Touch Him and You Shall Become Pure

Today is the feast of St. Clare of Assisi, the 13^th century saint who rejected noble wealth for a life of poverty and humility.

Inspired by St. Francis of Assisi, Clare followed the deepest desires of her heart at the age of 18 and left everything her aristocratic family had to offer. She became a virgin bride of Christ, courageously dawning a coarse brown habit and letting go of all material things with full faith and trust in God.

Clare was one of the first women to adopt a life of poverty and service. Others followed, and eventually she founded a new religious order: the Poor Clares. These nuns lived much like St. Francis’s friars, accepting no material property and leaving everything up to Divine Providence. The order also adopted St. Clare’s most precious charism: a deep love for the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

We can learn many things from the life of St. Clare of Assisi, but her detachment from all material things is perhaps the most inspiring and certainly the most difficult to imitate today. Pope Benedict XVI addressed this last Sunday in his Angelus address. Earthy desires are not necessarily bad, he said, but it is important to recognize that only God can satisfy the heart:

Jesus wants to help people move beyond the immediate satisfaction of their material needs… He wants to open a horizon of existence which is not simply that of the daily concerns of eating, dressing and career.

And He can do this for us if we let go of attachments that weigh us down. In the Gospel, Jesus says, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst” (John 6: 35). If we set our hearts free from the bonds of this world, they will be open to this heavenly bread which gives us peace.

St. Clare of Assisi experienced this when she laid all of her desires in God’s hands. In a letter to St. Agnes of Prague, she wrote:

When you have loved [him] you shall be chaste; when you have touched [him] you shall become purer; when you have accepted [him] you shall be a virgin. Whose power is stronger, whose generosity is more elevated, whose appearance more beautiful, whose love more tender, whose courtesy more gracious. In whose embrace you are already caught up; who has adorned your breast with precious stones... and placed on your head a golden crown as a sign [to all] of your holiness.

So let us commit this week to give up those material attachments that hold us back on our journey towards the beautiful, tender, and loving embrace of Our Father in Heaven. And make sure to honor St. Clare with a visit to a Poor Clares monastery today. You will open yourself up to many graces if you do, and perhaps even a Plenary Indulgence.

St. Clare of Assisi, Pray for Us!