Collect taken from the feast of St. Clare of Assisi, virgin.
Collect: O God, who in your mercy led Saint Clare to a love of poverty, grant, through her intercession, that, following Christ in poverty of spirit, we may merit to contemplate you one day in the heavenly Kingdom. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son…
“O God, who in your mercy led Saint Clare to a love of poverty,”
– We take seriously Jesus’ call to poverty. We see that in the fact that call it “mercy” when God leads someone, like Clare, to love poverty. How contrary to the world!
“grant, through her intercession, that, following Christ in poverty of spirit, we may merit to contemplate you one day in the heavenly Kingdom.”
– We do not ask to imitate Clare exactly, but to follow poverty of spirit. That kind of detachment and dependence on God is absolutely essential if we are to ever merit heaven. And the reason for this is seen in this request: our goal is to contemplate God directly, but we cannot contemplate the infinite God if our hearts and minds are filled with finite material things.
Questions & Advice: Do you love poverty? Would you consider that kind of love merciful or sad? What is the first thing you think of in the morning and the last before you go to sleep?
Read about Heaven in the Catechism (1023-29). Spend some of your prayer asking God to increase your desire for heaven until it pushes the love of other things out of your heart. Try fasting from something (food, drink, tv, internet) today as a way of cultivating a love of poverty.
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| Sancta Clara, ora pro nobis! |