Today the Church remembers St Clare of Assisi, founder of the Poor Clares.
Picture of St Clare
Clare’s father was a count, her mother the countess Blessed Orsolana. Her father died when the girl was very young. After hearing Saint Francis of Assisi preach in the streets, Clare confided to him her desire to live for God, and the two became close friends. On Palm Sunday in 1212, her bishop presented Clare with a palm, which she apparently took as a sign. With her cousin Pacifica, Clare ran away from her mother’s palace during the night to enter religious life. She eventually took the veil from Saint Francis at the Church of Our Lady of the Angels in Assisi, Italy.
Clare founded the Order of Poor Ladies (Poor Clares) at San Damiano, and led it for 40 years. Everywhere the Franciscans established themselves throughout Europe, there also went the Poor Clares, depending solely on alms, forced to have complete faith on God to provide through people; this lack of land-based revenues was a new idea at the time. Clare’s mother and sisters later joined the order, and there are still thousands of members living lives of silence and prayer.
What many of the Catholic commentaries on Clare forget to mention is that she had to fight to allow her Order to live in the poverty she and her sisters so desired. It simply was not the done thing to allow women to live by faith alone, they had to be supported in some way by the (male) dominated Church. This was the biggest battle Clare had to face, but one she finally won when the permission she so desired was granted whilst she was on he death bed.
I admire Clare, she was a woman who knew what she wanted and was willing to give herself wholeheartedly to bring it about. She fought to enter the monastic way of life and then she fought to make sure that way of life of her sisters followed the Franciscan ideal of poverty.
Some excellent pictures of St Damiamo, Clare’s Monestary
Tags: Church, Pilgrimage, poverty