Abide – St. Clare of Assisi

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Welcome, everyone. Welcome to Abide.

I'm so glad that you're joining me here to study our fifth Saint in this series. And I just invite you into that private room that Jesus talks about in Matthew 6:6 again, where it says, “If you wish to pray, go into your private room, shut the door, and pray to your Father in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

In Thomas Keating's book, 'The Better Part,' he writes these words about the private room that Jesus is talking about: “The term private room is a metaphor for the spiritual level of our being. This is a private place beyond the flow of our ordinary psychological awareness, with its endless streams of thoughts, commentaries, and emotional reactions to events taking place in daily life. In this method proposed by Jesus, we leave outside for the time of prayer, not just the environment, other people, and outside activities, but our thoughts, our perceptions, worries, and plans.”

So, I think what Thomas Keating is speaking to us about is that in Jesus's day, there probably weren't a lot of rooms with closed doors where you could go and be on your own. But it was more so an invitation from Jesus to go into your private space in yourself, deep, deep into your heart and into your being, where God dwells. And where we can allow the busyness of life, even our thoughts, and our concerns, and our emotions, we can just allow, we can kind of close the door on those things and come into this space. And so, I invite us now to imagine heading into that room and closing the door inside. Maybe you're sitting straight in a chair, or even lying down taking a rest, or more so on the go. We can all move into our inner rooms.

And take a nice deep breath in. And out. Just feeling our feet on the earth. Breathing in. And out. Recognising our heart, and our lungs, and our organs, that are serving us now as we sit. And last one, breathing in. And breathing out.

And in this time of prayer, we are practising, together, how to cultivate a capacity to hear the still, small voice within. We're not trying to escape the world and all the problems in it, or even the problems that we have ourselves, but we're here to develop an interior anchor that allows one to carry the presence and the peace of Christ into all circumstances. We're here to develop an interior anchor in the presence of God.

And these moments together can bring about honesty and transparency, and an authentic relationship with Jesus. Because we know that prayer is not about a performance or a to-do, but it's about intimacy.

So, I just want you all to visualise moving into your heart space. Moving into your physical body, where a lot is being held, there. And I want you to go deeper, still, where there's a little door that you can open, and inside is Jesus saying, ‘Welcome, come in.’ And inside that space is a seat for you, where the Spirit of God, Jesus, and the Father sit with us. And then we can practice closing the door on all of our thoughts, and all of our typical words and thought patterns, and all of our concerns. And we can just enter this space where we want to cultivate a listening ear for the still, small voice.

And in this little deep room, inside of your being, where we are anchoring, we get to have St. Clare of Assisi with us today, as our guest. She will be teaching us. And I just want to remind all of us, once again, about who Saints are. And I'm quoting from that wonderful book, 'Stories of the Saints,' by Carrie Wallace, where she writes, “Saints aren't born better or braver than the rest of us. And Saints aren't people who are always good and never afraid. They're people who believe there must be more to life than just what we can see. This world may be hard and unfair, but Saints believe in a God who is bigger than the world, whose law is love, and whose justice is peace.”

So, just remember that once again, as we sit with Clare of Assisi, that Saints are the same breath and blood that runs through your body. The same Spirit of God that runs through your body ran through the body of St. Clare. And so, we have this opportunity to cultivate a heart that knows that there's more to life than what we can see. And that's why we're here.
And so, I'd like to read you our little story. Once again, from the 'Stories of the Saints.'

“And Clare was born in 1194 and lived until 1253, and she lived in Italy.”

And, with her name being St. Clare of Assisi, you might be reminded of our Saint we studied last time, St. Francis of Assisi. And, as you hear the story, you'll see how their lives meet.
“Everybody expected Clare to marry a count or a king, because she was young and beautiful, and the daughter of a nobleman. But when Clare was 18, she heard Francis preach during Lent in her hometown of Assisi. ‘What should I do to follow God?’ She asked him. ‘Put on sackcloth instead of your fine clothes,’ he told her, ‘And go beg in the streets of your town.’ So, Clare did, and then she came back to Francis, ‘I want to make my vows to God,’ she said. ‘Dress yourself as a bride,’ he told her, ‘And meet us at the chapel of Port Zuncola on the night of Palm Sunday.’ On that night, Clare snuck out of her father's house through the dark streets to the chapel, and when she got there, Francis and his people shaved off all her hair, and she traded her fine clothes for a simple robe. And then she vowed to follow God for the rest of her life. When he heard this, Clare's father was furious. He travelled many miles up to San Paola, where she had joined a convent, and tried to drag her home. But Clare clung to the altar and refused to go. So, Francis sent her to a convent that was further off, in St. Angelo. Clare's sisters joined her there, and so did her mother.

