Clare: Her Light and Her Song

From the Introduction:

After Vatican II Council issued its call to all communities to rediscover the charism of their founder/foundress, I realised that my concept of Saint Clare's charism was decidedly thin. In fact, she herself was a very hazy figure in my mind, more a name than a living person whose dream I was supposed to be incarnating in the twentieth century.

So in the mid-sixties I began asking the question and seeking the answers which have led me on a course of exciting discoveries about this wonderful woman named Clare. Gradually material from diverse sources began to flesh out the life, the times and the personality of Clare of Assisi. I encountered a woman who was one of the most well-known figures in the Church and Europe in her own country and who was described at her death as "the new captain of womankind."

Although there are not too many documents deriving directly from Clare or writings about her by contemporaries, they are sufficient to piece together a chronological development of her life. I also had the inestimable advantage of learning and writing about Clare from the inside out: that is, from within a cloister where her Rule and spirit were the guiding norm of daily life.

I have attempted to write not only Clare's life story but something of her dream, her song. I have tried to capture in some small measure a hint of the Light she became, a reflection of that Light which came into the world to illumine the hearts of all who would receive Him.