Saint Clare

August 11 is reserved for honoring Saint Clare, an Italian nun who lived in the early 1200's. Born Chiara Offreduccio, she was the daughter of a Count. The story goes that she heard Francis of Assisi preaching and was moved. When her parents arranged for her to marry a wealthy young man, she fled her house and sought refuge with Francis.

This is where not all the stories match up. According to some, she was brought back home from a time, and then escaped once again at the age of 18, and she met a group of friars on the road, and in a poor chapel known as the Porticuncula she exchanged her extravagant clothing for a woolen habit, rope belt, and cut her long hair. At this time she joined a Benedictine convent which was stormed by her father and uncles. According to the story, she clung to the church's altar while the siege was going on, and apparently her family eventually gave up or lost.

The other version of the story claims that she joined a convent when she was fifteen, never returning to her father's house after running away the first time. It's not quite so exciting, but a bit more believable.

The stories join back up again to say that her sister Agnes soon joined her at the convent, and that Clare of Assisi, as she was then called, founded the Order of the Poor Ladies. After her death, they would be renamed "The Poor Clares". The Poor Ladies lived a life of absolute poverty, going barefoot, sleeping on the floor, eating daily contributions free of flesh. Their lives were lived in isolation, doing physical labor, and barely speaking. They lived with such rigorous rules that even the pope tried to persuade them to lighten up a bit. Clare replied, "I need to be absolved from my sins, but I do not wish to be absolved from the obligation of following Jesus Christ."

So what can we learn from Saint Clare? The main message she seemed to send was to live in poverty. I personally don't take very much from that because I don't see what good it does the rest of humanity to walk barefoot or sleep on a dirt floor. Just me, I guess. Like the saints we have talked about before, one thing I admire about Clare is her famous stubbornness about changing what she was doing, even refusing to do the bidding of popes, because she felt that what she was doing was right. If you know your history, you know that in the 1200s, it was a BIG DEAL for a Catholic nun to tell the Pope to mind his own damn business. That showed a lot of courage as well as a lot of dedication. Today is a day that we should concentrate on bringing both characteristics into our own lives.