Pastoral Musings . . .
By Fr. William Spencer, OFM

ST. CLARE, PRAY FOR AND WITH US....

          Monday. August 11th, our Franciscan family and the universal Church celebrated the feast of St. Clare of Assisi.  The more that we Franciscans have come to know about St. Francis and St. Clare, the more we’ve realized that their relationship wasn’t as one-sided as we once thought.  Francis of Assisi certainly had a profound impact on Clare’s life.  Her Offreducio family were members of Assisi’s nobility, and their home faced the piazza in front of Assisi’s Cathedral.  The young Clare would have not only seen and heard about Francesco Bernadone and the changes that were happening in his life, she would have been able to see and hear him from the windows of her home as he spoke in the piazza of San Rufino and when he preached in the Cathedral.  Those encounters prompted conversations that led to her own conversion.

          Clare’s prayers and her wisdom would continue to influence St. Francis.  When he would have preferred to spend his life in prayer on Mt. LaVerna, it was St. Clare who encouraged him to embrace the tension involved in living a life that was both active and contemplative.The Little Flowers of St. Francis remembers that

The humble servant of Christ, Saint Francis, a short time after his conversion, having already gathered and received many companions into the Order, was greatly preoccupied and in serious doubt about what he ought to do: whether to dedicate himself solely to prayer, or sometimes to preach; and he greatly desired to know the will of God about this...So he called Brother Masseo and said to him, “Go to Sister Clare and tell her for me that she, with some of her spiritual companions, should devoutly pray to God that He be pleased to show me what is better: to dedicate myself to preaching or only to prayer.  Then, go to Brother Sylvester and tell him the same...At that Brother Masseo returned to Saint Francis and Saint Francis received him with greatest charity... Saint Francis asked him, “What does my lord Jesus Christ command me to do?”  Brother Masseo replied, “Christ answered both Brother Sylvester and Sister Clare with the sisters, and revealed that it is His will that you go through the world to preach, because He has not chosen you only for yourself, but rather for the salvation of others.

          The Little Flowers of St. Francis also contains the memory of another conversation involving St. Francis and St. Clare:

...While they were enraptured this way, their eyes and hands lifted up to heaven, the people of Assisi and Bettona and those of the surrounding area saw Saint Mary of the Angels burning brightly, along with the whole place and the forest which was next to the place.  It seemed that a great fire was consuming the church, the place and the forest together.  For this reason the Assisians in a great hurry ran down to put out the fire, believing that everything was really burning...they went inside and found Saint Francis with Saint Clare and all their companions sitting around that humble table, rapt in God through contemplation.

          The document is the “Little Flowers of St. Francis,” so it emphasizes Francis’ role in the conversation, “Francis began to speak of God so sweetly, so deeply and so wonderfully that the abundance of divine grace descended upon them, and all were rapt into God.”  A larger perspective on the lives of these two saints would leave no doubt that St. Clare made her own contributions to that contemplative conversation.  It must have been quite an experience.

          Fr. Bob Pawell, O.F.M.  presided and preached at our Solemn Celebration of the Feast of St. Clare of Assisi on August 11th.  Several of you have mentioned to me how much you appreciated what he had to say, so I want to share his reflections with all of you.

Today, we celebrate St. Clare of Assisi who is, for us Franciscans, our sister and our mother.  She is preeminently the Poverella, the Poor Lady; her love of poverty lived in the spirit of the Beatitudes challenged and continues to challenge both our Church and our violent world.  She is and always will be, for us, “Lady Clare,” embodying a Franciscan feminism – fresh and full of Gospel radicalism.  Pope Innocent IV called her “ a clear light, brilliant as the sun – shining on us all.”  And Clare herself?  She thought of herself as Francis’ “little plant.”

At her death bed were her sisters and Brothers Raynaldo, Juniper, Angelo and Leo, Francis’ closest companions and Clare’s dear friends.  Those friendships spanned more than forty years, going back to a Palm Sunday night in the year 1212 when the eighteen year old daughter of Favarone and Ortolana di Offeducio stole out of the city gates of Assisi and knelt before Francis, asking to join him and his brothers in living the Gospel.  Francis was Clare’s “soul mate,” who confirmed her heart’s desire to live for the poor, crucified Christ.  Recalling the night of her espousal to the Lord, she exhorted her sisters,

What you hold, may you always hold.  What you do, may you always do.  Go forward, secure and with joy on the path of happiness.  With swift pace and light step, move freely so that even your steps stir no dust.  Let no one dissuade you from living in the spirit of the Lord.

After that night, Clare would spend the rest of her life of sixty years in the enclosure of San Damiano, the same church wherein Francis received Christ’s command from the Cross, “Rebuild my church which you see is falling into ruins.”  The Cross became for her a mirror; and gazing into it, she discovered ever more deeply who she was called to be.  In a letter to her friend, Agnes of Prague, she wrote:

...Christ is the mirror without cloud.  Behold the birth of this mirror, laid in the manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes.  Look more deeply into the mirror and behold the many labors and sufferings he endured to redeem us.  Then, in the depths of this very mirror, ponder his unspeakable love which caused him to suffer on the wood of the Cross and to endure the most shameful kind of death.  Place your soul in the brilliance of glory!  Place your heart in the figure of the divine substance!  And transform your entire being into the image of the Godhead itself through contemplation, so that you too may feel what his friends feel...

It is said that you become what you behold – this is certainly true of our sister, Clare.  For in 1224, Clare’s soul mate, Francis, received Christ’s wounds on Mt. LaVerna and, in that very year, Clare would fall into an illness that would conform her to the Crucified, marking her till her death some twenty nine years later.  Conformed to the Crucified, nothing burdened her in the long martyrdom of many illnesses.  She confided to Brother Raynaldo:

After I once came to know the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ through his servant Francis, no pain has been bothersome, no penance too severe, no weakness has been hard.

Conformed to the one who bore our infirmities, Clare became, in the words of the late Henri Nouwen, a “wounded healer.”  And many, afflicted in body, mind and spirit sought healing at her hands.  There was no magic in her healing ministry.  She simply signed the suffering with the Cross of Christ.  By Christ’s wounds “holy and glorious” they were healed through Clare’s intercession.  Clare not only saved the sick and ailing, but her city as well.  On two occasions when Assisi was under attack, it was her prayer that repelled the enemy and obtained the city’s liberation from those who sought to destroy it.  The city was saved, not by force of arms but by the powerful prayer of a powerless, poor and suffering woman.

How might we honor St. Clare today?  There are three ways one may honor a great person.  Some would hold a party in their honor.  Others might host a symposium which celebrates their accomplishments.  But the best way to honor another is to do what they would have done.  And so, recalling Clare’s liberation of her city which was under attack, I invite you, in the spirit of St. Clare, to pray for our city which, today, is under attack and beset by the violence of greed, gangs and guns and to join us in thanking God in this Eucharist for what he has done and will do through the intercession of Lady Clare, our sister, our mother, the Poverella, Francis’ “little plant,” the bright and shining lamp revealing the glory of God on the face of the poor crucified Christ.

          Our “party” may have been a Eucharistic one; but it was, nonetheless, a wonderful celebration.  The quotations from and about St. Clare in these Pastoral Musings constitute a “symposium” of sorts.  All that remains is for us to pray with our lips and our lives that our homes, our neighborhoods, our cities, our State, our nation and our world be freed from the violence that is so pervasive.  Through the intercession of St. Clare of Assisi, may it be so and be soon!

          Peace and everything good,
                                                  Fr. Bill

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