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Saint
Clare of Assisi |
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As she lay
dying in the austere attic dormitory of the monastery of San Damiano in
the summer of 1253, one of the friars present for the Last Anointing
attempted to console the suffering saint in
the long martyrdom of (her) many illnesses.
With the frank and candid simplicity which characterized her
approach to life and to spirituality, the Seraphic Mother addressed the
concerned brother serenely: Ever since I came to know the grace of
my Lord Jesus Christ through His servant Francis, no suffering
has troubled me, no penance has been hard, no sickness too arduous.
From a worldly point of view, this seems an incredible statement.
Few there are who, counting up the penances and privations of
forty-two years of enclosed living (to which St. Clare added numerous
physical mortifications and which God Himself bounded with twenty-eight
years of continual chronic ill-health) would conclude that life had not
been troublesome, arduous or hard. But
then, St. Clare’s perspective was not that of the worldly-wise, but
rather of the God-educated, to whom the
secrets of the Kingdom have been revealed. To
Know Christ
How is it that St. Clare saw suffering as an opportunity to
imitate the suffering Savior, as a grace to be seized, a privilege to be
cherished, a mystery to be entered into with reverence, generosity and
zeal? Why was she so light,
where often we are so heavy? A
study of her life reveals her abiding talent for being lifted up and out
of self, - where so often we find ourselves bogged down.
What most people find burdensome, Clare found freeing.
Why? What was
her secret? Centuries
before,
Eternal life is this: to know
You, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
These words of the Divine Master form the basis of all growth
and advancement in the realm of the spirit.
Ever since I came to know
the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ through His servant Francis… St.
Clare recognizes her debt of gratitude to the Little Poor Man who opened
to her the gates of deeper knowledge of the Incarnate Word, not so much
through his spiritual erudition, as through his holiness of life which
enkindled her love. For
Francis, the ardent lover and
imitator of the Son of God, the Gospel way was very clear – and it
led to
But St. Clare did more than read and marvel.
Just as at the beginning of her conversion
to Christ she set off without
hesitation on the adventure of a new experience, believing in the Gospel
as Francis showed her, and in nothing else, with the eyes of her body
and of her heart totally immersed in the poor and crucified Christ, so
did she throughout the long unfolding of her forty-two years of
religious life keep her focus upon the mystery of the Cross.
As St. Thomas Aquinas, Clare learned all from the book of the
Crucifix, and she urged her spiritual progeny to do likewise.
Meditate constantly
on the mysteries of the Cross…. Never let the thought of Him leave
your mind…. Keep always in mind the Passion of the Lord are just a
few of Clare’s reminders to her followers upon the Gospel way. On
the Heights
St. Clare’s quest
for absolute identification with
the poor Crucified set her firmly on the heights of contemplation.
Down through the centuries, the title which St. Clare bestowed
upon herself, the little plant of
St. Francis, continues to summarize both her mindset and her mission
in the Order of Penance. This
little plant was not some
spindly greenhouse specimen. No,
the Bull of Canonization speaks of Clare as being an oak
of patience. Clare
learned of Christ Crucified as Mary did, at the foot of the Cross.
This little plant flourished
upon the rock of The
Root is Love
Love Him in complete
surrender, who gave Himself up entirely for your love, wrote St.
Clare to one of her spiritual daughters, the future St. Agnes of Prague.
It was love that rooted Clare in the mysteries of the Redemption;
it was love that urged her on through the sufferings and vicissitudes of
her long religious life; it was love, kindled by hope and deepened by
faith, which recognized that the
sufferings of this world are not to be compared with the glory that is
to be revealed in us. St.
Clare of |
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