St. Clare

Today we honor the memory of St. Clare, one of the great saints of the church and a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi.  She was born into a wealthy family and her parents tried to arrange a marriage for her at the age of 15 to a wealthy man.  She resisted, and eventually, after a couple of years, she went to St. Francis who cut her hair and clothed her in a habit; she became the female equivalent of St. Francis.

Her order was called the Ladies of the Poor.  If you visit Assisi today, and walk down the hill, you see the convent where she lived and that she never really left.  Lots of people would come to her for advice.  After her death the religious community was renamed the Poor Clares which we still have today.

Maybe if we just pause and honor her today we can say to ourselves if she could do what she did, maybe I can do just a little bit more in the sense of being a disciple of the Lord.  Maybe we are not called to be as radical as Clare was, but we probably can do more than we are doing.