SAINT CLARE OF ASSISI
LAUDATO SI’ FOR SISTER WATER

This was the new woman of the Spoleto valley,
who opened a new source of vital water
for the refreshment and benefit of souls.

BolCan 11

O[/]n this 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, the Franciscan world celebrates the feast of Saint Clare of Assisi. We then also want to dwell briefly on this figure (leaving the readers to read the texts of the Holy Mass). The reason is simple: Chiara still constitutes a powerful reminder of evangelical radicalism today. Francesco’s “Little Plant”, as she loved to define herself, is part of those women who saved their soul «by throwing it into the only possible place: Christ; women who therefore rule, like few others, a world thirsty for death. Segregated, isolated souls, crucified in a thousand ways… but unspeakably free and joyful” – as Cristina Campo said. Souls that give voice to what is silent, that celebrate the mute and hidden and, at the same time, more real and pulsating, side of Life in its infinite iridescence. Since an exhaustive portrait is impossible, we will read only one verse of the Canticle of the Creatures, the one dedicated to water, where Francis also celebrated the sweet figure of Chiara. In four words the Saint masterfully captured the contemplative experience of his most faithful follower.

Praised yes, my Lord, for Sister Aqua
which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.

Chiara is all here: a woman paradoxically more useful in her seclusion, richer and more precious, in her extreme poverty, than any noble woman or queen, more fruitful than ever, in her virginal love, than any daughter or wife or mother of this world. Yes, Chiara’s life was useful in hiding. Aren’t the hidden forces the ones that really count? Isn’t it perhaps the yeast that disappears in the dough that makes everything ferment so that the bread on the table every day is fragrant and plentiful? Chiara was also humble in her abandonment, entrusting herself to God, day by day, like a child to her mother, and eating from her hand like the sparrows in the sky. She was also precious in a poverty that was neither laziness nor convenience. She had understood that striving continually to fill oneself does not help us to exist as we would like. Rather, in the superabundance of self, God and others no longer find space to be considered in their otherness, but are forced to disappear. Chiara, was chaste in love, that is, she understood that love is the eternal thing of the person. Her message is ever timely; it still resonates in the Church and in the world through the Poor Clare nuns, in whom the face of this new woman shines brightly like the dawn of eternity.

Commento a cura di d. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Praglia

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey