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Prayer
Life at San Damiano
From Clare
of Assisi - The Anchored Soul
by Gloria Hutchinson
 Her
life at San Damiano was as rigorous as that of any monk or peasant
farmer. Raised in a castle, she lived her entire adult life in
a small stone convent, slept on a straw mattress, fasted three
days a week, never ate meat, often did penance, and got up in
the middle of the night to pray the Divine Office.
Members of
her community who testified during the canonization process emphasized
the abbess' circumspect leadership: “She often hastened to
do herself what she had commanded another to do.” They described
the humility that led her to wash the extern sisters' feet on
their return from a round of begging. Her devotion to Christ in
his Passion was evidenced in all-night vigils. Chronically ill,
she healed others of sickness and depression by signing them with
the cross.
Clare called
herself the “little plant of the Blessed Francis,” and
she relied on him as her spiritual director in the early years
of her life as a religious. He was wise enough to lead her through
a gradual liberation until Christ himself was her only guide.
Everything
Clare did was prayer: when she came to San Damiano, says Celano,
“There she fixed the anchor of her soul”; here she lived
in the house of God and God made his dwelling in her. The anchor
held fast. She allowed herself no diversions from the single purpose
of her life. Like Jesus before his baptism, she lived in obscurity
and ordinariness.
The cloister
at San Damiano became a source of spiritual energy radiating throughout
the Church. Clare and her sisters prayed the Divine Office (Liturgy
of the Hours) five times a day, seven days a week, conforming
the pattern of their community life to the sequence of the liturgical
year. Washing or scrubbing, weeding or sewing, they were constantly
praising God and enjoying his presence.
Among those
who confided in her and counted on her prayers were two popes,
Gregory IX and Innocent IV. While the former had tried to convince
Clare to accept a less rigorous mode of poverty, the latter, at
her persistent request, confirmed the “privilege of seraphic
poverty” only two days before her death, on August 11th,
1253.
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