Clare of Assisi was born into a noble family in the Italian town of Assisi in the late 12th century. As a very young woman, against the wishes of her family, she renounced her wealth. And through the influence and guidance of Francis of Assisi, she entered into the life of a religious contemplative. She lived for most of her life at the convent of San Damiano just outside of Assisi, where she remained until her death, leading a life of contemplation and manual labour. There, she founded The Order of Poor Ladies (now called the Order St Clare or the “Poor Clares”), a monastic order for women in the Franciscan tradition.
Clare is remembered today for many things. For her love of animals and nature, and it is said that she had such a rapport with her cat that it used to bring things that she needed to her when she was ill in bed.
She is remembered for her austerity. Her order practised strict poverty, and did not own anything – not even common property. They were reliant solely on what could be begged for them by the Franciscan Friars. Clare and her sisters dressed like peasants, ate no meat, and they fasted regularly – perhaps even to the extreme. Up until her death, Clare defended the right of her order to absolute poverty from repeated attempts to water it down by the papal authorities – absolute poverty not seeming practicable for cloistered women.
Clare is also remembered for her influence – although she lived in poverty she was nonetheless a noble woman. Many other women followed her into the convent – including her sister, her mother, and also Agnes of Prague – now St Agnes – who may otherwise have become the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. Clare was a dear friend and advisor to Francis of Assisi, and was sought out for advice even by the Pope.
And Clare is remembered for her miracles, both large and small – she is credited with twice saving Assisi from military attack, and it is said that she once witnessed a mass at which she was not physically present.
Clare’s is an amazing story. But what can we take from it today? The designation of Clare as the patron saint of television (due to her vision of the mass) is one way that her life was made relevant for a modern context. But what I would really like to reflect on this morning is Clare’s choice for material poverty. What does her example have to say to use in a world of climate change, of social inequality, and most recently it must be said, of massive financial bailouts and feared recession?
We have seen an increase in reporting on and awareness of climate change over the last couple of years. According to polling at the last election, the environment was as important an election issue for voters as the economy. But polling from last week indicated that environmental concern has dropped in the face of the financial crisis. This doesn’t bode well for environmental protection, or so it might seem.
I don’t want to make light of the notion of a global recession, but the paradox is that it would probably be good for the environment. Reducing GDP would also reduce greenhouse gas pollution – not surprisingly in a fossil-fuelled economy. This association between ecological footprint and economic activity is also true on a micro level. Survey work on consumer behaviour suggest that the biggest predictor of individuals’ ecological footprints in industrialised countries is not how concerned we are about environmental issues – it’s actually about how much money we have. There are exceptions, but on the whole, the more money we have, the greater our footprint.
And yet, to suggest that we should plan to try to produce or consume not just differently but actually less in the face of environmental limits seems to be a political impossibility. Imagine trying to “sell” Clare’s lifestyle. I can just see it on ABC news online: “During a visit to a shopping mall in Sydney's western suburbs to celebrate St Francis of Assisi Day, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd urged working families everywhere to simplify their lifestyles.”
The world of climate politics is an interesting one. Carbon sequestration, or carbon capture and storage – where the flue gases produced from the burning of coal are captured and reinjected into the earth at many times less concentration is one questionable development. (Off-shore sequestration – where we export our coal across the ocean out of sight, out of mind – is another!)
The achievements of the international agreement on climate change – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol – have been ambiguous. The UNFCCC has not delivered global emissions cuts. What it has done is to reduce forestry, fossil fuel extraction, industrial production, and their complex human and ecological systems to the common currency of carbon – tradeable in the carbon market. What it has done is to set up emission reduction projects in developing countries with questionable social justice impacts, while greenhouse pollution in the industrialised world continues unabated. Carbon trading – born and bred in the richest nation in the world, the USA – is the only real game in town.
The solutions to climate change are seen to be held by those with wealth and power. According to this view, what we need to do is to use our wealth to harness clean technologies, and to assist developing countries to leap frog onto the path of clean industrialisation instead of using polluting technologies. We need to help them to fulfil their development aspirations, we need to “Make Poverty History”.
But what if the people with the solutions to climate change are not really our political or business leaders? What if the real leaders on climate change are the communities across the globe who are mobilising to defend their lands against fossil fuel extraction, and work for sustainable local energy, water and food provision? (Eg. The people of Phulbari in Bangladesh). “The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the Kingdom” (Mt 21:43), says Matthew’s Jesus to the Jewish leadership of the day. Perhaps our hope for a solution to climate change should look more to the grass roots – grass roots communities here, and also poor peasant communities abroad. Perhaps they are the ones with whom the hope of God’s kingdom of justice, peace, and integrity of creation rests. Perhaps well-off middle class people like me should strive to join them in solidarity. Perhaps we should also be taking steps to give up our material wealth and to move towards their way of living. Perhaps we should do more manual work to produce what we consume – grow our food, make our own clothes, produce our own energy. Or maybe that just sounds crazy and implausible.
In a paper called “The Poverty of Morality”, anthropologist Daniel Miller criticises those in developed countries who moralise reducing how much we consume. The problem is, he says, that they themselves aren’t personally willing to make the dramatic changes to their lifestyles that they advocate.
But Francis, Clare, and their companions did make these lifestyle changes. And it is not as if choosing to be downwardly mobile and join the peasant class in their society was a normal thing to do. The Franciscan order was one of the very first to practise absolute poverty. But their poverty was not self-denial for no reward, or a denial of the importance of the material world. It was about a different way of living in the material world that drew them closer to God. They sought to imitate Jesus Christ in the way that they lived, and in doing so to commune with him. And in communing with him, in turn, to conform their lives ever closer to his. Because of his dedication to clothing the naked, feeding the hungry and sheltering the homeless, Francis was known as the alter Christus, another Christ, and Clare in turn was called the alter Franciscus, another Francis. They, like Paul in today’s epistle, sought to “know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death” (Ph 4:10), and “for his sake” to “suffer the loss of all things” (v9).
In a letter to Agnes of Prague, Clare describes Jesus Christ as the mirror that is the source of her contemplation. “Behold, I say, the birth of this mirror”, she writes. “Behold his poverty even as he was laid in the manger and wrapped in swaddling clothes. What wondrous humility, what marvellous poverty! The King of angels, the Lord of heaven and earth resting in a manger! Look more deeply into the mirror and meditate on his humility, or simply on his poverty. Behold the many labours and suffering he endured to redeem the human race. Then, in the depths of this very mirror, ponder his unspeakable love which caused him to suffer on the wood of the cross and to endure the most shameful kind of death”. In much more feminine terms than Paul, she says “Queen and bride of Jesus Christ, look into that mirror daily and study well your reflection, that you may adorn yourself, mind and body, with an enveloping garment of every virtue, and thus find yourself attired in flowers and gowns befitting the daughter and most chaste bride of the king on high”.
Many centuries on, the story of Clare has passed into the realm of legend. We can be in danger of distancing ourselves from her. Either on the one hand by viewing her as a hero who achieved super-human feats, or on the other by romanticising her life and making light of her struggles, her illness and frailty. Either way we deny her humanity and her story loses its capacity to motivate us. And if we distance ourselves from Clare, perhaps we are also in danger of distancing ourselves from the humanity of Jesus Christ that she so affirmed. For those of us for whom material wealth is abundant, what does or would it mean to say along with Clare and along with Paul that “Christ is my only wealth”?
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