“Today, August 11th, is the feast day of Saint Clare. She was born in the city of Assisi, the same city that Francis of Assisi is from. In fact, at the same time, like Francis, Clare’s parents were very wealthy. Francis, as we know, renounced his wealth and left the city following a call from God to rebuild the church.
Now, Francis thought it meant rebuilding a tumbled, rumbled-down church outside of town, but he realized it was a lot more than that. It was about finding an order to spiritually revive the church all across the world. And so he went to Rome, and he got permission from the Pope to do something new.
Up to that time, if you joined a religious order, you joined a monastery and you stayed there. But this was going to be a new order. They were going to work in the towns and in the villages, and be out with the people, spreading the gospel of the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Well, Clare, of course, lives in the same town. She’s very well aware of this, and she’s very moved by it. She feels that she too has the calling to do the same thing. What he’s doing for men, she wants to do for women.
But her parents had other ideas.
Back in the middle age, there was no dating. There was no courting. You were told who are you going to marry by your parents, and that was that.
They told her, ‘no, we’re going to marry you off to another wealthy family and you need our fortunes.’ So Clare snuck out of the house, snuck out of town, and went and found Francis.
Now, Francis was smart enough to know that this family is very powerful. They’re probably going to send soldiers together. So he takes her to a Benedictine convent and asks the nuns to keep her there and hide her. So they placed her in the convent. News gets back to the family where she is and they send the soldiers there.
Francis, of course, is helping David respect the convent and leave it alone. He was wrong. They knocked the door down, barged into the convent, and began going through the rooms until they found Clare. But then, there was the miracle.
The miracle was this: Clare prayed to God that they would not be able to take her, and they couldn’t move her. They absolutely couldn’t budge her. They couldn’t pick her up. They couldn’t get her to go anywhere. She sat right there. The soldiers tried and tried and they gave up.
They went back to Clare’s parents and said, ‘well, it’s a miracle from God. She’s destined to be with those nuns.’
Of course, what Clare really wanted was to form an order, like Francis did. So Francis went back to Rome again and asked for permission to start an order for the nuns so they, too, could leave the convent and work among the poor people. This order was founded and later became known as the Poor Clares.
Now, as you probably heard me say, when you hear about a miracle, it usually has a couple of meanings. What it meant for the people then, and what it means for us now.
Obviously, it’s pretty easy to understand what it meant for Clare to be saved from having to go back home, and she got to fulfill her desire to follow God’s Will. But it means something for us, too, because we have to be steadfast as well. We have to be steadfast and solid in our faith, and we can’t let the temptations of this world move and shake and drive us anywhere. That’s not always easy.
The stronger and deeper we are in the faith, the more we’re immovable we are in the faith, and the more we’re able to resist those temptations. Faith is often described as a rock. The Rock of Faith grows in our lives.
No matter what the world throws against us like a mighty rock, we will not move in our faith. It will continue to grow until we reach the Heavenly Kingdom.”
~Fr. Joseph Gembala