Clare’s Encouragement: Go Forward and Stay There

This blog continues our Lent 2021 series of reflections on the Franciscan Intellectual-Spiritual Tradition by a variety of women and men Franciscans.

“We’ll get together when it’s safe.” How many times have you said this, or something like it, this past year? Who are you missing most this Lent? In your Christian vocation, who has been your greatest encourager recently?

The need to connect with loved ones

In this Lenten season of opportunity and loss, I have found Clare of Assisi to be a good friend and encourager. I am rereading her letters to Agnes of Prague, someone Clare grew to love but probably never expected to meet this side of heaven.

As I have needed to connect with others while distanced, so Clare and Agnes needed to connect with each other—in much more difficult circumstances! I have needed my loved ones to remind me who I really am, who I am called to be. Clare met this need for many friends, over many years. We do not know what Agnes of Prague shared with Clare, but in the few responses we have from Clare, there is deep, dynamic encouragement. I believe we can make that encouragement our own.

Always be mindful

In 1235, nine years after Francis died, Clare’s Second Letter to Agnes urges the Bohemian princess-turned-penitent to “always be mindful” of her commitment. Clare writes from her little space at San Damiano:

What you hold, may you hold,
What you do, may you do and not stop. (11)

The path of prudent happiness

The cloistered woman of Assisi goes on to write about movement like someone who is utterly unconfined in any way:

But with swift pace, light step, unswerving feet,
so that even your steps stir up no dust,
may you go forward
securely, joyfully, and swiftly,
on the path of prudent happiness . . . (12,13)

When was the last time you felt you were going forward “securely, joyfully, and swiftly”? What was drawing you? Who was with you then?

The going will not always be easy

Clare next signals that the going will not always be easy. But you knew that already, didn’t you? Go forward, she tells her friend,

believing nothing,
agreeing with nothing
that would dissuade you from this commitment
or would place a stumbling block for you on the way. . . (14)

Go forward, and stay there

Like Paul, who did not “run aimlessly” (1 Corinthians 9:23-27), and Francis, who prayed we might “follow His most holy commands even to the end” (Office of the Passion), Clare understands the stakes are very high for her friend. Agnes has been called by the Spirit:

so that nothing prevents you from offering
your vows to the Most High in the perfection
to which the Spirit of the Lord has called you. (14)

Go forward, and stay there, Clare says.

The cost of commitment

She certainly knew the cost of such commitment. When Francis—her own spiritual father and brother—died, she was not among those able to be at his deathbed. I have thought about this kind of separation a lot in the last year, at too many bedsides. The separations we have been asked to bear have been hard, and harder still for some of us.