This morning I found myself drawn to the writings of Clare of Assisi. I can’t really identify why precisely, but I think it had something to do with a desire to again uncover the wisdom of my religious tradition during this season of hopeful waiting.
Advent is really a wonderful time during which I find myself more aware of the rhythm of the spiritual life than I would otherwise observe. I usually find Advent to be a time when I am most grateful for the great gift of religious life in community, where each day begins and ends with the prayer of the Church and the communal reflection on the millennia-old psalms, the prayers of God’s chosen people dating back many centuries before Christ.
This morning I found Clare’s wisdom on poverty to be particularly pertinent during this liturgical season. At a time when you and I are blasted by advertising for Christmas shopping and a collective-cultural emphasis on material possessions, Clare’s writing to Agnes of Prague offers us something (dare I say) “counter-cultural.” It is an admonition for us to re-focus our energies from the fleeting, material and self-centered world of acquisition and possession to a more Christ-centered and self-giving world of humility found in a stance of evangelical poverty.
First Letter to Agnes of Prague
By St. Clare of Assisi (an excerpt)
O blessed poverty,
who bestows eternal riches
on those who love and embrace her!
O holy poverty,
God promises the kingdom of heaven
and, beyond any doubt, reveals eternal glory
and blessed life to those who have and desire her!
O God-centered poverty,
whom the Lord Jesus Christ
Who ruled and still rules heaven and earth,
Who spoke and things were made,
came down to embrace before all else!