At first, Francis led the convent according to his own rules. None of the women there wore shoes, ate meat, or used money. They slept on the ground, spent hours in silence, and worked and prayed. But then Frances put Clare in charge, and she added her own rule. Nobody in their order should own anything, and neither should the order itself. To survive, the Poor Clares had to beg, just like Clare did in the streets of her hometown before she took her vows. The Pope didn't like the idea of women begging in the streets. ‘Don't worry about that vow of poverty,' he told Clare, ‘Accept some property for your own convent and live off that. I'll grant you forgiveness of the vow.’ ‘I need to be forgiven for my sins,’ Clare told him, ‘But not for my vows.’ Even as she led the monastery, Clare was often sick.

One Christmas when she was too ill to go to church, she saw the nativity appear on the wall of her bedroom and heard the singing of the choir, even though she was too far away from the chapel for the music to reach her ears. At the time, the Pope was at war with King Frederick II of Parisia, whose armies were roving through Italy. And one day, they arrived at the gates of Clare's monastery. Clare was sick that day too, but that didn't stop her from going out to meet them. She took the bread and the wine of the sacrament with her and placed them on the wall of her convent, in front of the whole army. And then she knelt and prayed, ‘O Lord,’ she said, ‘Protect my sisters, whom I can't protect, myself.’ A voice answered, ‘I will keep them always in my care.’ Terrified at the voice, which seemed to come from nowhere, the soldiers of the army leapt up and they fled. And although the Pope, after Pope, kept trying to get Clare to accept property for her order, she never did. ‘They say we are too poor,’ she said, ‘But can a heart be poor if it has God?’”

Let us just take this time to allow the story of Clare to fill this place in our heart. This place where we're anchoring ourselves, in our private rooms, to listen to the still small voice.

The start of the story of Clare begins for us when she was 18, and Francis was preaching, and she heard it, and she was just taken by Francis and his words and how he preached. And maybe it's everything she ever was searching for, because she went up to him and said, ‘What should I do to follow God?’

And so, just like last time when we were studying Francis, I was having us uncover just those people in our lives that we have just been so grateful for, their words, their understandings of God. Maybe it's books you've read, or pastors, or mentors, or parents, or friends. Just those people that God has placed in your life that have aided you in your journey. You'll notice with each of the Saints, they were all very struck by maybe one or two people that embodied Christ for them. And so, may we be reminded and refreshed of the people that God has given to us in our lives and stories, that have been like Jesus with skin on.

We see here that Francis invites her to the church on Palm Sunday to commit her life to God. And it says here that she had her head shaved, and she traded in her fine clothes for simple ones, and she vowed to follow God for the rest of her life.

I'm curious to know in our stories, was there a time where we made a commitment to follow God? Maybe it was more of a traditional, I asked Jesus into my heart. Maybe it was at a baptism. Or, we see here with Clare, it's a vow to allow Christ to be her everything, to be married to Him. And this vow is what she said yes to and has put herself in environments in order to be faithful to that vow.

So, let us return back to where we made a vow to God. Who was there? What did it look like?

And maybe it's hard to remember or even put into words. And maybe right now in this little prayer time, in the sacredness of the depths of your heart, with Clare, and with God, and the Spirit, and Jesus, that this is a time to vow to follow God.

And when we vow to follow God, He provides. He provides community, His own presence. His very own presence to continue to develop, to lead us. And so, let us remember our vow. Let us refresh our vow. Let us take this vow seriously. And become aware, once again, of those people, and those disciplines, and those ways that allow us to be faithful to the vow that we've made to follow God.

