Your
God is King!
This prophetic declaration deeply
resonated in the heart of St. Francis of Assisi .
I am
the herald of the Great King,
he proclaimed at the beginning of his conversion
to Christ.
You
have made yourselves daughters and handmaids of the Most High Sovereign
King,
he wrote to St. Clare and her first Sisters at San Damiano.
Your
God is King!
St. Clare did not hesitate to expand on
this reality when she corresponded with her faithful disciple, the future
St. Agnes of Prague .
Agnes was the daughter of a king and the
sister of a king.
She could have become the wife of a king,
too, except she responded to Christ’s call to leave everything to live for
Him as an
heiress and queen of the kingdom of heaven.
This vocational decision, the Seraphic
Mother wrote, made Agnes not only
the
daughter of the King of kings
but also
the sister
and spouse of the Most High King of heaven.
Clare
bids Agnes (and us):
Behold JESUS as
the eternal
King of heaven, seated in glory on a starry throne.
Behold Him who is
the King of
angels
enthroned in the poverty and humility of the
manger.
Look long and often at the crucifix and see
there the
Lamb of God, the eternal King to whom you have
been wondrously espoused!
Contemplate
the King of
all ages,
stripped of glory, yet reigning triumphant from
the tree of the Cross. Yearn to be eternally united with
the King of
all ages
when you cross the threshold of death and enter
His kingdom.
This
awareness of Christ’s Kingship is at the center of Clarian spirituality.
In all her writings, we can almost hear
Clare take up the invitation issued in Psalm 24 and make it her own:
Let
the King
of glory
enter!
Psalm 24 also poses a question: Who
IS
the King of
glory? It is a question to which the Lady
Clare responded:
IT IS THE
LORD!
Jesus truly
was the
ruling force in the Seraphic Mother’s life. She lived obedient to Him and
according to His Will.
She was open to the guidance of His Holy
Spirit, docile to His holy way of working in her soul, in her community, in
the ecclesial and social currents of her time.
St.
Clare lived with a graciousness and nobility befitting one espoused to the
King of heaven.
She was sensitive to His Presence at
prayer, at work, and even as she recreated with her Sisters.
In fact, Clare was always on the lookout
for King Jesus, so much so that as she lay dying, she turned to one of her
Sisters and asked,
the King of
glory
Do
you, daughter, see as I do?
But what about us, who live in an age far removed from that of St. Clare, in a society in which royalty has little to do with daily life?
Firstly,
we can learn from St. Clare’s FAITH.
We can experience life as she did, as an
unending procession of events flowing from the hand of a merciful King and
leading to His Heart.
We can make our own the liturgical refrain
which unequivocally declares,
King of all the ages, Your ways are perfect and
true!
Then
we can expand our understanding of prayer as homage to the Great King.
Perhaps we can even take up St. Paul’s
magnificent hymn to Christ the King and make it an integral part of our
prayer:
To the King of ages,
immortal, invisible, the only God,
be honor and glory forever and ever.
Amen!
