Happy St Clare's Day!

A Happy Feast of St Clare to everyone!  Just a short post today as we have restricted internet at the friary and I am signal chasing with a laptop!  Holy poverty for the 21st Century, indeed.

 

Clare was a young woman who felt called to follow Francis' life of poverty, but was prevented from doing so because the Church felt such a life was too strenuous for a woman to lead.  She lived a cloistered life of contemplation and prayer with her sisters, whose numbers continued to grow, and resisted attempts by the Church to force possessions and hierarchical power structures on her community.

Even though she was not able to go out to preach, her fame spread and it is largely due to her and her sisters that the Franciscan message survived the death of Francis and the first generation of friars.

 

St Clare was received by St Francis into a life of humility, poverty and simplicity only after she escaped her family through a back door of her house.  Shortly after, they came to get her back.  Having beaten her and one of her sisters, they tried to drag her forcibly from the church.  They failed

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"Place your mind before the mirror of eternity!  Your soul in the brilliance of glory! ... Transform your entire being into the image of the Godhead itself! ... May you totally love God whose self-giving was totally for your love, at whose beauty the sun and the moon marvel, whose rewards and their uniqueness and grandeur have no limits."  St Clare of Asissi

 

Father, thankyou for the witness of the many women who have carried the gospel in their lives far better than I ever could... and bless all women who feel constrained by the fact they live in a church run by men.  Bless us all with the strength and love of our sister Clare.  Amen.