Today's Feast: St. Clare of Assisi

Today is my feast day, the feast of my beloved St. Clare, after whom my dear parents named me "Alice Claire." In this particular icon of her, she is holding a scroll that reads "Place your mind before the mirror of eternity." That comes from her third letter to her niece St. Agnes of Prague:

"Place your mind before the mirror of eternity!
Place your soul in the brilliance of glory!
Place your heart in the figure of the divine substance
and transform your entire being into the image
of the Godhead Itself through contemplation!
So that you too may feel what His friends feel
as they taste the hidden sweetness
that God Himself has reserved from the beginning
for those who love Him."

St. Clare is known for her terribly austere poverty. Her exterior poverty was an expression and a result of her deep interior poverty, the total abandonment of herself to God alone. The women who followed her into the cloister were originally known as the Poor Ladies of Assisi; today they're called the Poor Clares. Poverty was not a negation for St. Clare. As with all true Christian asceticism, her poverty was embraced for love, with love and by love. As Pope John Paul II wrote in his Letter for the Eighth Centenary of the Birth of St. Clare of Assisi, "For Clare, poverty -- which she loved so much and mentioned so often in her writings -- is the wealth of the soul which, stripped of its own goods, is open to the 'Spirit of the Lord and his holy manner of working' (cf. RCl X, 10), like an empty shell in which God can pour out an abundance of his gifts."

Having nothing, St. Clare possessed all things; poor as she was, she made many rich (2 Cor 6:10). She had found the pearl of great price, the King of Glory, and she would henceforth count all else as worthless for the sake of her Beloved Jesus (Phil 3:8). She would live her life for Him alone, her love burning with an ever brighter flame as she fed on His hidden sweetness and tasted the goodness of the Lord.

God of mercy, you inspired Saint Clare with the love of poverty. By the help of her prayers may we follow Christ in poverty of spirit and come to the joyful vision of your glory in the kingdom of heaven. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. ~Opening Prayer, Feast of St. Clare