Tuesday – 19th Week in Ordinary Time – A – Memorial of Saint Clare, Virgin

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today is the memorial and the feast of Saint Clare of Assisi. She was born in that beautiful little town on the countryside in the slopes of Assisi in 1193 into a wealthy and noble family. Now, as a young woman, she heard Saint Francis preach and she became captivated by the radical way in which he was trying to live the gospel. Around Palm Sunday of 1212, at approximately 18 years of age, she left her family home and went to the Porziuncola, where Francis received her commitment to religious life and the famous cutting of her hair.

Eventually, she settled at San Damiano, where the other women who joined her, including her sister Agnes, were provided by Saint Francis and the brothers a safe haven and monastery for their way of life. Saint Francis became her spiritual father. Clare later described herself as his, and I quote, “little plant,” and wrote that “The Son of God became for us the way which our blessed Father Francis showed and taught us by word and example.”

That quote tells us something important. Clare did not ultimately follow Francis. Francis showed Clare how to follow Christ. This is very important.

Her radical poverty is illustrated in today's readings, which become almost a biography for her life. Saint Paul says, and I quote in Philippians 3:8, “I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord”. Clare could have actually spoken these very words. She came from wealth, she had social position, property, security, and the prospect of an advantageous marriage. And she surrendered it all into the hands of God.

But we misunderstand Clare if we think she gave these things up because she believed they were evil. Clare did not become poor because she discovered that possessions were worthless. She became poor because she discovered someone worth infinitely much more. That treasure hidden in a field where she sold everything she had in order to acquire that field. That is why she fought so strongly for what became known as the privilege of poverty.

And suddenly today's Psalm sounds almost as though Clare herself had chosen it. And I quote, “You are my inheritance, O Lord” (Psalm 16:5). Most people consider an inheritance something we receive and possess, but Clare's inheritance was God himself.

And then Saint Peter in today's gospel says, “We have given up everything and followed you” (Matthew 19:27). And Saint Clare could say exactly the same thing. She gave up her home, her inheritance, her social position, her prospects of marriage, her financial security, and Jesus promises “everyone who has given up houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or lands, for the sake of my name, will receive a hundred times more, and will inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29).

Look at Saint Clare. She surrendered one household and became the spiritual mother of communities throughout the world. She surrendered an earthly inheritance and received an inheritance that has endured for more than eight centuries. She surrendered security and discovered what we read in the Psalm. “You are my inheritance, O Lord” (Psalm 16:5).

Saint Clare's spirituality can perhaps best be summarized by something she wrote to Saint Agnes of Prague. “Gaze upon him, consider him, contemplate him, as you desire to imitate him.” So she recommends to all of us: gaze, consider, contemplate, imitate. Look long enough at Christ that eventually your life begins to resemble the one you are looking at.

And this is precisely what Francis had done for Clare. Clare looked at Francis and saw what could happen when somebody took the gospel seriously. But Saint Francis did not lead Clare to himself. He led her to Christ.