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SFP VOICES JULY/AUGUST 2010
Vol. VI, No.6 © |
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CLARE: SISTER AND PROPHETESS Clare was hidden, yet her life was visible. Clare was silent, yet her reputation became widespread. Clare was kept hidden but was known throughout the world… This summer edition of SFP Voices calls to mind Clare of Assisi as Sister and Prophetess. We are most likely familiar and comfortable with experiencing our sister Clare as Sister to us and our world. However, what role did Clare play as a Prophetess? The role of Prophetess is to bring to “light” the Divine future.
• The life of Clare, although hidden to the world, transformed the world. Within this issue you will read of the light filled influence Clare has been in the lives of our own Sisters. As you read and ponder these reflections you will come to see that Clare of Assisi continues to shine brightly! Your sister, |
“Clare’s Form of Life continues to illuminate us to live and practice our
Franciscan charism of healing and reconciliation. ”
Sister Marta Gomes Pedrosa, SFP
Clare’s Sacred Story Clare spent her youth in the midst of a violent world. She probably saw the horrors of bloody holy wars while dreaming of peace. The world and its ties were unable to dim the clearest of lights, and Clare shone forth in the fraternity of Francis of Assisi and from there to the whole world. Being a sister and a brother to all is the central axis of the Evangelical Way of Life as proposed by Francis and Clare. The concrete experience of their brotherhood/ sisterhood was as revolutionary as their radical poverty for the feudal society in which they lived, marked by a strongly hierarchical Church much involved in the circles of power. Clare was not allowed to go out preaching like Francis, but her way of living with her sisters stretched beyond the walls of their monastery as she became a witness to the faith and a prophet for the Church and the world. Holy Poverty Clare’s first great struggle was to maintain her faithfulness to poverty and this way of life was part of a more encompassing project. With the same tenacity, Clare insisted until she obtained the Papal approval of her Form of Life. Clare wrote her last letter to her sister Agnes, who also had joined the Poor Clares, and all her tenderness with regard to her Sisters is evident (4th Letter, 34-38). Clare wrote: “Let each one confidently manifest her needs to the other. For if a mother loves and cherishes her child according to the flesh, how much more diligently should a sister love and cherish her sister according to the Spirit.” (Reg. BI VIII, 15s)
Mother Frances lived this love inherited from Clare and so we, as Franciscan Sisters of the Poor, cannot let the flame of this love be extinguished. As we bring forth this healing and reconciliation within our communities, we certainly will acquire more strength and shine to help our brothers and sisters who suffer so much. Pope Alexander IV, who canonized Clare, emphasizes her participation in the Church body. She is compared to a new life spring which spread itself in rivulets, irrigating the entire Church. He also compares her to “a vessel of so many aromas, perfuming the Lord’s mansion with a sweet odor...”. (Canonization Proclamation, 4.9) The aspect of her life I most appreciate is her trust in the Lord illustrated in the Monstrance with which Clare was able to expel the invading Saracens from her convent. She spent hours before the Blessed Sacrament. This teaches us that when we seek God, He protects us and gives us the courage to further our mission. |
Clare Illuminates Our Charism
SAINT CLARE, SISTER AND PROPHET OF THE WORLD
“. . . she reflects to perfection our charism of healing . . . ”
sr. Anne Claire Kabore, sfp
 Church of San Rufino, Assisi: Font at which St. Francis and St. Clare were baptized |
 San Damiano Choir of the Poor Clares. The wood stalls date from the time of St. Clare |
 Simple room overlooking the cloisters, where St. Clare died on August 11, 1253 |
I am grateful to tell you about my experience with St. Clare through SFP Voices. Having lived for many years a great closeness with Saint Clare [as a Poor Clare], I can say that her life has been a calling for me, a schooling. Through her I learned every day to grow and reaffirm my vocation. Was it not Clare who said that the greatest grace God ever granted and keeps granting us everyday is our vocation?
In light and truth, Clare of Assisi’s journey was such that even in her childhood and adolescence, she sought to place herself in true relationship with the world. Her heart became more attracted to God and evermore inhabited by God’s mysteries. She also unabashedly found the just attitude for compassion, not unlike that which God has for the world. Her ears were open to the genuine outcries of the world that was blindly seeking the One who created it.
In Clare I find two core traits – that of sister and prophet. She was also a woman of interiority, relationships and compassion. In all these aspects she reflects to perfection our charism of healing. Let us explore this. In Clare, these three aspects are intertwined and mutually fruitful:
Clare, Woman of Interiority
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| Stephen Whatley, 2008 |
As she tells us herself, Clare’s inner point of support was God, the Divine Love, who places her in her realistic and present humanity between the care and solicitude of a burning love for the neighbor (4thL Ag, 5) and total confidence in the Almighty Who lived in her: “He Who created you has sent you the Holy Spirit and has always guarded you as a mother does her child who loves her” (Process of Canonization III, 20).
