Commontide
Proper 13
Liturgical Color: White/Gold
The 10th Sunday after Trinity
Almighty and merciful God, it is only by your grace that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service: Grant that we may run without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Most liturgical texts are from the Book of Common Prayer (2019) of the Anglican Church in North America.
The New Coverdale Psalter, © 2019 by the Anglican Church in North America. Used by permission.
Abbess of San Damiano and Founder of the Order of Poor Ladies
Ecumenical Commemoration
Clare of Assisi (1194-1253) gave up a noble family and a good marriage to follow Francis into radical poverty, and founded the order of women that bears her name, the Poor Clares. She fought popes for forty years for the right to own nothing at all, even in common, and won approval of her Rule, the first written by a woman, two days before she died. Her four letters to Agnes of Prague, with their image of Christ as a mirror, are among the treasures of medieval spirituality.
Born Chiara di Favarone in 1194 to a noble Assisi family, Clare heard Francis of Assisi preach and was drawn to his vision of apostolic poverty. In 1212, at about eighteen, she left her family secretly on Palm Sunday night and joined Francis at the Portiuncula, where he received her into religious life.
Clare was established at San Damiano, where she lived for forty-one years, becoming abbess of a growing community of women — the Order of Poor Ladies, later called the Poor Clares. The defining struggle of her religious life was securing the Privilege of Poverty: the right for her community to own no property, not even collectively. This was unprecedented, as the papacy normally required religious houses to hold endowments for stability. Clare appealed to successive popes over decades, resisting attempts to impose property ownership on her community.
Two days before her death, Pope Innocent IV finally approved her Rule — the first monastic rule written by a woman to receive papal sanction. Clare's four surviving letters to Agnes of Prague, a Bohemian princess who had adopted the Clarian form of life, reveal a sophisticated contemplative theology centered on the image of Christ as mirror.
Clare endured chronic illness for nearly three decades of her abbacy but remained actively engaged in governance and spiritual direction. She died on August 11, 1253, and was canonized by Alexander IV in 1255.
Traditionally, Clare defended Assisi from Saracen attack in 1240 by processing to the walls carrying the Blessed Sacrament in a monstrance, at which the attackers fled. This episode is recorded in the canonization proceedings and by Thomas of Celano. Additional miracles are attested in the canonization process, including healings and her vision of attending Christmas Mass at the basilica of San Francesco while confined to her sickbed — this last tradition led to her designation as patron saint of television in 1958.