Today is the feast of St. Clare.
The old Catholic Encyclopedia article
The turning point in her life, from Christus Rex:
The Porziuncola was again a venue for an important landmark in the early Franciscan history in 1211. During the night of 18-19 March Clare escaped from her family’s house in Assisi and managed to go out of the town gates and proceed to the Porziuncola. It seems that a plan was carefully worked out between her and Francis, with the approval of the bishop Guido. That Sunday was Palm Sunday, and Clare took part in the celebration of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, in the cathedral church. When everybody was in bed she set out to execute her plan of escape.
For months she had been meeting Francis secretly to tell him that she wanted to join his movement. So they finally decided to put their plans into action. Clare was met by Francis at the Porziuncola. There she let him cut her golden tresses at the foot of the altar of the Virgin Mary. She changed her noble garments and put on the habit of penance. Francis sent her together with some friars to a secure refuge, the female Benedictine monastery of San Paolo delle Abbadesse in Bastia Umbra. Her family would come demanding her return, but in that place she was protected by a papal intedict upon any outsider who ventured into the nun’s quarters. After a short time Clare passed to another Benedictine monastery, Sant’Angelo di Panzo, on the foothills of Mount Subasio. There she was joined by her sister Caterina. Her uncle Monaldo came over to drag Caterina back home by force, but his plan did not succeed. Clare and her sister, who changed her name to Agnese, were sent by Francis to San Damiano. As he had predicted, it was here that the Order of the Poor Ladies of San Damiano was founded. In this small chapel and adjacent monastery Clare and her sisters lived a cloistered life, but without any property or possessions. Until 11 August 1253, the day of her death, Clare never left San Damiano. There she asked two Popes to confirm the Privilege of Poverty for her sisters. There she was joined by her mother Ortolana, and her other sister Beatrice. At San Damiano she received the final approval of her Rule, modelled upon that of the Friars Minor, just two days before she died, praising God for having created her.
The Poor Clares website: "Surrounding the world with prayer"
A brief history of the Poor Clares.
. Nonetheless, Pius XII knew what he was doing. He recalled an episode from St. Clare’s life that one could say prefigured TV. A witness at Clare’s canonization proceedings testified that one Christmas Eve St. Clare was so ill she could not leave her bed to attend Midnight Mass. After all the nuns had gone, Clare sighed and said, "See Lord, I am left here alone with You." At that moment God granted Clare a vision in which she saw and heard the Mass as clearly as if she had been present in the convent chapel. Pope Pius interpreted this vision as a kind of miraculous broadcast, and named St. Clare the patron of television.
A couple of years ago, I wrote a short piece on Agnes of Prague for the Franciscan University of Steubenville magazine (they have a back page article dedicated to a Franciscan-related saint or blessed every issue). Agnes was the daughter of a king, who turned from betrothal to Emperor Frederick II of Germany to enter a house of Clare’s order in Prague. We have four letters that Clare wrote to Agnes, which are striking in the way Clare plays on Agnes former earthly status to call her to something greater:
To the daughter of the King of kings, handmaid of the Lord of lords, most worthy spouse of Jesus Christ and therefore, very distinguished queen, the Lady Agnes, Clare, useless and unworthy handmaid of the Poor Ladies, sends her greetings and the prayer that Agnes may always live in the utmost poverty. I thank the one who liberally bestows grace, from whom every best and perfect gift is believed to come, because he has adorned you with such a good reputation founded upon your virtues and has made you shine with the honors of so much perfection. He did this so that once you have been made a diligent imitator of the Father who is perfect, you may deserve to be made perfect, so that his eyes may not see anything imperfect in you.
This is that perfection with which the King will unite you to himself in marriage in heaven’s bridal chamber where he sits in glory upon his starry throne, because despising the heights of an earthly kingdom and the less than worthy offers of an imperial marriage, you have been made an imitator of the holiest poverty, and in a spirit of great humility and the most ardent charity, you have clung to the footsteps of him with whom you have been worthy to be united in marriage.
This passage on fasting is striking, as well:
Now, I thought that I should respond to your charity about the things that you have asked me to clarify for you; namely, what were the feasts-and I imagine, that you have perhaps figured this out to some extent-that our most glorious father, Saint Francis, urged us to celebrate in a special way with different kinds of foods.
Indeed, your prudence knows that, with the exception of the weak and the sick, for whom he advised and authorized to use every possible discretion with respect to any foods whatsoever, none of us who are healthy and strong ought to eat anything other than Lenten fare, on both ordinary days and feastdays, fasting every day except on Sundays and on the Lord’s Nativity, when we ought to eat twice a day. And, on Thursdays in Ordinary Time, fasting should reflect the personal decision of each sister, so that whoever might not wish to fast would not be obligated to do so.
All the same, those of us who are healthy fast every day except Sundays and Christmas. Certainly, during the entire Easter week, as Blessed Francis states in what he has written, and on the feasts of holy Mary and the holy apostles, we are also not obliged to fast, unless these feasts should fall on a Friday; and, as has already been said, we who are healthy and strong always eat Lenten fare. But because neither is our flesh the flesh of bronze, nor our strength the strength of stone, but instead, we are frail and prone to every bodily weakness, I am asking and begging in the Lord that you be restrained wisely, dearest one, and discreetly from the indiscreet and impossibly severe fasting that I know you have imposed upon yourself, so that living, you might profess the Lord, and might return to the Lord your reasonable worship and your sacrifice always seasoned with salt.
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