From the Divine Office, Matins (Office of Readings) Second Reading:
A letter of St Clare to Blessed Agnes of Prague:
Consider the poverty, humility and charity of Christ
Happy the soul to whom it is given to attain this life
with Christ, to cleave with all one’s heart to him whose beauty all the
heavenly hosts behold forever, whose love inflames our love, the
contemplation of whom is our refreshment, whose graciousness is our
delight, whose gentleness fills us to overflowing, whose remembrance
makes us glow with happiness, whose fragrance revives the dead, the
glorious vision of whom will be the happiness of all the citizens of the
heavenly Jerusalem. For he is the brightness of eternal glory, the
splendour of eternal light, the mirror without spot.
Look into that mirror daily, O queen and spouse of
Jesus Christ, and ever study therein your countenance, that within and
without you may adorn yourself with all manner of virtues, and clothe
yourself with the flowers and garments that become the daughter and
chaste spouse of the most high King. In that mirror are reflected
poverty, holy humility and ineffable charity, as, with the grace of God,
you may perceive.
Gaze first upon the poverty of Jesus, placed in a
manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes. What marvellous humility! What
astounding poverty! The King of angels, Lord of heaven and earth, is
laid in a manger. Consider next the humility, the blessed poverty, the
untold labours and burdens which he endured for the redemption of the
human race. Then look upon the unutterable charity with which he willed
to suffer on the tree of the cross and to die thereon the most shameful
kind of death. This mirror, Christ himself, fixed upon the wood of the
cross, bade the passers-by consider these things: ‘All you who pass this
way look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow.’ With one voice
and one mind let us answer him as he cries and laments, saying in his
own words: ‘I will be mindful and remember and my soul shall languish
within me.’ Thus, O queen of the heavenly King, may you ever burn more
ardently with the fire of this love.
Contemplate further the indescribable joys, the wealth
and unending honours of the King, and sighing after them with great
longing, cry to him: ‘Draw me after you: we shall run to the fragrance
of your perfumes, O heavenly bridegroom.’ I will run and faint not until
you bring me into the wine cellar, until your left hand be under my
head and your right hand happily embrace me and you kiss me with the
kiss of your mouth.
In such contemplation be mindful of your poor little
mother and know that I have inscribed your happy memory indelibly on the
tablets of my heart, holding you dearer than all others.
Lord God, in your mercy
you led Saint Clare to the love of poverty.
Help us, by her intercession,
to follow Christ in poverty of spirit,
so that, in the kingdom of heaven,
we may see you in your glory.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
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Saint Clare (1193/4 - 1253)
She
was born at Assisi and came under the influence of Saint Francis. She
left home at the age of 18 and, under Francis’s guidance, began a
community that grew to become the order of the Poor Clares (she was
later joined both by her sister and by her widowed mother). In its
radical attachment to poverty the Rule of the order was much more severe
than that of any other order of nuns. In 1215 Clare obtained from the
Pope the privilege of owning nothing, so that the nuns of the order were
to be sustained by alms and nothing else. Such a rule was (like the
Franciscan rule) both a challenge to established structures and a risk
to those who followed it, and successive Popes tried to modify it. In
1247 Pope Innocent IV promulgated a new Rule that allowed the ownership
of communal property: Clare rewrote it. A later attempt at mitigation in
1263 partly succeeded (perhaps because Clare was dead by then): some
communities followed the old, strict rule and some followed the new.
Clare was a noted contemplative and a caring mother to her nuns. She died at Assisi in 1253.
See the articles in the Catholic Encyclopaedia and Wikipedia.
The drift towards laxity and the desire for strictness
are part of the history of every religious order. In the history of
most monasteries, for example, one can find both a steady relaxation of
the rule and a desire on the part of some members of the community to be
more severe and ascetic – possibly even to become hermits. The Maronist
Saint Sharbel Makhluf is one example; the Trappist Thomas Merton is
another. In our own lives, too, we are always oscillating between being
too strict and being too lax. It seems to be a universal tension in the
human race.
