CLARE OF ASSISI - Jane Morley

I’m not sure how much you know about St Clare of Assisi, whose Feast we are celebrating today. Before I delved into the history surrounding St Francis, also of Assisi, I knew very little about Clare.

So who was she? And why does her story still matter?

Clare was born in about 1194, and was about 12 years younger than Francis. Their stories are intertwined, but her story is usually overshadowed by his.

When she was 18, Francis was about 30, and had already begun his ministry of preaching, and his life of poverty, in and around Assisi. They presumably met as a result of her hearing him preach, but she comes into the historical record when on Palm Sunday night, in 1212, she escaped from her noble family and fled to San Damiano, a sanctuary outside Assisi, where Francis and his brothers were waiting for her. Clare wanted to receive the blessing Christ promises to the poor, as our Gospel reading tells us; and by embracing a life of poverty, she desired to express her love for Christ Crucified, in the vein of our first reading, from the Song of Songs.

 ‘… Love is strong as death,

passion fierce as the grave; …‘

Francis sealed her intention by cutting off her long hair. There was no going back; her family’s subsequent fury had no effect.

Because she was a woman, she couldn’t stay with the Brothers, so, as an interim measure, Francis placed her in a neighbouring Benedictine convent. Afterwards he set her up in San Damiano, where women started to join her, including women from her own family. The Convent was enclosed, and life there was dedicated to prayer and an austere version of poverty. But Clare fostered an atmosphere of equality and compassion among the Sisters, and only reluctantly accepted the title of Abbess. Her story from then on is one of loyalty to Francis’s ideals, until she died.

In her writings she refers to herself as Francis’s ‘little plant’.  But is that all she was? Francis himself died in 1226, and Clare outlived him by 27 years. During that time, she had to fight over and over again to restore what was called ‘the privilege of poverty’ which was taken away from her by church authorities after Francis died, because they deemed it unsuitable for a women’s community. They thought enclosed women were too frail to rely on God’s grace alone to support them.

In fact, Clare won this battle on her deathbed, and gained the Pope’s approval of the ‘privilege of poverty’, which she had included in the Rule she wrote – the first Religious Rule written by a woman to be approved by the Church!

Clare had also founded scores of communities of ‘Poor Ladies’ (as these communities were called) across Europe; and she wrote letters of remarkable spiritual advice and mystical insight to many women involved in her movement.

Her life, therefore, had influence far beyond the walls of San Damiano. Far from simply being Francis’s ‘little plant’, she is better described, in the words of author Wendy Murray, as ‘Gentle Warrior’. Not only did she take on the Church authorities, including successive Popes, over the Rule of poverty; she also kept the Franciscan ideal alive in the long years after Francis died, while Francis’s Brothers experienced bitter divisions over how to live out Francis’s legacy.

So how is the life of this ‘gentle warrior’ relevant to us in the 21^st century? After all, on one level, Clare failed. She didn’t, and couldn’t, prevent the changes the Church made to her Order after her death. Francis, too, couldn’t prevent the agonising splintering of his Order after he died.

However, Christianity is about failure – Christ died ‘outside the city gate’, as a common criminal. But what mattered the most was the way He had lived His life. And, as we know, Christ’s life was marked by compassion and inclusion. This was what the world couldn’t understand, or cope with. This was what made His life seem like a failure. But this was what was vindicated by the Resurrection.

As followers of the Risen Christ, both Francis and Clare were beacons of lives lived beautifully and with integrity, but tenaciously, against all odds. And we can, in our own way, follow in their footsteps; as it was for them, so it is for us. So, it’s not about our winning, or our achieving, or even our legacy.

It’s about our faithfulness, and God’s mercy.

In the 21^st century, the world is facing multiple crises that Francis and Clare did not face in the same way – the increasing conflicts that threaten to turn into nuclear war; the lack of control of AI; widening inequality and division; and of course the climate and biodiversity crisis. In times like these, maybe we need to remember that human nature, and God’s call to faithfulness, don’t change, even though the stakes are higher today than they were in Clare’s time. In response, can we be ‘gentle warriors’, as Clare was 800 years ago? Can we balance a commitment to justice and compassion, with a stance of generous humility?

Maybe, as far as our circumstances allow, this is our task; and at our last breath, maybe we can let it go, as St Clare did, and let God deal with it all.

Amen.