Clare is fully human, a real woman who -- thanks to the teaching presence of the ‘Motherly God’ within her -- knows how to communicate her humanity and womanliness to her sisters in their daily lives. A masterpiece of grace that every woman is secretly and deeply called to, Clare let spring forth within her body, heart, and spirit, a spiritual motherhood as the great feminine mission of interior love. This love awakens and encourages in all those around her the ‘divine vocation:’ “ Loving one another with the charity of Christ, may the love you have in your hearts be shown outwardly in your deeds so that, compelled by such an example, the sisters may always grow in love of God and in charity for one another” (Testament of St. Clare, 59-60).
Clare, Woman of Relationship
We know that the ability to establish relationships defines the human person and gives the impetus for progression toward maturity. The Intra-Trinitarian communion itself is an eternal mutual relationship: a perfect place where our ‘divine vocation’ will be fulfilled. This ‘relationship’ grows to maturity in the Christian life by the specific support of love and mutual forgiveness. Clare is represented in this dynamic through her letters and life. Clare reveals herself as a deeply relational being and constantly directs us toward the achievement of this relational vocation that this poor God taught her.
Her letters describe and transmit the state of a poor sister in Christ, ontologically called in her feminine being to promote life as a life for God from the present moment onward. She recognizes her friend [Agnes of Prague] as a “most venerable lady” (1LAg, 1) “ . . . because You are the spouse, and the mother and the sister of my Lord Jesus Christ . . .” (1LAg 12); and later: “. . . O mother and daughter, spouse of the King of all ages! ” (4LAg, 4).
As we have already pointed out, in the first aspect, the emphasis in St. Clare’s writings tenderly shows where this interconnection takes place: within her heart. That is where the “new woman” is born as daughter, mother, spouse, woman and helper of God Himself; a friend, a servant in mission, and a queen with the King. All her writings illustrate the numerous aspects of a very rich relationship, but I am particularly taken by her 4th Letter and her Benediction:
– The Letter resounds with a very pure song of spiritual friendship, which she sends to her far away friend and sister [Agnes of Prague], who is close to her heart, and with whom she likes to share everything. As I like to say, Clare unveils for us the fountain of her heart, transformed by Christ’s ineffable charity from where all true relationships flow.
– Her Benediction manifests a whole network of interconnections that can be felt in the very words of the mystery of communion in consecrated life – transparency, gift, love, sharing in poverty and in God’s blessed humility with all the saints – the new Humanity!
Clare, Woman of Compassion
Compassion is a mystery of kindness and, as Christ Himself tells us: « No one is good, except God alone. » (Mark 10: 18). “Com-passion” is a word that leads us toward the experience of a “passion lived with the other.” God is the first to share in our human misery by sending his own Son, Who came to live this passion before our human eyes. Jesus, by the gift of his human life, imparts God’s compassion to us.
And Mary is also a perfect mirror of compassion, a gift of God to his Son and, through Him, to humanity. What stands out in St. Clare’s writings is that Marian reality, intensely present in her inner vision, with numerous external consequences. Clare invites us to constantly walk in the mystery of the “ … untold labors and punishments . . .” through which the Son of God lives again in us and around us, lives his passion. (4LAg, 15-23). While meditating on “ . . . the agonies of His mother standing at the foot of the cross. . .” (Letter to Ermentrude of Bruges, 12), Clare exhorts us to pursue the same holy compassion as the Mother of God, here and now. As Friar Brian Purfield, OFM said so well in his book Reflect on the Mirror: “The profound attentiveness that Clare brings to the Passion of Christ has characteristically feminine traits ”.
From all these riches that I continue to receive from Saint Clare until this day, her invitation is still the same to me, as a Franciscan of the Poor.
Clare Actions: Prophet and Witness of Hope through Healing Sr. Vincenzina Raimondo, sfp
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Saint Clare has always been for me, as a Franciscan Sister of the Poor, a point of reference. As I reflect on her life, what impresses me is her being a sister among sisters. Convinced that she could not go to God by herself, she worked tirelessly so that every day would be lived by putting love first – a love which is concrete, without expectations, free from compromise, practiced in life together and leading to union with God in unity with the sisters who were entrusted to her. Generous in forgiving, in welcoming with care the most vulnerable, Clare helped them grow in love through innumerable healing acts, becoming herself a “place” where each one would feel welcomed. Clare did not ask for anything for herself, but was ready to lift her sisters from their sorrows or fatigue. When she washed and kissed the dust-filled feet of the Sisters who were coming back after begging, Clare announced the gospel of love that becomes service and gives of itself without measure. The Language of Love How can we not think of our own SFP healing charism, which cares for so many hearts wounded by life?
