St. Clare of Assisi - Rector's Rambling for August 9, 2020

When I was in the discernment process, trying to figure out whether God may be calling me to seminary or perhaps to join a religious order, I decided to spend a long weekend at the Friary of the Society of St. Francis on Long Island.  The goal of my visit was to try to get a sense of what life was like for Episcopal Franciscan Friars living in community, and was also hoping that God would make it abundantly clear what I was supposed to do about my sense of vocation to the priesthood.

What I had in my head, perhaps formed by too many TV shows or movies, and the reality of this small religious order couldn’t have been further apart.  They lived in a small house, the neighboring old friary being rented out to a larger Roman religious order.  The chapel was a converted detached garage with chairs in a circle.  And with a brother or two out of town that weekend, there were only two others there in the house who never wore a habit.  It was like visiting at someone’s house, rather than what I thought the religious life would be like.

But the saving grace of that weekend was when I wandered next door to the convent of the Episcopalian Poor Clares of Reparation.  There I found a beautiful chapel with time of adoration for the Blessed Sacrament.  The sisters welcomed me to join them for the formal Daily Offices, and I ended up spending much positive time in prayer there.  And when the sisters came over to the friary to share Sunday supper, they were joyful with a deep sense of peace.

For the next eight years the sisters wrote to me, assuring me of prayer for my vocation.  They rejoiced to hear I was going to Nashotah House, and even said they were praying that I would get to say Mass for them one day.  Unfortunately, the last sisters of the Order were in a nursing home when I was ordained, and the last sister died in 2003.

This week we remember at the altar their patron saint, St. Clare of Assisi.  She desired to live a life of radical poverty as St. Francis and his brothers were doing, but did so in a semi-enclosed convent.  She and her sisters in the 13th Century did as those wonderful sisters on Long Island were doing 750 years later: prayer, reparation for sin, and adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

      St. Clare’s story of her decision to become a nun, escaping from her house after dark to have her hair cut and to be clothed in a habit, makes for a wonderful telling.  And her fending off an attack by Muslim invaders by taking Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and marching him to the invaders (they must have thought she was crazy!) is proof of her great love for and faith in Jesus.  She was not afraid, for she knew if she lived or died, she was Lord’s.  May we have faith like her!