Prayer
to St. Clare
Blessed St. Clare, you trusted in
The Blessed
Sacrament as your
Only protection.
In your hour of need you heard a voice from
The
Sacred Host
‘’I WILL ALWAYS
TAKE CARE OF YOU’’.
Take care of us in our earthly needs.
Enkindle in us
a tender love
for Jesus and Mary.
Plead for our families,
Our
beloved country and our suffering world.
Guide us by your light to heaven.
Amen.
The Lady
Clare, "shining in name, more shining in life," was born in the town
of Assisi about the year 1193. Her mother was to become Blessed Ortolana di
Fiumi. Her father is said to have been Favorino Scifi, Count of Sasso-Rosso,
though whether he came of that noble branch of the Scifi family is not certain.
Concerning Clare's childhood we have no reliable information. She was eighteen
years old when St. Francis, preaching the Lenten sermons at the church of St.
George in Assisi, influenced her to change the whole course of her life. It is
likely that a marriage not to her liking had been proposed; at any rate, she
went secretly to see Friar Francis and asked him to help her to live "after
the manner of the Holy Gospel." Talking with him strengthened her desire to
leave all worldly things behind and live for Christ. On Palm Sunday of that
year, 1212, she came to the cathedral of Assisi for the blessing of palms, but
when the others went up to the altar-rails to receive their branch of green, a
sudden shyness kept Clare back. The bishop saw it and came down from the altar
and gave her a branch.
The following evening she slipped away from her home and hurried through the
woods to the chapel of the Portiuncula, where Francis was then living with his
small community. He and his brethren had been at prayers before the altar and
met her at the door with lighted tapers in their hands. Before the Blessed
Virgin's altar Clare laid off her fine cloak, Francis sheared her hair, and gave
her his own penitential habit, a tunic of coarse cloth tied with a cord. Then,
since as yet he had no nunnery, he took her at once for safety to the
Benedictine convent of St. Paul, where she was affectionately welcomed.
When it was known at home what Clare had done, relatives and friends came to
rescue her. She resisted valiantly when they tried to drag her away, clinging to
the convent altar so firmly as to pull the cloths half off. Baring her shorn
head, she declared that Christ had called her to His service, she would have no
other spouse, and the more they continued their persecutions the more steadfast
she would become. Francis had her removed to the nunnery of Sant' Angelo di
Panzo, where her sister Agnes, a child of fourteen, joined her. This meant more
difficulty for them both, but Agnes' constancy too was victorious, and in spite
of her youth Francis gave her the habit. Later he placed them in a small and
humble house, adjacent to his beloved church of St. Damian, on the outskirts of
Assisi, and in 1215, when Clare was about twenty-two, he appointed her superior
and gave her his rule to live by. She was soon joined by her mother and several
other women, to the number of sixteen. They had all felt the strong appeal of
poverty and sackcloth, and without regret gave up their titles and estates to
become Clare's humble disciples. Within a few years similar convents were
founded in the Italian cities of Perugia, Padua, Rome, Venice, Mantua, Bologna,
Milan, Siena, and Pisa, and also in various parts of France and Germany. Agnes,
daughter of the King of Bohemia, established a nunnery of this order in Prague,
and took the habit herself.
The "Poor Clares," as they came to be known, practiced austerities
which until then were unusual among women. They went barefoot, slept on the
ground, observed a perpetual abstinence from meat, and spoke only when obliged
to do so by necessity or charity. Clare herself considered this silence
desirable as a means of avoiding the innumerable sins of the tongue, and for
keeping the mind steadily fixed on God. Not content with the fasts and other
mortifications required by the rule, she wore next her skin a rough shirt of
hair, fasted on vigils and every day in Lent on bread and water, and on some
days ate nothing. Francis or the bishop of Assisi sometimes had to command her
to lie on a mattress and to take a little nourishment every day.
Discretion, came with years, and much later Clare wrote this sound advice to
Agnes of Bohemia: "Since our bodies are not of brass and our strength is
not the strength of stone, but instead we are weak and subject to corporal
infirmities, I implore you vehemently in the Lord to refrain from the exceeding
rigor of abstinence which I know you practice, so that living and hoping in the
Lord you may offer Him a reasonable service and a sacrifice seasoned with the
salt of prudence."
Francis, as we know, had forbidden his order ever to possess revenues or
lands or other property, even when held in common. The brothers were to subsist
on daily contributions from the people about them. Clare also followed this way
of life. When she left home she had given what she had to the poor, retaining
nothing for her own needs or those of the convent. Pope Gregory IX proposed to
mitigate the requirement of absolute poverty and offered to settle a yearly
income on the Poor Ladies of St. Damien. Clare, eloquent in her determination
never to break her vows to Christ and Francis, got permission to continue as
they had begun. "I need," she said, "to be absolved from my sins,
but I do not wish to be absolved from my obligation to follow Jesus
Christ." In 1228, therefore, two years after Francis' death, the Pope
granted the Assisi sisterhood a
Privilegium paupertatis, or Privilege of
Poverty, that they might not be constrained by anyone to accept possessions.
"He who feeds the birds of the air and gives raiment and nourishment to the
lilies of the field will not leave you in want of clothing or of food until He
come Himself to minister to you for eternity." The convents in Perugia and
Florence asked for and received this privilege; other convents thought it more
prudent to moderate their poverty. Thus began the two observances which have
ever since been perpetuated among the Poor Clares, as they later came to be
called. The houses of the mitigated rule are called Urbanist, from the
concession granted them in 1263 by Pope Urban IV. But as early as 1247 Pope
Innocent IV had published a revised form of the rule, providing for the holding
of community property. Clare, the very embodiment of the spirit and tradition of
Francis, drew up another rule stating that the sisters should possess no
property, whether as individuals or as a community. Two days before she died
this was approved by Pope Innocent for the convent of St. Damian.