Prophecy of Hope |
Clare is a woman of great humanity and, as such, can establish powerful, intense relationships, achieving full communion with the community of life. This is witnessed also in her 4th Letter to Agnes of Prague, where one can sense the tenderness, human and spiritual sensibility of the deep relationship with her poor and crucified Spouse. From this source come her strength, tenderness, tenaciousness, docility, abandonment, trust, and healing love which restores the wholeness of the individual.
Clare di Favarone (Chiara)
A Sister, Franciscan, Founder, Prophet and Contemplative
“What you hold, may you always hold. What you do, you do and do not stop. But with swift pace,
light steps, and unswerving feet, may you go forward.” (Words of our sister, Clare [From Clare’s 2nd Letter to Agnes of Prague, 11-13] )
Images are from Altarpiece of St. Clare, by an unknown Master (1280).
Sr. Mary Maloney, SFP
At 18 years of age, on Palm Sunday in 1212, Clare consecrated herself to God before Francis. She had been ‘formed’ by her mother in a household of women who prayed together and gave alms and food to the poor of Assisi. From her young years, the burning project of Clare’s heart was to be poor like Jesus was poor. As this desire grew within her, she was compelled to ask Francis about this call. With the women in her household, Clare shared this, her vision, her truth, her call!
Clare and Francis
The fruits of Clare’s prayer even spilled over Francis of Assisi. Before that fateful day in 1212, Francis sought out Clare because of her reputation for holiness. He visited her home where he met her and the prayerful members of her household: Pacifica, Cristina and Filippa. Clare had gone many times to hear Francis preach. She declined to accept the conventional life of a woman of her social status, refusing a planned marriage – and also refusing to accept land that was her right by inheritance. Instead, she gave all that her family provided for her to Assisi’s poor.
 Sant’Angelo in Panza |
Clare’s parents were determined that she marry the young man to whom they had promised her, so, in desperation, she left her parents’ home (actually, she broke the lock on the back door) and walked through the city gates, down the road and through the fields to the little church of St. Mary of Portiuncula. She presented herself to Francis and his followers who received her commitment to follow the Gospel Life. Francis himself cut off her beautiful hair, and then she put aside her fine clothing and dressed in a very simple garment. However, not even a woman as intrepid as Clare could become an itinerant beggar in medieval Italy! Francis and the other brothers escorted her to the Benedictine Monastery at San Paolo where she asked for and was given sanctuary.
As you can imagine, there was quite a fuss! Clare’s parents tried to convince her to return home, to no avail. Clare lived at this Benedictine Monastery of nuns for a brief period, but when the men in her family resorted to physical violence, she went for a short time to a house of female penitents, Sant'Angelo in Panza on Monte Subasio.
Clare’s Prophetic Stance Attracts Others
Clare soon moved to the Church of San Damiano, which Francis himself had rebuilt. Other women joined her there – even her mother, Ortolana -- and San Damiano became known for its radically austere lifestyle. The women were at first known as the "Poor Ladies,” and became known as followers of St. Francis.
Clare’s courage, determination and prophetic stance as a woman of her day have attracted me to her. She was able to disregard social conventions placed on women by medieval society in order to follow her call. A few examples:
• She abandoned home, security, wealth and inheritance to follow Jesus and to be poor, like Him.
• She was the first woman to write a Rule for religious life: The Poor Clare Rule, and fought the Church and Pope for its approval… finally granted on her deathbed by Pope Innocent IV in 1253.
• Twice, by the power of her prayer, she liberated Assisi and San Damiano from armed enemies. When hoards of Saracen mercenaries attacked the city of Assisi, she stood with the Blessed Sacrament lifted high.
Clare and Blessed Frances
Clare was a sister to the poor and desired to give all she had to them, and to live in solidarity with them. It is little wonder that Frances Schervier had great devotion to Clare and called on her in prayer. Above all her other virtues, the time Clare spent in contemplation has been the greatest attraction to me because it is the desire of my own heart. Clare fell passionately in love with Jesus Christ, and remained faithful to God until death. If you want to learn more about Clare’s life of prayer, contemplation and spiritual
direction, read her four Letters to Agnes of Prague. In them Clare:
• Asks us to gaze, to consider, to contemplate Jesus Christ.
• Gives us a way to Jesus through the Image of a Mirror.
• Gives us a way of spiritual direction for ourselves and others.
She also gives us so much more! Like Frances Schervier, Clare healed the wounds of Christ in poor, suffering humanity by prayer, poverty, love and contemplation.
Copyright 2010 Franciscan Sisters of the Poor