St Clare

 Reflection of St Clare

 

"We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become." - St. Clare 

 

Here's the biography of St. Clare of Assisi, drawn from Pope Benedict XVI's General Audience of 15 September 2010

St. Clare of Assisi (1193–1253)

Pope Benedict XVI called her one of the best loved saints, who lived in the 13th century as a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi, and whose life shows how much the Church owes to courageous, faith-filled women who spark renewal in the Church. 

Pope Benedict XVI drew on solid historical evidence for her life, noting that reliable sources survive, including early biographies like that of Tommaso da Celano and the canonization proceedings the Pope opened just months after her death, which preserve testimony from people who had known her for years.

Her flight from home

Clare was born in 1193 into a wealthy noble family and gave up her rank and riches to embrace humility and poverty in the manner St Francis of Assisi taught. Though her family had a prestigious marriage arranged for her, at eighteen, driven by her longing to follow Christ and her admiration for St Francis of Assisi, she slipped away from home at night with a friend, Bona di Guelfuccio, to reach the friars at the little church of the Portiuncula — it was Palm Sunday evening, 1211. In a striking ceremony, Francis cut off her hair while the friars held torches, and she put on a plain penitential habit, becoming from that moment a humble, poor bride of Christ fully consecrated to him.

Friendship with St Francis of Assisi 

Pope Benedict XVI highlighted the bond between the two saints as something beautiful in itself — at the start of her religious life especially, St Francis of Assisi was for Clare both teacher and brotherly friend, and the meeting of two souls burning with the same love of God became a spur for both toward holiness.

Life at San Damiano

After a brief stay with other religious communities, Clare and her first companions settled at the church of San Damiano, where the friars had prepared a small convent, and she remained there over forty years until her death in 1253. A visiting Flemish bishop, Jacques de Vitry, left an eyewitness account of the sisters' life — the women lived in scattered houses near the city, kept nothing, supported themselves by their own labor, and were genuinely uneasy at receiving more honor from clergy and laity than they wanted.

The privilege of poverty and her Rule. Clare pursued radical poverty joined to total trust in providence, securing from the Pope the "Privilege of Poverty," an unusual exception to canon law that let her and her sisters own no property at all — a concession Church authorities granted because they recognized real evangelical holiness in her way of life. Pope Benedict XVI noted the historical significance of this: Clare was the first woman in the Church's history to write a religious Rule herself and have it approved by the Pope, meant to safeguard the Franciscan charism among the many women's communities inspired by Francis and Clare that were multiplying in her lifetime.

Her virtues and miracles 

At San Damiano, Clare lived out humility, piety, penance, and charity heroically — despite being superior, she insisted on personally serving sick sisters and gladly took on the humblest chores. Her devotion to the Eucharist was tied to a famous episode: twice, simply by holding up the Blessed Sacrament, she was said to have driven off Saracen mercenaries who threatened to attack San Damiano and ravage Assisi.

Pope Benedict XVI pointed to her Fourth Letter to St. Agnes of Prague as the heart of her spirituality, where Clare used the medieval image of a mirror, urging Agnes to gaze daily into the perfection of every virtue found in Christ himself and so be transformed inwardly and outwardly.

Canonization

Such events, along with other remembered miracles, led Pope Alexander IV to canonize her in 1255, only two years after her death. The eulogy in the Bull on the Canonization of St Clare declares: "How powerful was the illumination of this light and how strong the brightness of this source of light. Truly this light was kept hidden in the cloistered life; and outside them shone with gleaming rays; Clare in fact lay hidden, but her life was revealed to all. Clare was silent, but her fame was shouted out"

Reference:

General audience of 15 September 2010: Saint Clare of Assisi. (Vatican.). Click here