Chiara Countdown: "Illuminating All the World"

I'm so sorry for not posting in ages.....I've been busy moving to my new "cloister" here in CT.

Since the joyous feast day of St. Clare is less than a month away, I'm going to start the "Chiara Countdown" by making posts all about Clare until Aug. 11!

The following excerpt is taken from the monumental book A Right To Be Merry, written by the well-known Poor Clare Colletine poet and author Mother Mary Francis.....

"St. Clare is a true mirror of Mary. She built no hospitals, made no political pronouncements, inaugurated no new systems of pedagogy, and wrote no books. In the world's eyes, she just did nothing at all. But who was she? Holy Church decleares that she was and is a light more shining than light itself. The Church delights to frolic with her name: Clare, light. The Office of her feast is shot through with the beams of that light which she was. And when the last speech had been made and the last atom shattered, St. Clare will still be a "bright light illuminating all the world."

She was a citadel of silence, and that is why she answers a crying need of our time. We have forgotten how to be silent: we have grown araid. Yet nothing truly great or enduring was ever yet or will ever be achieved without silence. "While all things were in quiet silence, thy almighty Word, O God, leaped down from Heaven." In the singing silences of eternity that Word was begotten in the bosom of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeded as their mutual love ablazed with silence." - Mother Mary Francis, A Right to be Merry