Dom Prosper Guéranger: St. Clare’s Life of Heroic Virtue Opened St. Francis’ Style of Ascetic Life to Holy Women

By Dom Prosper Guéranger, LifeSiteNews, Aug 12, 2024

This text is taken from The Liturgical Year, authored by Dom Prosper Guéranger (1841-1875). LifeSiteNews is grateful to The Ecu-Men website for making this classic work easily available online.

St. Clare, spiritual daughter of St. Francis, ruled her Poor Clares for 42 years and worked many miracles, before departing for God.

(LifeSiteNews) — The same year in which St. Dominic, before making any project with regard to his sons, founded the first establishment of the Sisters of his order, the companion destined for him by heaven received his mission from the Crucifix in the church of St. Damian, in these words: “Go, Francis, repair my house which is falling to ruin.”

The new patriarch inaugurated his work, as Dominic had done, by preparing a dwelling for his future daughters, whose sacrifice might obtain every grace for the great order he was about to found. The house of the Poor Ladies occupied the thoughts of the seraph of Assisi, even before St. Mary of the Portiuncula, the cradle of the Friars Minor. Thus, for a second time this month, Eternal Wisdom shows us that the fruit of salvation, though it may seem to proceed from the word and from action, springs first from silent contemplation. …

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