Look at All the Flowers: Editors\u27 Introduction

Pope Francis presented the following reflection in his homily on July 25, 2013 at the World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro: “With him [Christ], our life is transformed and renewed, and we can see reality with new eyes, from Jesus’ standpoint, with his own eyes (cf. Lumen Fidei, 18).” In her meditation, “Look at All the Flowers,” Chiara Lubich says that “to look at all the flowers is to have Jesus’ vision.” She presents a short yet deep and mystical reflection on her own experience of seeing reality with “Jesus’ vision.” In this meditation, she also presents the collective way to “discover” that vision through her spirituality of unity, an experience where the light of Christ arises in ways that illuminate reality at its depths, in God-Love. In this short introduction, we wish to present some background that may be helpful to the readers of the text. What is presented here is taken from papers given by scholars who are members of the Abba School, that studies Chiara’s mystical writings from “Paradise ’49,” a period of illumination extending from the summer of 1949 to 1951.1 The papers cited in this essay were presented on March 15, 2013 at the Mariapolis Center at Castel Gandolfo, Italy at an international conference of the expanded Abba School that focused on the seminal text “Look at All the Flowers.” The articles that follow in this issue of Claritas were also presented at that international conference