Homily: August 11 2016 - St. Clare - Antithesis and Antidote to the modern ethos

The idea of entering a monastery in order to pursue a life of prayer and joyful communion with the Lord, like St. Clare, is quite foreign to many today.  Our modern culture tells our young girls that they cannot be happy unless they, like a Disney princess, marry prince charming and live in a castle filled with all the luxuries money can buy, or acquire the sort of job where she can buy her own castle and live life according to her own whims and fancies.

St. Clare is often in my thoughts, and over the past year, I have reflected often on her great courage. The courage of leaving her family, leaving a life of luxury which many would kill for, in order to become a poor nun.

Clare was of an aristocratic family.  At 15 she refused to marry.  Instead, she was drawn to the dynamic preaching of St. Francis of Assisi.  He became her lifelong friend and spiritual guide.  Determined to dedicate her life to God, on Palm Sunday in the year 1212, Clare escaped one night from her Father’s home.  Several miles away, she met St. Francis and his brethren at the poor little chapel of the Portiuncula.  At the altar of Our Lady, she traded her rich clothing for the rough brown woolen habit of the Franciscans, exchanged her jeweled belt for a common rope with three knots to symbolize her poverty, chastity, and obedience, and caught off her long golden tresses.  Thus she became espoused to Christ.  Her sister Agnes, 14 years old, soon joined her, as did several other women, in the following weeks.

They lived a simple life of poverty, austerity, and seclusion from the world.  Clare and her sisters went barefoot, slept on the ground, ate no meat, and observed almost complete silence.  This was the beginning of the cloistered order of Franciscan nuns known as the Poor Clares, thus the Virgin Clare was made the mother of countless virgins consecrated to Christ.

Many young women claim they are not called to the consecrated life because they feel the call to bring children into the world.  A biological urge to have children is not proof that one is not called to religious life. It is a sign of health, a healthy body and a healthy mind and a generous soul. 

Celibacy as a religious sister, brother, or priest is still fertile, because it is aimed and raising children for God. Pope Francis spoke recently of a “fertile chastity which generates spiritual children in the Church” as the true aim of religious consecration, to be Virgin Mothers, like Mary. Just as biological children bring joy to mothers, bearing spiritual children can bring great joy, real fulfillment. The joy of spiritual fruitfulness” is to animate our existence, the Pope said.

St. Clare, in her dedication to God, she was a virgin who fought to be poor: she is the antithesis and antidote to the modern ethos. May we, like Clare, trust God enough, love God enough, that we may have the courage enough to follow him out of the luxury of the world, away from the empty promises of our culture, to pursue the promises of Christ for the glory of God and salvation of souls.