Saint Clare

                      

Saint Clare has figured large in my life since the first time I read about her, this woman who is called by the Catholic Church simply Virgin Not Martyr, and who has a memorial but not a great feast. In the long ago time when I wanted to take a different sort of religious vow than I took as a dewin, I remember reading the book, For The Love of God, and reading about the Poor Clares them gathering on the eight hundredth anniversary of the death of Clare. For me Clare has always been a saint whose spirit, when invoked, pervades a place with the desire for simplicity and the love of God. To me, if she is second to any saint, it is only Mary Magdalene. Her call for poverty, should probably be understood in modern times as a call to absolute "simplicity" She was Clara, or Clarity, and she is the saint of Clear Vision. Her poverty was a desire to be stripped of anything which came between her and the experience of God. She was also known for clair audience, clairvoyance and claire.... videance, having received on the wall of her room visions from God. This last story made her the patron saint of television because this is the way we bastardize the profound.

I am thinking now of the moment in Brother Sun Sister Moon when Clare comes to Saint Francis to be consecrated and he cuts away her lovely blond hair. She has a look of absolute freedom and joy as she puts on the brown robe and veil and goes off to start her order. Clare is the saint of freedom and devotion to the Beloved. She stands right beside Saint Francis. 

Clare is the Lady of Lammas. Many of the great feasts in what has come to be called (perhaps erroneously) the witch's year last over several days, not one, and at least Lammas, Samhain, Yule and Beltane stretch eleven or twelve days before being concluded by a holy day or a Saint's Day. Lammas concludes with Saint Clare who is always portrayed carrying a paten in which the Eucharistic Host is contained, always shining like the sun. There is a legend tied to this, but legends are often ways of explaining images. The image is the first thing. The Lammas Load that ends Extraordinary Time is another form of the Eucharistic Host which begins it with Corpus Christi, and at the end of Lammas, behold Clare holding the Bread of Life, and so rather than trying to beat the mystery to death with junior explanations, we rejoice in the presence of one who is so close to the Divine Presence for whom we long.

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