St. Clare of Assisi
  Our Guide to the Garden of Prayer

Prayer is like a secret garden,
made up of silence and rest and inwardness.
                                        -  Jean Vanier

PART  THREE
Words Like Kindling (Vocal Prayer)
Words in contemplative prayer are not speeches;
they are like the kindling that feeds the fire of love. (CATECHISM 2717)
     It is tempting to imagine that in the garden of prayer, the saints and mystics went from vision to vision, from ecstasy to ecstasy.  Actually, they employed the same sturdy tools for prayer that are available to us, especially when the cultivation of their prayer garden meant laboring through periods of aridity, barrenness and darkness.  But the saints and mystics had the faith to see that even the simplest "tool," the simplest vocal prayer, can help to bring forth deep, fruitful contemplative prayer.  Vocal prayer, founded on the union of body and soul in human nature, associates the body with the interior prayer of the heart, following Christ's example of praying to His Father and teaching the Our Father to His disciples.  (CATECHISM 2722)

       St. Clare of Assisi was no exception to this rule.  We even know some of her favorite vocal prayer - the Office of the Passion composed by St. Francis and a prayer to the Five Wounds of Christ.  But the Lady Clare's most favored vocal prayer was the Holy Name of JESUS, the prayer that is possible "at all times" because it is not one occupation among others but the only occupation: that of loving God, which animates and transfigures every action in Christ Jesus.  (CATECHISM 2668)

       Thus we find St. Clare beginning her testament with the exuberant greeting: In the Name of the Lord!  We find her invoking the Lord's Name in time of trial and blessing His Name in times of thanksgiving.  In Christ's Name, she summons her followers to a full-hearted fidelity to the ideal of poverty:  Totally clinging to (the Lady Poverty), most beloved Sisters, desire for the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ and His most holy Mother to have nothing else forever under heaven.  (Rule of St. Clare, VIII)

       As she prayed in life, so Clare prayed at the hour of her death.  One of the Sisters who kept watch with the Seraphic Mother during her final hours testified that she admonished the Sisters to remain in prayer... and that she (Clare) continually kept the Passion of the Lord and the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ on her lips.  (Process of Canonization 10, 10)

       In a well-tended garden of prayer, human words lead to the Divine Word.  Because of the transforming power of the Word, the faithful soul is able to proclaim: It is no longer I who pray, but Christ who prays in me!  This is what happened to St. Francis.  The brothers who lived with him knew that daily, constantly, talk of Jesus was always on his lips....  he was always with Jesus:  Jesus in his heart, Jesus in his mouth, Jesus in his ears, Jesus in his eyes, Jesus in his hands, he bore Jesus always in his whole body.  (First Life of St. Francis by Thomas of Celano, II, 9)  Something similar happened in the life and prayer of St. Clare.  Christ "took over" in her soul and in her prayer until what she wrote as well as what she said was so marked by the love stirred up in her by her loving, prolonged gazing upon Christ that it is not easy to express what only a woman's heart could experience.  (Pope John Paul II)  And, it all began with a word.
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