Today is the feast of St. Clare of Assisi, the 13th 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:
