Article
Clare fixed her Eyes on the Poor and Crucified Christ
She puts it thus in one of her letters: “Look upon him who became contemptible for you, and follow him, making yourself contemptible in this world for him. Your Spouse, though more beautiful than the children of men, became for your salvation the lowest of men, was despised, struck, scourged untold times throughout his entire body, and then died amid the suffering of the cross…. Gaze upon him, consider him, contemplate him, as you desire to imitate him. If you suffer with him, you shall rejoice with him; if you die with him on the cross of tribulation, you shall possess heavenly mansions in the splendor of the saints, and in the Book of Life your name shall be called glorious among men” (2LAg 19-22).
Clare, who entered the monastery when she was but 18 years of age, died there at the age of 59, after a life of suffering, of constant prayer, strict observance and penance. Because of this “ardent desire for the poor, crucified Christ“, nothing burdened her, to the point that at the end of her life she could say to Brother Raynaldo, who assisted her “in the long martyrdom of so many illnesses“, that: “After I once came to know the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ through his servant Francis, no pain has been bothersome, no penance too severe, no weakness, dearly beloved brother, has been hard” (LegCl 44).
5. But the one who suffers on the cross is he who reflects the Father’s glory and sweeps away in his Passover those who loved him to the point of sharing his suffering out of love for him.
The delicate 18-year-old who, fleeing home on the night of Palm Sunday 1212, set off without hesitation on the adventure of a new experience, believing in the Gospel as Francis showed her, and in nothing else, with the eyes of her body and of her heart totally immersed in the poor and crucified Christ, experiences this union which transforms her: “Place your mind before the mirror of eternity“, she writes to Agnes of Prague. “Place your soul in the brilliance of glory! Place your heart in the figure of the divine substance! And transform your entire being into the image of the Godhead itself through contemplation, so that you too may feel what his friends feel as they taste the hidden sweetness that God himself has reserved from the beginning for those who love him. Since you have cast aside all (those) things which, in this deceitful and turbulent world, ensnare their blind lovers, love him totally who gave himself totally for your love” (3LAg 12-15).
Thus the hard bed of the cross becomes the sweet nuptial bed and the “life-long recluse of love” finds the most passionate accents of the beloved in the Song of Songs: “Draw me after you … O heavenly Spouse! I will run and not tire, until you bring me into the wine-cellar” (4LAg 30-31).
Enclosed in the monastery of San Damiano, in a life marked by poverty, hard work, tribulation and illness, as well as a fraternal communion so intense that, in the language of the “Form of Life“, it could be described as “holy unity” (RCl, Bull of Innocent IV, 2), Clare experiences the purest joy experienced by any creature: the joy of living in Christ the perfect union of the three divine Persons, entering as it were into the ineffable circuit of Trinitarian love.
Letter of His Holiness John Paul II for the Eighth Centenary of the Birth of Saint Clare