Clare of Assisi

 Saint Clare of Assisi

Memorial
11 August

Growing up in the Bronx, I lived around the corner from the Church named after Our Saint for today. My parents put my Sisters in that school to get a quality Catholic education. The Sisters who staffed that school were not really well versed in the English language so when my sister Marie (the dead one) came home calling the 16th president of the United States “Aboram O’Lincol,” they pulled them out of there in a big big hurry and enrolled them in Our Lady of Solace (OLS) where the nuns were Irish but at least spoke English. OLS was ½ a mile away from my house and I had to walk there every day. When I got older and no longer went to OLS I cheated and went around the corner to Saint Claire’s for Sunday Mass. Because the Boy Scout troop at Saint Claire’s didn’t require my Father to volunteer as an assistant on camping trips for me to join the program, like the other troops in the neighborhood did, that became the home to my Scout life. Dad didn’t like to work for anything that didn’t pay money.

Anyhoo…. Clare’s father was a count, her mother the countess both religious in their way, even though the Count checked out early when Claire was still very young. Once when Claire heard Saint Francis preach in the streets and became hooked, she found her calling. Francis and Claire became close friends.

In 1212 along with her cousin Pacifica, Clare ran away from the family palace in the middle of the night and joined the convent. She eventually took her final vows from Saint Francis himself at the Church of Our Lady of the Angels in Assisi, Italy.

Clare founded the Order of Poor Ladies now called the Poor Clares in the same town as Francis and led it for 40 years. In fact The Poor Claries followed the Franciscans wherever they went depending solely on the kindness of strangers; alms, forced to have complete faith on God to provide through people; this lack of land-based revenues was a new idea at the time.

Clare was a peaceful, holy, thoughtful, optimistic person…a real sweet lady it seems. She should speak to Sister Mary Muriel; my arch nemesis maybe. For example, she would get up late at night to check on her nuns and help them if they had kicked off their blankets or were distressed in any way. 

She was a deeply spiritual woman full of faith, once when her convent was about to be attacked by malcontents, she displayed the Sacrament in a monstrace at the convent gates, and prayed before it; the attackers left. Whenever you see Claire, she is holding the Monstrance.

It seems Her patronage of sore eyes is not because she is also the patronage of Television like my mother told me; actually this patronage may have developed from her name which has overtones from clearness, brightness, brilliance – like healthy eyes.

On her deathbed, she became too ill to attend Mass, so the Lord provided an image of the service on the wall of her cell; the first widescreen TV and televised service. This is why Pius XII declared her patroness of television.

Born
16 July 1194 at Assisi, Italy

Died
11 August 1253 of natural causes

Patronage
against sore eyes
embroiderers
eyes
for good weather
gilders
gold workers
goldsmiths
laundry workers
needle workers
telegraphs
telephones
television
television writers

Representation
monstrance
woman with a monstrance in her hand