Saint Clare of Assisi

That woman was Clare. She was born into a wealthy noble family, with servants and a future already arranged through powerful alliances. Then one spring night she cut off her golden hair, took off her jewels and put on a rough habit.

Tradition tells that while Ortolana was pregnant and kneeling before a crucifix to pray for a safe delivery, she heard a voice say:

“Do not be afraid, for you will give birth to a brilliant light that will illumine the whole world!”

Because of that prophecy, the baby girl was named Chiara, Italian for “light” or “clear”.

Clare grew up in her family’s magnificent mansion near the cathedral of San Rufino. She learned embroidery, music, letters and the ways of court life. Yet the lavish amusements of her class never captured her heart. From her gentle mother she learned compassion early: she would often set aside the best portions of her food at banquets and secretly send them to the hungry poor outside the city gates.

On Palm Sunday 1212, Clare put on her most splendid gown and went with her family to Mass at the cathedral. When the other young women went up one by one to receive palms from Bishop Guido, Clare, overcome with emotion, stayed where she was. Seeing this, the bishop came down the steps himself and placed the palm in her hand, as if to bless the step she was about to take.

But Clare ran into the chapel, gripped the altar cloth with both hands, and pulled off her veil to show everyone her shorn hair. She declared firmly:

“I will have no other bridegroom but Jesus Christ!”

Faced with such iron resolve, the noblemen withdrew, defeated.

Only sixteen days later, her fifteen-year-old sister Agnes ran away from home to join her. The family came again, beat Agnes cruelly and tried to drag her off, but through Clare’s prayers the girl suddenly became as heavy as stone. None of them could lift her, and in the end they let her go.

Not long afterwards, Francis brought Clare and her sisters to settle at the small chapel and poor convent of San Damiano outside Assisi, the same crumbling church Francis had restored with his own hands, where the old crucifix that had spoken to him hung. There the Order of Poor Ladies, later known as the Poor Clares or the Second Order of Saint Francis, was born. Later, even her own mother Ortolana and her youngest sister Beatrice asked to enter the convent and live under her guidance.

She fought to the end for what she called the “Privilege of Poverty” (Privilegium Paupertatis): the convent was to own no property and no land that brought in income, and the sisters were to live entirely by the work of their hands and by daily alms.

Out of concern for the sisters, several Popes, among them Gregory IX and Innocent IV, offered again and again to grant the order lands and income, but each time Clare knelt and pleaded:

“Holy Father, absolve me from all my sins, but never absolve me from following the poor Christ!”

She took the lowliest jobs in the convent: nursing the sick sisters herself, washing linens and clothes, washing the feet of the sisters who came back from begging, and going around on freezing winter nights to tuck a blanket around each one.

In 1240, the brutal Saracen mercenaries of Emperor Frederick II swept through the Spoleto valley, plundering as they went, and set up ladders against the walls of San Damiano. The sisters wept in terror. At the time, Clare was gravely ill and bedridden.

Suddenly a dazzling light blazed out from the Eucharist. The terrified soldiers tumbled from their ladders and fled. San Damiano and the whole city of Assisi were saved at the last moment by the power of the Eucharist.

Because of this event, in 1958 Pope Pius XII proclaimed Saint Clare patron of television and telecommunications.

At the beginning of August 1253, sensing that the hour had come to go home to the Father, Mother Clare lay in bed clutching the Rule the Holy See had just approved and sent to her.

As her sisters knelt around the bed sobbing, Mother Clare smiled and whispered her last words, spoken to her own soul:

“Go forth in peace, my soul, for you have had a good guide... Bless God, who created you, sanctified you, and loved you with a tender love like a mother for her little child!”

Only two years later, on September 26, 1255, Pope Alexander IV canonized Clare of Assisi. A new basilica was built in 1257 on the foundations of an older church to receive her body, but the exact location of the saint’s tomb was forgotten for nearly six centuries, just as had happened to her spiritual father Francis. Only in 1850 were her remains found again, intact, beneath the main altar. In 1987 her relics were placed in a glass coffin in the crypt beneath the basilica, her face covered with a thin layer of wax to preserve her features over the years. The ancient San Damiano crucifix, the one that spoke to Francis, was also brought to this basilica and is kept there, while a copy hangs in its original place in the church of San Damiano for pilgrims to see.