Clare of Assisi did not elaborate on the poverty of the human person but she knew it in the depths of her soul. She fought for the “privilege of poverty” because she knew that if she failed to be dependent on others, she would ultimately fail to be dependent on God. Like Francis, she firmly believed in a God enfleshed in fragile human […]

Image: Stained glass window in Église Saint-Honoré-d’Eylau, Paris | photo by Mbzt’s Saint Jane Frances de Chantal Saint of the Day for August 12 (January 28, 1572 – December 13, 1641) https://www.franciscanmedia.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/SODAug12.mp3  Saint Jane Frances de Chantal’s Story Jane Frances was wife, mother, nun, and founder of a religious community. Her mother died when she was 18 months old, and her father, head of parliament at Dijon, France, became the main influence on her education. Jane developed into a woman of beauty and refinement, lively and cheerful in temperament. At 21, she married Baron de Chantal, by whom she had six children, three of whom died in infancy. At her castle, she restored the custom of daily Mass, and was seriously engaged in various charitable works. Jane’s husband was killed after seven years of marriage, and she sank into deep dejection for four months at her family home. Her father-in-law threatened to disinherit her […]

Reading 1 EZ 9:1-7; 10:18-22 The LORD cried loud for me to hear: Come, you scourges of the city! With that I saw six men coming from the direction of the upper gate which faces the north, each with a destroying weapon in his hand. In their midst was a man dressed in linen, with a writer’s […]