Our stories, our selves

Today we are honoring one of our saints, St Clare of Assisi, companion to St Francis. Our parish hall has been long called St Clare’s Hall, and we’ll make that official this fall with a plaque to that effect. But St Clare’s feast day is this week (Tuesday the 11th) so it seemed appropriate to say some things about her today.

(First, just a word that there’s a fascinating world out there of Catholic podcasts for children about the lives of the saints – they’re told in very exciting, dramatic ways, with voice actors and swelling music, and they make being a saint seem quite thrilling. I commend them if you want some inspiring stories to listen to on long drives! Here’s one to try.)

Clare, or Chiara Offreducio, was born in 1194 in Assisi to a prominent, wealthy family (it’s often the wealthy ones that have the privilege and luxury to consider their spiritual lives, at least in medieval times). Her mother Ortolana was especially pious, having gone on several pilgrimages as a young woman. She had a vision before Clare was born, telling her that this child would be a light to the world – which is why she named her Clare, meaning ‘light.’ So they shouldn’t have been surprised when Clare got religious herself, apparently inspired by Francis’ preaching in the piazzas of Assisi. Defying her family, she refused to marry and escaped the locked house to join Francis and take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, as the first female follower of Francis. She stayed in a Benedictine convent until she could begin her own community at San Damiano, a cloistered community of women who devoted themselves to poverty and prayer. Later her mother and sisters also came to join her in the convent (a wonderful detail – so often these stories of saints seem to demand utterly renouncing one’s family, instead of the whole family being inspired together).

Her prayer life was fervent and powerful. There are two different stories of her praying for and receiving divine protection for her convent and the town of Assisi, once holding up a monstrance with the blessed host to repel an invading army of Saracen mercenaries and once arousing a great storm to avert another attack. And because she earnestly prayed to see the Christmas Eve mass when she was too sick to attend, the wall of her enclosure melted away and she was able to experience the whole mass from her sickbed. And so Pope Pius XII in the 1950s made her the patron saint of television – and later, computers. Her prayer and devotion is meant to protect us from all troubling influence we might receive through those media – let us all pray fervently to her for this every day!

And just as important as her prayer was her commitment to poverty. By that, Clare meant absolute poverty – the whole community sleeping on the floor, owning nothing, depending completely on what others offered them. There are stories of Clare miraculously multiplying loaves of bread during a famine, providing enough for her sisters to eat. And she had to be tenacious about that commitment to poverty – none of the Catholic hierarchy could imagine a group of women living in such hardship, so they repeatedly set rules that were too lenient by Clare’s standards. So she wrote her own rule, and repeatedly insisted on it until the pope would finally approve it – and then she died, two days later, on August 11, 1253.

St Clare, in other words, was a woman of profound faith, iron will, and uncompromising spiritual discipline. She was already being lauded for all of that during her lifetime, and she was canonized as a saint just two years after her death. And like the old hymn says, we should mean, God helping, to be saints too, just like her.

Because her story echoes stories of our ancestors in scripture, doesn’t it? Her life and times were very different from thousands of years earlier, yet there are similarities. Listen again to the ones we heard today of the boy Joseph and the struggling disciple Peter, for example, two different people also thrust into adversity and danger, overwhelmed by forces beyond their control, yet who find their footing through faith and perseverance in following God. Joseph is taken as a slave to Egypt, but years later reunites with his brothers and saves their lives, telling them, What you meant as harm, God used for good, sending me here to preserve life for you and all the people of Egypt. Peter the poor fisherman steps out of the boat, but loses his confidence when the wind kicks up and nearly drowns – only one of many failures of faith he shows in the gospels. But later Peter is able to stand before the chief priests and councils and proclaim faith in Jesus, healing the sick in his name. Very different stories, but two characters who experience suffering, who struggle with terrible misfortune and trouble, and yet who know and see the power of God in their lives all the same. And in that power they love, heal, teach, and save. Just as Jesus did. Just as we are called to do.

The gift of stories like these truly comes when we hold them up next to our own life stories. We might be tempted to put saints and Bible characters into a whole ‘nother category from us. Their lives are utterly different from ours, more spectacular than our mundane stories – so we think they have no real meaning for us. We haven’t been sold into slavery, or tried to walk on water, or been invaded by armies. But we have our own struggles, large and small – our own circumstances as different as these stories are different from one another. What might be traumatic for one of us may be ordinary for another, some of us seem to live through more terrible situations than others, but no human life is exempt from suffering. We worry, we hurt, we fear, we grow sick or face real hardship and abuse, any number of painful things in our lives. Any number of reasons to say, well, look at all of this that has happened to me – God can’t possibly be real, or care, or be any part of my life at all. But when we look at the stories of others in our faith – past and present – we can see another way.

Joseph is a young, hapless boy taken to a foreign country and put into slavery – he doesn’t rise out of that on his own. Clare is a frail woman protecting a community of women against invaders who come to pillage and destroy – she doesn’t save them by her own power. Peter doesn’t walk on the water or preach eloquently to religious leaders by his own doing. These great stories of our faith show us that when we are following God, we are held, able to walk through things that might otherwise scare us to death. When we are listening for God’s call and God’s voice, even if it’s drawing us into uncertain territory, we are given strength and peace beyond what we can muster ourselves. We can face into things that seem too big and terrifying to imagine, with God’s help.

When Jesus grabs hold of Peter out there on the water, he asks him, why did you doubt? God asks it of us too, again and again. Why do you doubt? Why are you afraid? Don’t you know that I am with you in this as I have always been? As I have always been, with all my people? How many more stories must I tell? For I am calling you too, every one of you, to a life of faith – a life filled with the practice of the presence of God and love for your neighbor. A call we hear right here together, in this community of St Francis, in this Pauma Valley. And in every part of our lives.

Very few writings remain from St Clare, but there are a few letters she wrote to a princess known as Blessed Agnes of Prague. In one of them she signs off this way:

What you hold may you always hold.
What you do, may you always do and never abandon.
But with swift pace, light step and unswerving feet,
so that even your steps stir up no dust,
Go forward, the spirit of our God has called you.