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  FOUR

       The Word of God fell into the good soil of St. Clare's soul, and it bore a hundredfold.  The sources tell us that the Seraphic Mother cultivated a lifelong devotion to Sacred Scripture and that she took care that her daughters were provided with the food of God's Word especially through the instruction of devout preachers.  (LEGEND OF ST. CLARE, 37)

       In the beginning of her Rule, St. Clare states unequivocally that  the form of life of the Order of the Poor Sisters which the blessed Francis founded is this: to observe the Holy Gospel.  (Rule of St. Clare, 1)  She could have written just as truly that the form of PRAYER of the religious family she founded was also to observe the Holy Gospel.  For as Clare derived from the sacred text the principles by which she lived, so did she also take from them the pattern of her own prayer.

       St. Clare committed herself and her Order to the full recitation of the Divine Office  (Rule of St. Clare, 3)  Thus, the psalms held a privileged place in her garden of prayer.  Like St. Francis, she read and prayed the psalms primarily in a Christological light.  The Psalter is the book in which The Word of God becomes man's prayer.  The words of the psalmist, sung for God, both express and acclaim the Lord's saving works; the same Spirit inspires both God's work and man's response.  Christ will unite the two.  In Him, the psalms will continue to teach us how to pray.  (CATECHISM 2587)

       The Lady Clare entered so deeply into the Christ-mysteries through the psalms that she often wept during Sext and None, the two liturgical Hours of the Divine Office especially dedicated to the memory of the Lord's Passion.  Her spoken words, like many of her written words, have a psalm-like quality about them:  Blessed be God, me dearest Sister!  Praise the Lord with me!  And like St. Francis, Clare, too, died with a psalm on her lips:  Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of His saints!

       St. Clare cherished another legacy of prayer for the Little Poor Man, - a great devotion to the most perfect of prayers, the Our Father.  It was, in a sense, the spiritually logical outcome of their devotion to the Psalter.  After showing how the psalms are the principal food of Christian prayer and flow together in the petitions of the Our Father, St. Augustine concludes:  Run through all the words of the holy prayers (in Scripture), and I do not think you will find anything in them that is not contained and included in the Lord's prayer.  (CATECHISM 2762)

       For St. Clare, the Our Father was more than a formal prayer.  It became the gateway to perfect identification with Christ, with the desires of His Heart, with the prayer of His soul.  Yet it was also a profoundly practical prayer for her who asked for her community's daily bread, who prayed for the forgiveness of her sins and the sins of the world, who begged God for deliverance from evil.  Simple and faithful trust, humble and joyous assurance are the proper dispositions for one who prays the Our Father.  (CATECHISM 2797)  These were the dispositions the Seraphic Mother brought to her praying of the Psalms and the Our Father - and the Church is still reaping the harvest.