In today's Gospel, while some were thinking of the beautiful stones of the temple, Jesus announces that nothing would remain of what they admired.

Francis and Clare of Assisi, with different paths, lived with the final horizon of life always before them.

By divine revelation and by unquestioned intuition they understood that the glitter of this world would be the first detractors of souls.

They knew that of all they saw, nothing would remain at the end of days.

And every day, from the first light of dawn, this thought guided them in the work of witnessing.

The Sources, a bottomless vein of the Gospel events experienced by these Giants of the Gospel, proclaim beginning with the Canticle of Brother Sun

"Be praised, my Lord, for sister our death of the body/ from which no man can escape/ woe to those who die in mortal sins;/ blessed are those who find in your most holy will,/ for the second death will do them no harm" (FF 263).

Nevertheless, Clare reminded her sisters of the ultimate goal of life:

"Blessed, however, are those to whom it is granted to walk this way and persevere in it to the end" (FF 2850).

Again in one of her letters to Agnes of Bohemia, she recalls:

"How many times do kings and queens of this world deceive themselves in this regard!

Even if they raise their pride up to heaven and almost touch the clouds with their heads, in the end they will be dissolved into nothingness, like rubbish' (FF 2894).

They always threw their hearts over the hurdle, trusting in God.

As Jesus announces in the Gospel: «These things you observe, there will come days when no stone will be left upon stone, which will not be destroyed» (Lk 21:6)

Tuesday 34th wk. in O.T.  (Lk 21:5-11)