Clare and the Eucharist Part II
The two supporting her heard her say, “Lord, look upon these servants of yours because I cannot protect them.” And from the case containing the Eucharist came a child’s voice saying, “I will always defend you.” Nor did Clare forget Assisi: “Lord,” she prayed, “please defend the city as well.” The same voice answered, “The city will endure many dangers, but it will be defended.” It was a dialogue of few words, but there was a great silence outside when it was over. The Saracens had withdrawn without causing damage. In other words, this event took place within the Monastery, with the Saracens on one side of the door and St. Clare on the other, and not as usually depicted, with St. Clare holding the Monstrance above the window with the Saracens below in the courtyard.
Here again, the confidence and the intimacy between Clare and the Eucharistic Jesus are very much evident. She speaks to Him as to a very loved and trusted friend, one who would never let her down and whom she knows will resolve the problem even at the 11th hour! (Remember that the Saracens were already inside the Monastery.)
St. Ignatius of Loyola says that it isn’t what we do that makes us saints but how free we leave God to act in our lives. This brings us to the heart of the spirituality of St. Francis and St. Clare, who opened themselves entirely to God, stripping away everything that could separate them from Him and leaving Him absolutely free in their lives. They could ask for all because they had given all.
But the Eucharist, for Clare, was not something, not even Someone outside herself. St. Paul says: “I live, now it is no longer I but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:22). Christ in us is the principle of all our love and virtue. The interior life is the presence of Jesus Christ within us, which is the vital principle of all we do. It is Jesus living His own life within us, and we, living it with Him, conforming all to Him; thinking, deciding, planning, suffering, working with Him, in Him, by Him, for Him, like Him. In proportion to our love for God will be the intensity of our Interior Life.
Luis de León states, “When Christ unites His very Body and Spirit with the faithful and just, and in some sort mingles His very Soul with their souls, and His Body with their bodies, He looks out from their eyes, speaks with their tongues, works through their senses; their faces, their countenances, their movements are Christ, who thus occupies them wholly. So intimately does He take possession of them that, though His Nature in no way destroys their own, there will be nothing seen in them at the Last Day, nor will any nature be found in them other than His Nature.”
Clare knew that sanctity was nothing other than God living freely in her. When God takes possession of our hearts, He transforms us into His likeness. Clare carried Jesus not only in her soul but in her very body. She says in her letter to Agnes of Prague: “The soul of a faithful person, the most worthy of all creatures, is greater than heaven itself since the heavens and the rest of creation cannot contain their Creator, but the faithful soul (and she doesn’t say religious or priest) is His dwelling place and throne.” We are all called to sanctity.
The Christian soul can be called the possession, the resting place of the Divine Essence. Jesus is the air that the soul inhales. Sanctity is nothing else than God’s life in us. The very bearing of one who carries God within reflects the dignity, the grace, and the charm of Jesus Christ to such a degree that their whole person is like a pure, transparent crystal through which the Divine figure shines, and this breaks through the thin veil of the body.
Rereading the testimonies of the witnesses at the canonization process of St. Clare, I was surprised at the number of those who called her one of the holiest women ever to have lived. To quote the united testimony of her sisters, the Abbess at the time declared: “All that was found in the holiness of any other holy woman, except the Virgin Mary, could be truly said of and witnessed in the Lady Clare.”
In ending, I would like to once again bring to our awareness that the greatest thing we can do in this life is to enter fully into the depths of the Divinity and share in the intimate life of God, as far as possible, so that our truest lives, like Clare’s and Francis’, will be the life we lead hidden with Jesus Christ in God, while HIS life will become fully evident to all through us.
Sr. Regina Dierson, OSC
Poor Clares of New York