Emu­lat­ing Fran­cis and Clare

From the Renovaré Newsletter Archive

The selection below is from a January 1997 Renovaré newsletter. Download a PDF of the original newsletter.

In our day of anti-heros, we need exam­ples of faith­ful liv­ing that we can gen­uine­ly admire. So from time-to-time (often at the begin­ning of a new year), we at Ren­o­varé hope to fea­ture par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­u­als that are ster­ling mod­els of Chris­t­ian spir­i­tu­al­i­ty for us. In this issue we look at two such indi­vid­u­als — Fran­cis and Clare who were both from Assisi, a small town in North­ern Italy. Togeth­er they laid the foun­da­tion for the world-wide Fran­cis­can movement.

The ​“Fri­ars Minor” (as they called them­selves) became the most dynam­ic spir­i­tu­al move­ment of the thir­teenth cen­tu­ry, draw­ing thou­sands into their ranks and inspir­ing tens of thou­sands more to a deep­er devo­tion to Christ. Fran­cis and Clare were at the heart of this spir­i­tu­al explo­sion, Fran­cis set­ting the pat­tern for the men’s expres­sion of the move­ment and Clare for the women.

Com­bi­na­tions to Emulate

The delight­ful sto­ries of Fran­cis and Clare have been recount­ed well over the years. What I want to stress here is the unique com­bi­na­tions we find in their lives — com­bi­na­tions that make them espe­cial­ly invit­ing mod­els for us today even though we live in dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent circumstances.

First, between Fran­cis and Clare them­selves we find a won­der­ful com­bi­na­tion of devot­ed friend­ship which at the same time is free from sex­u­al over­tones. In Fran­cis and Clare we see the deep­est care and most pas­sion­ate respect for one anoth­er with­out the slight­est hint of eroti­cism. This is a pow­er­ful les­son to us who live in a cul­ture that makes ​“love” and ​“sex” vir­tu­al synonyms.

Sec­ond, we see intense con­tem­pla­tion com­bined with evan­ge­lis­tic fer­vor. When Fran­cis asked Clare for coun­sel on whether he should devote him­self to con­tem­pla­tive prayer or to evan­ge­lis­tic preach­ing, she wise­ly replied that God want­ed him to do both. What an instruc­tive mod­el for us today.

Third, we dis­cov­er a rad­i­cal cri­tique of the Church com­bined with a pro­found love for the Church. When St. Fran­cis heard the divine Word, ​“rebuild my church,” he went about obey­ing that com­mand in such a way that called into ques­tion every crav­ing for pos­ses­sions, every han­ker­ing after sta­tus, every yearn­ing for hon­or. Yet, through it all it is impos­si­ble to ques­tion Fran­cis’ great devo­tion and con­cern and love for the Church, the com­mu­ni­ty of Faith. It is a com­bi­na­tion we would do well to imitate.

Fourth, we find an authen­tic charis­mat­ic lead­er­ship com­bined with a pro­found com­mit­ment to Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty. In our day gift­ed lead­ers are sore­ly tempt­ed to go their own way with­out regard for either the tra­di­tions that have gone on before them or the guid­ance and coun­sel of those around them. But for both Fran­cis and Clare sub­mis­sion and obe­di­ence to Chris­t­ian author­i­ty were cen­tral to their call­ing. In this they teach us.

Fifth, we learn from these two how to have an eco­log­i­cal sen­si­tiv­i­ty that refus­es to deify cre­ation. Fran­cis could express the deep­est rev­er­ence for nature — tam­ing the wolf of Gub­bio, preach­ing to the birds, writ­ing his can­ti­cle to ​“Broth­er Sun and Sis­ter Moon” — with­out ever wor­ship­ing nature. Con­sis­tent­ly he called upon all of the cre­ation — Broth­er Wind and Sis­ter Water, Broth­er Fire and Sis­ter Moth­er Earth, as well as the entire human cre­ation — to ​“Praise and bless my Lord (God) and give Him thanks and serve Him with great humil­i­ty.” It is sol­id guid­ance for us today.

These, I believe, are com­bi­na­tions that we can all appre­ci­ate and embrace. And I would hope we will find many inven­tive ways to inte­grate these com­bi­na­tions into our day-to-day experience.