Clare.03

In 13th Century Italian churches,
                on a certain holy day,
                each girl in her 15th year would go,
                one by one, to place a flower on the altar.
Socially, it served as the girls' coming out.
The boys would all be in church
                to watch them process in their special dresses,
                displaying simultaneously beauty, humility, and piety.
But when that day came for Clare of Assisi,
                it didn't come off as planned.
She was there alright, dressed to kill
                for a 13th Century church event,
                                and she was beautiful.
She was the most desirable young woman
                in church that day.

Gershwin would have said,
                her daddy's rich and her mamma's good-lookin'.
But when it came time for her start down the aisle, she froze.
No one knows why.
But Clare would not consent
                to play her role in the social order,
                to embark on the path of courtship and marriage.
The suitors came anyway though.
The fact that she hadn't come out didn't dissuade them.
She was still beautiful, rich, and a kind, good person.
So things went for three years.
During that time, a local boy, Francesco Bernadone
                began an odd local religious movement

                                –– a kind of ascetic street gang.

He and the other guys took up begging,
                preaching about Jesus,
and rebuilding the ruins of the little church, San Damiano.
We don't know what Clare thought of any of this.
But when she was 18,
                she heard Francis give a series of Lenten sermons.
Whatever he said must have persuaded her.
What happened next could not have happened
                if her parents had listened to me.
The only advice I give new parents
               is to enjoy their children when they're little
               and to paint their bedroom windows shut
                                 before they turn 13.
But Clare's parents did not have the benefit of my sage guidance.
And, on the eve of Palm Sunday, 1212 A.D.,
               while her family lay sleeping.
                               Clare snuck out.
Maybe she had read the sneaking out passage
               in the Song of Songs.
She was 300 years too soon to read St. John of the Cross's

              "Dark Night of the Soul."

              "On a dark night

              fired with love's urgent longing
                            –– oh happy chance! ––
               I went out unobserved,
               my house being now at rest."
That's what Clare did.
Out of the house, through the streets, past the gates of Assisi,
              she went--and on through the fields and olive groves by night.
Her destination was the Chapel of St. Mary of the Angels,
              where Francis and the brothers were waiting.
There she exchanged her fine clothes
              for a penitential habit.
And Francis cut off her hair.
The problem now was what to do next.
There were no co-ed religious orders in Italy.
So Francis took her to a Benedictine convent
              for the time being.
It didn't take her family long to find her.
When they came to take her home, they had help

              –– the young men of Assisi who were her suitors
                              came to literally drag her back
                                              into the dating field.

Her arguments wouldn't stop them.
So she tore off her veil, revealing her shorn head.
They got the point and went home without her.
Eventually, Clare moved into San Damiano,
                the little, disused church Francis had been restoring

                              –– though no one, including Francis,
                             had known until now what he was restoring it for.
There she founded an order of women,
                devoted to Franciscan style spirituality.
Francis still hadn't found himself though.
He couldn't decide whether to be a secluded mystic
                or an on-the road evangelist.
It was Clare who told him to hit the road.
She said, "God did not call you for yourself alone,
                but also for the salvation of others."
So Francis left, and Clare missed him dreadfully

                –– so much so that the Brothers,
                who normally deferred to Francis
                               as their Superior and spiritual master,
                reprimanded him for neglecting her.
Some things don't seem to change much.
Francis would come home to Clare on occasion.
Once when he was dejected, he came home
                and stayed in a little hut outside San Damiano.
While there, he wrote "The Canticle of Brother Sun."
And after he received the stigmata,
                Clare made special shoes to protect his bleeding feet.
The years passed –– but not so many years ––
                before Francis' health declined and death drew near.
He was not yet 50.
Clare fell ill too, and feared she would not see Francis again.
He sent her a promise that she would.

But it was not his living self she was to see.
Francis died, they brought his body to San Damiano,
                and Clare wept over him.
She had lost more than a friend.
In her final "Testament" Clare wrote,

               "We take note . . . of the frailty which we feared
                on separation from our holy Father Francis. He was
                our pillar of strength, and after God,
                              our one consolation and support."
But Clare lived on another 27 years,
                now with only God for support,
                and during that time she kept the rigorous principles
                                 of Franciscan spirituality in her convent
                long after the male Franciscans had given them up.
Two days before her death, at the age of 79,
                Clare received Pope Innocent's approval
                                of her order and it's rule.

What makes a saint?
Theologian Karl Rahner said,

               "They are the initiators and creative models of the holiness
                which happens to be right for . . . their particular age . .

                They create a new style . . ."

Saints in pairs like Clare and Francis
                weren't part of the tradition.
Now they are, and their odd, chaste love
                is a gem in our treasure chest of Christian memories.
Ours is to remember them and to honor them,
                not by imitation of their specific choices,
                            so much as imitation of their daring
                            to create a new model of sanctity for a new day.
                                                                                                                                                                  Amen.