to Ezekiel and gives him a scroll to eat. Eat what is before you, he says. Feed your belly and fill your stomach with this scroll. Ezekiel eats it — and it is as sweet as honey in his mouth. Then go, God says. Go speak my words to them. This is not the usual order. Usually we learn, then act, then integrate over years. God says: take it in first. Let it be food. Let it be sweet. And then go.

The Psalm picks up the same thread and runs it all the way through: your decrees are my delight, my counselors. Your instructions are my heritage. Your words are sweeter than honey to my mouth. This is not a person who reads Scripture as obligation. This is a person who has tasted something and cannot stop going back to the source.

Then Jesus places a child in the middle of the room. The disciples had been asking who is the greatest in the Kingdom — a very adult question, about rank and recognition. Jesus does not answer it directly. He shows them. A child cannot strategize her way to greatness. A child cannot impress her way in. A child just comes. Open hands. No agenda. Trusting that what is needed will be given. “Unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven.” And then the shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to find the one lost sheep — because not one of these little ones is to be lost. They matter that much. You matter that much.

Today is the memorial of Saint Clare of Assisi, who heard Francis preach when she was seventeen and recognized something she had been hungry for her entire life. She left her family’s palace in the middle of the night at eighteen, knelt before Francis, and let him cut her hair. She founded the Poor Clares on an almost audacious simplicity: own nothing, control nothing, trust everything to Providence. When the pope himself tried to soften her rule of poverty, Clare replied: “I need to be absolved from my sins. But I do not wish to be absolved from the obligation of following Jesus Christ.” A child’s answer. Completely direct. No negotiation with the world.

She also left this counsel on contemplation: “Gaze upon Him, consider Him, contemplate Him — as you desire to imitate Him.” Not just read about him. Gaze.

A few questions to sit with tonight:

1. Ezekiel was told to eat the scroll — to take God’s word inside, not just process it. Is there a passage of Scripture, a prayer, a phrase that has been following me lately that I have not yet let become food? What would it mean to eat it?

2. Jesus says become like a child. What part of my approach to God is still too adult — too strategic, too performance-oriented, too careful about how I look? What would it feel like to just come?

3. Clare said: I do not wish to be absolved from the obligation of following Jesus Christ. Is there an obligation I have been quietly trying to get out of — a call, a commitment, a truth I have been softening?

4. The shepherd leaves the ninety-nine to find the one. Do I actually believe I am the one he would leave them for? What would change in my day if I did?

One small thing for tomorrow:

Take one line of Scripture — any line, even just “Do not be afraid” — and carry it through the day. Say it to yourself in traffic, before a hard conversation, at lunch. Let it be food, not just information.

Lord Jesus, you placed a child in the middle of the room and said this is greatness. Clare heard that and spent forty-one years living it — no possessions, no security, just open hands before you. I want to come to you more like that. Help me to eat your word the way Ezekiel ate the scroll — all the way down, until it is sweet, until it is food, until it changes how I move through my day. And when I lose my way, go looking for me the way the shepherd goes looking for the one — because you said not one of these little ones is to be lost, and I want to believe that means me. May Saint Clare pray for me as I learn, slowly, to gaze. Amen.

If you’d like to share: what word or phrase from Scripture has been following you lately — and have you let it become food yet?