8/11/2016 – Thursday of the 19th week of Ordinary Time – St Clare of Assisi - Matthew 18:21–19:1

      Today, we celebrate St Clare of Assisi, a saint who was born in Italy at the end of the 12^th century. Like her mentor and guide and close friend, St Francis of Assisi, Clare came from a very wealthy family, giving all of that up in order to follow Christ with all her being.  Clare founded a monastic religious order for women in the Franciscan tradition called the Order of the Poor Ladies. After her death, the Order was renamed the Order of St Clare. Today, that Order is commonly referred to as the Poor Clares.  Although Clare is remembered for her deep piety and her deep devotion to the Catholic faith, she is also remembered by Church historians as the first woman in the history of the Church to write a rule for her religious community.  This was at a time when most women's communities lived according to the rules that were written by men.  Clare’s motivation in doing so is because many of the men and women of the early Franciscan religious communities felt that they could not authentically live out their lives in the spirit of the Gospel under the common rules that had been past down to them. 

       In Clare’s rule for her order, she incorporated two fragments that St Francis wrote himself.  One fragment said this: "I, little brother Francis ... beseech you all, my ladies, and counsel you, to live always in this most holy life and poverty."  The emphasis was not on habits or cloisters or conformity.  The emphasis was on living the Gospel values and the simplicity of Christ’s original message that mattered most to Francis and Clare. In today’s Gospel, as Christ talks about the importance of forgiving others in our life of faith and the importance of feeling forgiven by God, we see this message conveyed in the words of Pope Francis in our modern era.  Pope Francis asserts:  “May the Church be a place of God’s mercy and hope, where all feel welcomed, loved, forgiven, and encouraged to live according to the good life of the Gospel.  And to make others feel welcomed, loved, forgiven, and encouraged, the Church must be with doors wide open so that all may enter.  And we must go out through these doors and proclaim the Gospel.” Let the Gospel message live in all of us, just as it did in St Clare and the members of her religious order.