Memorial of Saint Clare, Virgin

What is Daily Mass Readings with Homily and Saint of the Day?

Hear the Mass readings of the day, followed by a homily grounded in the writings of the Church Fathers, Doctors, and master theologians. Every episode concludes with a brief reflection on the heroic virtue of the Saint of the Day and a practical spiritual resolution to carry into your daily life.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today is August the eleventh, the Memorial of Saint Clare of Assisi, Virgin. God speaks His Word into willing souls — let us open our mouths, eat what He gives, and become small enough to receive it.

A reading from the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel.

The Lord GOD said to me: As for you, son of man, obey me when I speak to you: be not rebellious like this house of rebellion, but open your mouth and eat what I shall give you. It was then I saw a hand stretched out to me, in which was a written scroll which he unrolled before me. It was covered with writing front and back, and written on it was: Lamentation and wailing and woe! He said to me: Son of man, eat what is before you; eat this scroll, then go, speak to the house of Israel. So I opened my mouth and he gave me the scroll to eat. Son of man, he then said to me, feed your belly and fill your stomach with this scroll I am giving you. I ate it, and it was as sweet as honey in my mouth. He said: Son of man, go now to the house of Israel, and speak my words to them.

The word of the Lord.

Responsorial Psalm — Psalm 119.

How sweet to my taste is your promise! In the way of your decrees I rejoice, as much as in all riches. How sweet to my taste is your promise! Yes, your decrees are my delight; they are my counselors. How sweet to my taste is your promise! The law of your mouth is to me more precious than thousands of gold and silver pieces. How sweet to my taste is your promise! How sweet to my palate are your promises, sweeter than honey to my mouth! How sweet to my taste is your promise! Your decrees are my inheritance forever; the joy of my heart they are. How sweet to my taste is your promise! I gasp with open mouth, in my yearning for your commands. How sweet to my taste is your promise!

Alleluia. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart. Alleluia.

A reading from the holy Gospel according to Matthew.

The disciples approached Jesus and said, "Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven?" He called a child over, placed it in their midst, and said, "Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me." See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that their angels in heaven always look upon the face of my heavenly Father. What is your opinion? If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills and go in search of the stray? And if he finds it, amen, I say to you, he rejoices more over it than over the ninety-nine that did not stray. In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father that one of these little ones be lost.

The Gospel of the Lord.

The scroll is written on both sides — front and back — and it is filled with lamentation and wailing and woe. This is the first thing we must sit with. God does not hand Ezekiel a scroll of comfortable words. He hands him the whole truth of the human condition before divine holiness: grief, suffering, consequence. And yet — and this is the miracle at the heart of this passage — when Ezekiel eats it, it is as sweet as honey in his mouth.

Saint Gregory the Great, commenting on this very passage, teaches that the Word of God is simultaneously bitter in its demand and sweet in its consolation. The scroll contains both judgment and grace, and the prophet who truly consumes it — who does not merely read it at a distance but internalizes it, makes it the substance of his very being — discovers that beneath the weight of lamentation lies the unutterable sweetness of God's truth. The bitterness is on the outside of the scroll; the honey is in its marrow.

Origen of Alexandria, reflecting on this image, draws a profound allegorical connection to the Eucharist itself. The hand stretched out from heaven, the scroll given to be eaten — these foreshadow the Body and Blood of the Word made flesh, given to us not merely to admire but to consume, to take into ourselves until we are transformed by what we receive. We are not called to be students of Christ from a safe academic distance. We are called to eat. To be absorbed into Him even as He is absorbed into us.

Now the Lord places a child in the middle of the disciples, and the connection to Ezekiel becomes luminous. Who is capable of receiving the scroll? Who is capable of truly eating the Word of God without choking on pride? The child. Not because children are innocent of sin, but because children possess the one disposition that makes receiving possible — radical, unguarded openness. A child does not cross his arms and evaluate the gift before accepting it. A child opens his mouth.

Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his commentary on this section of Matthew, is careful to note that Our Lord does not say the disciples must become childish — foolish, naive, intellectually vacant. He says they must become humble like a child. The Greek word He uses, tapeinoo, means to be brought low, to be set at the base. It is the same root that runs through the Magnificat: He has put down the mighty and exalted the humble. The child is not praised for weakness. The child is praised for having no pretension to greatness, no agenda of self-promotion, no elaborate interior architecture constructed to defend the ego.

The ninety-nine sheep who did not stray represent all the souls who maintain the form of religion. But the Father's heart runs after the one who is lost — and here the anagogical horizon opens wide. Heaven itself is moved by the recovery of a single soul. The rejoicing of the Father over one returned prodigal, one found sheep, one eaten scroll that transforms its prophet — this is the eschatological reality toward which all of history bends. God will not rest until the last little one is found.

These readings, taken together, announce a single vocation: receive. Be small enough to open your mouth. Be humble enough to let the Word become your food. Be like Clare of Assisi — who renounced everything precisely so that she could hold everything that mattered.

Clare Offreduccio was eighteen years old when she slipped away from her noble family's house in Assisi in the middle of the night and ran to Francis, who was waiting for her at the Portiuncula with a torch. She knelt before the altar, and Francis cut off her hair. In one gesture, she surrendered title, inheritance, beauty, the future her family had arranged. She chose poverty so radical that for the rest of her forty-one years as a religious, she fought the papacy itself — respectfully but unflinchingly — to preserve her right to own nothing.

This is not romanticized simplicity. This is the child placed in the midst. Clare became literally what the Gospel demands: the one who received the Word as honey, who ate the scroll of lamentation and woe and found it sweet because she had nothing left inside her to resist it. When she was dying, witnesses reported that she spoke quietly to her own soul, saying: "Go forth in peace, for you have followed the good road." She had gasped with open mouth for the commands of God, as the Psalmist sings, and those commands had become her inheritance forever.

Her poverty was not an end in itself. It was the instrument of her absolute availability to God. She stripped away every earthly comfort so that nothing stood between her and the scroll, between her and the child's posture of pure receptivity. The Church venerates her today not as a historical curiosity but as a living icon of this Gospel — proof that the way down is the way in, and the way in is the way home.

Today, in some concrete moment — a conversation you approach with your own agenda, a prayer you recite without truly opening your mouth — stop. Put down the armor of your own importance. Open your hands. Receive what God is actually giving, not what you expected. Become, for one moment, the child in the midst.

May Almighty God bless you, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Praised be Jesus Christ, now and forever. Amen.
EPISODE_TITLE: Eat the Scroll, Become Small
IMAGE_PROMPT: A luminous painted scroll unfurling from a heavenly hand above a kneeling child in soft golden light, in the style of classical Catholic devotional art.