Clare governed the convent continuously from the day when Francis appointed
her abbess until her death, a period of nearly forty years. Yet it was her
desire always to be beneath all the rest, serving at table, tending the sick,
washing and kissing the feet of the lay sisters when they returned footsore from
begging. Her modesty and humility were such that after caring for the sick and
praying for them, she often had other sisters give them further care, that their
recovery might not be imputed to any prayers or merits of hers. Clare's hands
were forever willing to do whatever there was of woman's work that could help
Francis and his friars. "Dispose of me as you please," she would say.
"I am yours, since I have given my will to God. It is no longer my
own." She would be the first to rise, ring the bell in the choir, and light
the candles; she would come away from prayer with radiant face.
The power and efficacy of her prayers are illustrated by a story told by
Thomas of Celano, a contemporary. In 1244, Emperor Frederick II, then at war
with the Pope, was ravaging the valley of Spoleto, which was part of the
patrimony of the Holy See. He employed many Saracens in his army, and a troop of
these infidels came in a body to plunder Assisi. St. Damien's church, standing
outside the city walls, was one of the first objectives. While the marauders
were scaling the convent walls, Clare, ill as she was, had herself carried out
to the gate and there the Sacrament was set up in sight of the enemy.
Prostrating herself before it, she prayed aloud: "Does it please Thee, O
God, to deliver into the hands of these beasts the defenseless children whom I
have nourished with Thy love? I beseech Thee, good Lord, protect these whom now
I am not able to protect." Whereupon she heard a voice like the voice of a
little child saying, "I will have them always in My care." She prayed
again, for the city, and again the voice came, reassuring her. She then turned
to the trembling nuns and said, "Have no fear, little daughters; trust in
Jesus." At this, a sudden terror seized their assailants and they fled in
haste. Shortly afterward one of Frederick's generals laid siege to Assisi itself
for many days. Clare told her nuns that they, who had received their bodily
necessities from the city, now owed it all the assistance in their power. She
bade them cover their heads with ashes and beseech Christ as suppliants for its
deliverance. For a whole day and night they prayed with all their might- and
with many tears, and then "God in his mercy so made issue with temptation
that the besiegers melted away and their proud leader with them, for all he had
sworn an oath to take the city."
Another story, which became very popular in later times, told how Clare and
one of her nuns once left their cloister and went down to the Portiuncula to sup
with Francis, and how a marvelous light radiated from the room where they sat
together. However, no contemporary mentions this story, nor any other writer for
at least one hundred and fifty years, whereas Thomas of Celano says that he
often heard Francis warning his followers to avoid injudicious association with
the sisters, and he states flatly that Clare never left the enclosure of St.
Damian.
During her life and after her death there was disagreement at intervals
between the Poor Clares and the Brothers Minor as to their correct relations.
The nuns maintained that the friars were under obligation to serve their needs
in things both spiritual and temporal. When in 1230 Pope Gregory IX forbade the
friars to visit the convents of the nuns without special license, Clare feared
the edict might lead to a complete severing of the ties established by Francis.
She thereupon dismissed every man attached to her convent, those who served
their material needs as well as those who served them spiritually; if she could
not have the one, she would not have the other. The Pope wisely referred the
matter to the minister general of the Brothers Minor to adjust. After long years
of sickness borne with sublime patience, Clare's life neared its end in the
summer of 1253. Pope Innocent IV came to Assisi to give her absolution,
remarking, "Would to God I had so little need of it!" To her nuns she
said, "Praise the Lord, beloved daughters, for on this most blessed day
both Jesus Christ and his vicar have deigned to visit me." Prelates and
cardinals gathered round, and many people were convinced that the dying woman
was truly a saint. Her sister Agnes was with her, as well as three of the early
companions of Francis-Leo, Angelo, and Juniper. They read aloud the Passion
according to St. John, as they had read it at the death-bed of Francis
twenty-seven years before. Someone exhorted Clare to patience and she replied,
"Dear brother, ever since through His servant Francis I have known the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, I have never in my whole life found any pain or
sickness that could trouble me." To herself she was heard to say, "Go
forth without fear, Christian soul, for you have a good guide for your journey.
Go forth without fear, for He that created you has sanctified you, has always
protected you, and loves you as a mother."
Pope Innocent IV and his cardinals assisted at the funeral of the abbess. The
Pope would have had her canonized immediately had not the cardinals present
advised against it. His successor, Alexander IV, canonized her after two years,
in 1255, at Anagni. Her body, which lay first in the church of St. George in
Assisi, was translated to a stately church built to receive it in 1260. Nearly
six hundred years later, in 1850, it was discovered, embalmed and intact, deep
down beneath the high altar, and subsequently removed to a new shrine in the
crypt, where, lying in a glass case, it may still be seen. In 1804 a change was
made in the rule of the Poor Clares, originally a contemplative order,
permitting these religious to take part in active work. Today there are houses
of the order in North and South America, Palestine, Ireland, England, as well as
on the Continent. The emblem of St. Clare is a monstrance, and in art she is
frequently represented with a ciborium.
Saint Clare, Virgin, Foundress of the Poor Clares. Celebration of Feast Day
is August 12th by the pre-1970 liturgical calendar and August 11th (the actual
date of her death) by the present one.
Taken from "Lives of Saints", Published by John J. Crawley &
Co., Inc.
