Ash Wednesday

Saint Clare of Assisi

Even now, says the Lord,

return to me with your whole heart,
with fasting, and weeping, and mourning…

Ash Wednesday and Lent are all about the Privilege of Penance which God has granted to all Christians. I borrow that phrase from our Franciscan tradition and Saint Clare of Assisi.

Clare, born in 1194, was twelve years younger than Saint Francis. She would have known about the stir he caused when he bolted from his father’s house and set out on his own. It was clearly the talk of the town and I’m sure her parents and family tsk-tsked about the ungrateful young man who threw off his family’s fortunes to live a day laborer and part-time beggar.

But by the time she was eighteen he was becoming more accepted in the city, the oddball who spoke so well of God. And he was beginning to gather disciples. And finally she asked him to speak to her. The two of them met, chaperoned by his friar companion and her confidante, and she fell in love with his vision of Poverty.

Soon afterward she fled her family home to live as Jesus had lived, without any provision for tomorrow. And other women followed, including her sisters and mother. Francis set them up in the rebuilt ruin of Saint Damien’s Church and there she spent the rest of her life.

When he died only a few years later, in 1226, she carried the banner of Poverty for the movement as the friars plunged into confusion over how they should live without their leader. Seeking the Pope’s approval, she begged for the Privilege of Poverty. Despite everything the church believed about women, their frailty and vulnerability, she wanted her sisters to live without any means of support. They would survive only on the daily gifts of their neighbors, never owning estates with share-cropping peasants and never storing provisions for the future.

The leadership of the Church held out against her. They could neither refuse nor consent. They must have been appalled when a mongrel army of Saracens ravaged the Spoleto Valley and threatened the convent. Frightened Assisans watched from the city walls, expecting to see the little enclosure burning in the night. But the sisters were spared, apparently by the Hand of God, and Clare could point to Jesus as her true savior in that dreadful hour.

Finally, as she lay dying, the Pope consented. He sent the sisters a papal bull granting the Privilege of Poverty. The saint clasped the document to her chest in gratitude, and died the following day. She had been bed-ridden for over twenty years with spinal tuberculosis.

As Christians and Catholics we should thank God for the privilege of penance during Lent. We will follow Jesus as he atones for our sins on the road to Calvary. We will share his prayers, hunger and generosity, and we will know something of his Holy Spirit. Some will think we’re crazy for confessing our sins while they trumpet their good deeds and deny all wrongdoing. But we will enjoy an infinitely more satisfying privilege of walking with Him who claims our sins as his own.