One of St. Francis’s most telling bits of wisdom comes to us in one of his twenty-three Admonitions. St. Francis traveled around to communities of his brother friars in the early thirteenth century. On one such occasion, while speaking to a group of men who had chosen to leave their previous ways of living to follow the gospel according to St. Francis, he said: “What you are before God, that you are and nothing more.” St. Francis knew that what we needed to do to see ourselves as we truly are is to look at ourselves with the eyes of God. How does one see that inherent dignity, that unique identity that makes up our True Self? One looks in the mirror of the soul with the eyes of the loving God who created each of us as he or she really is. No more, no less. What looking at ourselves as God does provides us with is an honest look at each person as uniquely brought into this world in love.
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