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Clare
and the Beginning of the Poor Clares
Clare
of Assisi and of Today
A Heart Seduced and Enraptured by The Lord
On
the occasion of the 750th Anniversary of the death of St. Clare
and of the approval of her Rule. Letter of the Minister General
of the Order of Friars Minor, Br. José Rodríguez
Carballo, ofm, on the feast of St. Clare of Assisi.
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Clare
and the Beginning of the Poor Clares
From Clare
of Assisi - The Anchored Soul
by Gloria Hutchinson
 Clare
of Assisi is a sign of contradiction. She divests herself of feminine
assets (beauty, wealth, family connections, eligibility). She
fights for the “privilege
of poverty”
as
persistently as many struggle for success in corporate empires.
Clare had
the hidden life of poverty and prayer Francis would have envied
if he not clearly heard the call to an active ministry. Clare
incarnates the 30 years of Jesus' life at Nazareth, a life of
daily hardship, simple joys and restricted horizons.
Her father,
Faverone di Offreduccio, was a knight; her mother, Ortolana, a
charitable matron who made pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to
Rome. Their home was a castle where little Chiara and her two
sisters, Catherine and Beatrice, learned needlework and music,
reading and writing.
When she
was 16, Clare began the secret, chaperoned meetings with Francis
that would sow dissatisfaction with her comfortable life. She
received the rough Franciscan habit from Francis on the night
of Palm Sunday, 1212. That was the beginning of the Second Order,
the Poor Ladies, later known as Poor Clares.
After the
ceremony of self-offering, the young noblewoman apparently never
looked back and for the next 42 years, enclosed in her convent
at San Damiano, she lived in literal poverty and constant prayer.
The Second
Order soon attracted many more women who sought to commit themselves
to Christ in the contemplative religious life. Clare's compassion
and wisdom made her an acclaimed saint in her own time. After
Francis' death, Madonna Chiara mothered the friars through the
years of transition and did her best to see that the founder's
ideals were not compromised. Her reputation as a healer and a
spiritual counsellor grew.
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