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Audio Course: St. Francis of Assisi: A New Way of Being Christian
Blog Author: Br. William Short
This weekend we will celebrate Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. For two thousand years Christians have recalled the events of the final days of the life of our Lord, beginning with Palm Sunday, passing through Holy Thursday and Good Friday, to the rest of Holy Saturday and the glory of Easter.
Saint Francis and Saint Clare of Assisi knew this same rhythm of the great feast of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus. Inspired by the preaching of “Brother Francis,” and her conversations with him, “Lady Clare” of the nobility of Assisi embraced the way of Gospel. But she did it in a way that would give rise to scandal. On the night of Palm Sunday (probably in the year 1212, when that Sunday fell on March 18), “Lady Clare,” about eighteen years of age, with a faithful companion broke through the side-door of her family home in the “uptown” part of Assisi and hurried out of town, down toward the old dilapidated chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, in the part of “suburban” Assisi known as the “porziuncola,” the ‘little portion,” near the leper colonies where the city’s “infected” citizens lived out their lives in isolation. But there were friends waiting to welcome her at that little chapel among the lowly and despised “infected” of the town, Brother Francis and the other brothers of the new group calling themselves “penitents of Assisi.” She was joining their “brotherhood!” That didn’t seem to bother any of them. Now they had a “sister,” in addition to having brothers.
They stood with her and her companion in the little church dedicated to Saint Mary “of Los Angeles” — (yes, that is where the city in California gets its name from its Franciscan founders!) and Francis cut off her hair and gave her the clothing of a “penitent” (a devout Christian dedicated to following the Gospel). Accompanied by the brothers, Clare went to spend the night (and the rest of a tumultuous Holy Week!) with the Benedictine nuns at the Abbey of San Paolo delle Badesse, one of the most noble, and one of the most stringently protected local monasteries for women (by the authority of Pope Innocent III).
Tune in soon to find out a little more about the “debutante ball” on the morning of that Palm Sunday in 1212, which “Lady Clare” boycotted, and how in the world she turned out to be the “Patron Saint of Television” fifty years ago …