St. Clare - Rector's Rambling for August 11, 2019

Continuing our August review of some of the Saints, August 11 on the modern calendar is the Feast of St. Clare of Assisi.  She is the foundress of what is known as the Second Order Franciscans, and now better known as The Poor Clares.

Born into upper middle class affluence in 1194, she happened upon the happy band of faithful led by St. Francis himself, who had eschewed all property ownership and were living in absolute poverty in order to serve the Lord more closely.  Desiring to follow this way, she approached Francis when she was 18 years old and, against her parents objections, had her hair cut, was clothed in a religious habit, and then placed in a Benedictine Convent until the details of her unique vocation could be worked out.

Although she would have been happy to live a life like the men, sleeping on church floors, begging for food, and working as iterant preachers, as a woman in the 13th century, this was too dangerous.

For 40 years, Clare gathered around her other women desiring to live a life of absolute devotion in poverty to our Lord, offering prayer in reparation to God on behalf of an ungrateful world.

One notable wonder attributed to her occurred in 1240 “...On the occasion of an invasion of that region by a band of Saracen (Muslim) soldiers who were intent on despoiling the convent and ravishing the nuns.  Clare had no protection against them except her faith.  Hence she took the Most Holy Sacrament from the altar, saying: have no fear, my daughters; trust in Jesus.  And leading her sisters, she marched out through the enclosure door, with the Sacrament as her weapon, as if to attack the Saracens therewith.  Who were so amazed by the evident and strange courage of these dedicated women, that they turned and fled.” (Anglican Breviary, p. 1381).

The Poor Clares in Anglicanism and Roman Catholicism continue their ministry of prayer and reparation today.