Clare puts forth the tremendous mystery of the human person both as rich and poor. The mystery can be stated in this way: We are rich in our poverty but we must possess poverty to know our wealth in God. Clare does not see the meaning of poverty as living in deprivation but living fulfilled in God. Her understanding of poverty is paradoxical. To embrace poverty is to be endowed with riches; to possess and desire poverty is to receive God’s promise of the kingdom of heaven. The poor person is not the one in need of material things but the one in need of God and the one who needs God possesses God and to possess God is to possess all.
Clare desired to follow Francis’s evangelical way of life and may indeed have done so in the early part of her career. Although she described herself as “la piantacella,” the little plant of Francis, she was clearly no wilting flower. She had a strong, independent spirit and a real desire to join in Francis’ evangelical project. Whereas Francis saw poverty as the means for living authentic gospel life, Clare fought for the “privilege of poverty,” because poverty was the key to Christian life. The Incarnation spoke to her of the “poverty of God” manifested in God’s self-giving love.
You don’t need a lot of elaborate statistics to know that there are billions of people who are suffering crushing poverty at this very moment. If you start to pay attention, you feel this inside yourself. We may often distract ourselves or deny it, but there’s no getting around the fact that we are connected in more ways and to a greater extent than we can ever fathom. The deeper we go in our spiritual practice, the more obvious and undeniable these connections become.
Being present to the poor through friendship, solidarity, and service isn’t just a helpful set of moral principles. It’s a virtuous circle, with each feeding and amplifying the others, and all leading to a more authentic way of being in the world. Because when we make room for these in our life, we’re making room for love, the common bond that can bridge any gulf poverty may create.
Clare recalled these new beginnings in later years. That she and her sisters had survived the painful trials of the foundation was not nearly as surprising to her as it was to Francis. “When the blessed Francis saw, however, that although we were physically weak and frail, we did not shirk deprivation, poverty, hard work, trial or the shame or contempt of the world—rather we considered them as great delights, as he had frequently examined us according to the example of the saints and his brothers—he greatly rejoiced in the Lord” (Testament, 27-29). Taking each word of this recollection on its merits, we must imagine that the early years of life in San Damiano were a continual struggle at levels material, social, and spiritual.
Bl. Margaret of Castello (1287–1320) was born to noble Italian parents who were awaiting the birth of the child of their dreams. Instead, they bore a daughter who was blind, dwarfed, lame, and hunchbacked. Margaret’s parents were horrified by the physical appearance of their newborn child, so they hid her and kept her existence secret. A servant had her baptized and named her Margaret, meaning, “Pearl.” When she was six years of age she was nearly discovered, so that her father confined her to a cell inside the wall of a church with her necessities given through a window. The parish priest took it upon himself to educate Margaret. She lived in this way until age sixteen, when her parents took her on pilgrimage to a shrine famous for miraculous healings. There they prayed earnestly for their daughter to be cured of her deformities, which they loathed. When no cure came, her parents abandoned her in the streets and returned home, never to see her again. Margaret begged for food and was helped by the town’s poor who took turns sheltering her in their homes. She became a Dominican Tertiary and took up the work of serving the sick, dying, and imprisoned. Margaret was known for her great joy, sanctity, and profound mystical experiences. She died at the age of 33, and hundreds of miracles were credited to her intercession both before and after her death. Her body is incorrupt. She is the patron against poverty, and of the disabled, handicapped, and unwanted. Her feast day is April 13th.
“The Divine Heart is an ocean full of all good things, wherein poor souls can cast all their needs; it is an ocean full of joy to drown all our sadness, an ocean of humility to drown our folly, an ocean of mercy to those in distress, an ocean of love in which to submerge our poverty.”— St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
