Franciscan feast of Saint Clare of Assisi

Lectionary: 416
Selected Readings for the Franciscan Feast
of Saint Clare of Assisi

I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.

In Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth, a young woman on her journey through the “Gilded Age” of New York’s high society, gives a small donation from her dwindling wealth to a needy woman. As it turns out, the “mite” is very helpful. When the two women meet again our debutante, Lily Bart, is getting more desperate and the formerly needy woman is content with her poverty. But their second meeting proves to be an opportunity missed for our beautiful heroine. She cannot redirect her life with a better set of values, and the novel ends in tragedy. The book has been described as "an attack on an irresponsible, grasping and morally corrupt upper class."

The young Clare of Assisi apparently suffered a painful event when her upper class family was driven out of town by civil unrest. They took shelter in neighboring Perugia until the dust had settled, but she must have noticed during their flight the frailty of this world’s security. It can disappear in the twinkling of an eye. Why not invest in something more secure – something like the Word of God?

When the unlikely opportunity of divesting her wealth came along, the eighteen year old made the most of it, to the bewildered horror of her family and friends. At midnight on Palm Sunday she escaped her easy life to pursue the poverty Saint Francis extolled. After admitting her to the forest community he placed her in a convent of Benedictine women until he had prepared a place for the “Poor Ladies of Assisi” in a broken down chapel. Two of her sisters soon joined her; and her mother, several years later. The cloistered community spread to all parts of the world and her foundation in Assisi remains.

 

I think of poor "Lily Bart," a fictional woman, when I consider the true story of Saint Clare. Both women knew the wealth and privilege that our ancient system arbitrarily bestows on a few. But Clare's culture remembered, however faintly, the story of Jesus, the Son of God who was born in poverty, raised in exile, despised by the elite, and crucified. Ms. Bart's American society offered none of that. Seeing the fatal trap of her birth, Clare could flee to a life of freedom. Lily could not see the escape her destitute young friend offered. 

As Catholics we are heirs of Saint Clare's wealth. We have been given a treasure buried in a field, a pearl of great price. Let's neither squander the opportunity, nor deprive our children of it.