When Clare vowed to follow God, she moved into a convent where Francis was in charge, and then she quickly became in charge of her own group of women, that were called the
Poor Clares. And one of the key aspects or virtues of Clare and all of the fellow women was their commitment to poverty. They didn't own anything of their own, and they didn't even want a property that they would own. It says in our story, today, to survive, the Poor Clares had to beg, just like Clare did in the streets of her hometown before she took her vows. Now, Clare did not write very much, but she wrote four letters to her sister, her sister Agnes. And these letters were to encourage Agnes and other women, because letters in this day were read aloud, and they were very important and kept. And I'll read you part of one of the first letters that she writes Agnes. And I'm reading from this book called 'Francis and Clare: The Complete Works.' And it's by Regis Armstrong and Ignatius Brady.

She writes, “‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs,’ Matthew 3, sorry, Matthew 5, verse 3. O blessed poverty, who bestows eternal riches on those who love and embrace her. O holy poverty, to those who possess and desire you, God promises the kingdom of heaven and offers, indeed, eternal glory and blessed life.” So, I think we would all say that we're aware of the Beatitudes, and this one in Matthew 5:3, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs.’ And Clare was a daughter of a nobleman. She had plenty of money and she was going to be wed to someone in power, and she decided to leave all of this to live a life of poverty. She saw that there was something greater.

And so, I think with her lead, she left all of the things of the comforts of the world, for the comfort of God. Let us take a moment in our own lives where we might feel a poverty. I don't think any of us have taken this vow of poverty in the same way. But some of us are experiencing poverty in our health. Some of us feel impoverished in our emotional life. And maybe even our academic way right now, in our academic practices, we feel impoverished. Maybe in your finances. Maybe in relationships, there just seems to be lack. And I wonder if we could just bring these places of vulnerability, a sense of feeling hollowed out or empty, places that just feel weak, and if we can just offer them into the sacred space where Saint Clare chose to be impoverished, chose to leave the family, chose to not have possessions, chose to not have prestige. She traded it in. And so, as you just give your spaces of poverty into the hands of God, allow the Spirit of God to speak to you in His tender voice, and allow Clare's example to inspire you to know that it's okay to be in these spaces of poverty, and that the kingdom of heaven is present to you, in its fullness, even in this poverty.

Again, hear Clare's words, “O blessed poverty, who bestows eternal riches on those who love and embrace her. O holy poverty, to those who possess and desire you, God promises the kingdom of heaven and offers, indeed, eternal glory and a blessed life.”

And Lord, I just know that poverty is not something I aspire to, at all. I want to feel full, and feel good, and feel safe, and secure, and have extra. Not less, not hollowed out, not weak. And so, Lord, put Your hand upon these spaces in me and in my friends, and allow us to see what these spaces of poverty can bring. And how the intimacy and the dependence on You can be cultivated here. Because You are life. You are life. You are the way. And for places where we feel we have a lot, maybe we have quite a bit of finances, maybe we have quite a bit of strength in the areas of physical health, or our mental hearts and mental spirits and emotional lives are strong, I'm wondering if we would be open, God, to share and to be more generous with the places where we have a lot of fullness. And we might even think about simplifying, and maybe desiring less, so that we can create a more hollowed out way, for more of You to be filled, for more of You to fill. And so, Lord, may Your Spirit hover over those places where we are full, and abundant, and maybe stuffed, and need to clear out, to simplify and to give away, to trade it in. Trade in our fine dresses for the simple rags.

And lastly, I'd just like to highlight Clare's beautiful courage as she was quite sick on her bed that day. And we hear that the Pope was at war with the King, and the armies were roving through Italy, and they arrived at the gates. And Clare was weak, but she got up, she brought what she had, which was the wine of the sacrament and the bread, and she knelt down and prayed, ‘O Lord, protect my sisters whom I cannot protect, myself.’ And the voice answered, ‘I will keep them always in my care.’

And so, may these words and these gestures of Clare inspire you and inspire us to, even in our places of poverty, that we can be courageous and get up and offer what we have. We can pray to the God who knows us, who loves us, and wants to continue, to continue to use us.

And may we be reminded again, today, with what Clare said and how she lived: ‘How can a heart be poor if it has God?’ And so, teach us, Father, what that fullness of heart can be like, and how we continue to come to You to release, and to let go, and to hollow out, and to simplify, and to really learn from our sister Clare. Her beautiful, courageous, humble way. And so, brothers and sisters, may you get up from this private room, open the door, moving into your lives and into your spaces, being anchored in the heart of God, knowing His presence is forever with you and for you. Go in peace.