Blessed Clara Gambacorta, Widow, Nun/ Blessed Mary Mancini, Widow and Nun

 

Blessed Clara Gambacorta, Widow, Nun/ Blessed Mary Mancini, Widow and Nun

 

 

Tribue nobis, miséricors Deus, spiritum oratiônis et paeniténtiœ, ut, Beate Clara vestigiis inharéntes, corénam quam ipsa in célis accépit, obtinére mereâmur. Per Dôminum.

 

Grant to us, O merciful God, the spirit of prayer and penitence, that following the footsteps of blessed Clara, we may be worth to obtain the crown she received in heaven.

 

Deus, gratiae largitor et maerentium consolator, qui Beatam Mariam admirabili patentia invictaque animi constantia in adversis vitae roborasti, ipsius nobis intercession concede ut, voluntati tuae sincere corde obsequentes, per varias vitae semitas fideliter ambulemus. Per Dominum.

 

O God, the giver of grace and the consoler of those who mourn, who strengthened Blessed Mary with wondrous patience and invincible constancy in adversity of life, grant to us by her intercession that following your will with a sincere heart, we may walk faithfully in the various paths of life.

 

 

Blessed Clara Gambacorta is a widow and Dominican nun who was known for her and her community's religious observance and her great charity and forgiveness.

 

Born in Pisa in A.D. 1362, Blessed Clara's father became the governor of Pisa when she was seven years old and betrothed her to a young man named Simon di Massa. Although chosen for marriage by her parents, Blessed Cara was devoted, tradition tells, to living a life entirely for God. At the age of 12 Blessed Clara was forced to submit to marriage, but her husband left immediately after the marriage to fight in foreign wars and died in 1377 without ever returning to Pisa. Now a widow at the age of 15, Blessed Clara was determined to join a religious order, but her parents were intent on seeing her remarried.

 

In the face of her parents' opposition, Blessed Clara cut off all her hair, gave all she owned to the poor, and, wearing rough penitential clothes, entered the local Convent of the Poor Clares. In her choice of a religious life, Blessed Clara was encouraged in letters by Saint Catherine of Sienna, whom she had met on the Saint's visit to Pisa two years earlier. In the convent, she exchanged her baptismal name, Thora, for the religious name of Clara. However, she was not in the convent long because her brother, with an armed force, removed her from the convent and took her home where she was kept for many months against her will. However, on the feast of Saint Dominic, Clara's sister-in-law took her to mass a the local Dominican church where she received a call to the religious life as a Dominican.

 

Finally, through patience, Blessed Clara overcame the objections of her family and was allowed to join the Dominican Convent of the Holy Cross outside Pisa.

 

While the Convent of the Holy Cross had a devout and pious spirit, it was not a place of strict religious observance. So, after four years Blessed Clara, and four others, moved into a new convent dedicated to Saint Dominic and built for them by Peter Gambacorta, where strict religious observance was kept by Blessed Clara and her fellow sisters.

 

Blessed Clara was soon chosen as the prioress of the new convent and from it several sisters went on to reform communities throughout the region. The community was renowned for its religious observance and even was responsible for initiating a reform of friars because of their example and prayers.

 

Tradition tells of Count Galeazzo who one day was praying in front of a crucifix in a half-ruined church in the city. From the crucifix came a voice asking that the Count carry it to the Covent of Saint Dominic. While the Count was enroute to the convent, Blessed Clara heard a voice that urged her to the convent's door to meet her spouse. At the door she found Count Galeazzo and the crucifix, which she accepted with great deoviton and hung it above the convent's high altar.

 

Although Blessed Clara's convent lived in strict religious observance, it was a community known for its charity. No poor person who approached the convent was left unaided. And, Blessed Clara organized out-sisters who would work in institutions around Pisa ministering to those in need under the direction of Blessed Clara. As well, Blessed Clara was a spiritual guide for many through her wise counsel and letters. Known for her prudence and charity, Blessed Clara even pardoned the assassins of her father and brothers, even giving the assassin's widow and daughters safe refuge in the convent. Blessed Clara also prized study and encouraged her sisters to do so too.

 

Blessed Clara died on 17 April 1419, at the age of 57. Tradition tells that many miracles and signal graces have been obtained by the intercession of Blessed Clara. She was beatified by Pope Pius VIII.

 

Blessed Mary Mancini:

 

    Catherine Mancini was born in Pisa, of noble parentage, and almost in babyhood began enjoying the miraculous favors with which her life was filled. At the age of three, she was warned by some heavenly agency that the porch on which she had been placed by a nurse was unsafe. Her cries attracted the nurse's attention, and they had barely left the porch when it collapsed. When she was five, she beheld in an ecstasy the dungeon of a place in Pisa in which Peter Gambacorta, one of the leading citizens, was being tortured. At Catherine's prayer, the rope broke and the man was released. Our Lady told the little girl to say prayers every day for this man, because he would one day be her benefactor.

 

 

 

    Catherine would have much preferred the religious life to marriage, but she obeyed her parents and was married at the age of twelve. Widowed at sixteen, she was compelled to marry again. Of her seven children, only one survived the death of her second husband., and Catherine learned through a vision that this child, too, was soon to be taken from her. Thus she found herself, at the age of twenty five, twice widowed and bereft of all her children. Refusing a third marriage, she devoted herself to prayers and works of charity.

 

 

 

    She soon worked out for herself a severe schedule of prayers and good works, fasting and mortifications. She        tended  the sick and the poor, bringing them into her own home and regarding them as Our Lord Himself. She gave her goods to the poor and labored for them with her own hands. Our Lord was pleased  to show her that He approved of her works by appearing to her in the guise of a poor young man, sick, and in need of both food and medicine. She carefully dressed his wounds, and she was rewarded by the revelation that it was in reality her redeemer whom she had served.

 

 

 

    St. Catherine of Siena visited Pisa at about this time, and the two saintly women were drawn together into a holy friendship. As they prayed together in the Dominican church one day, they were surrounded by a bright cloud, out of which flew a white dove. They conversed joyfully on spiritual matters, and were mutually strengthened by the meeting.

 

    On the advice of St. Catherine of Siena, Catherine (Mary Mancini) retired to an enclosed convent of the Second Order. In religion, she was given the name Mary, by which she is usually known. She embraced the religious life in all its primitive austerity, and, with Blessed Clare Gambacorta and a few other members of the convent, she founded a new and much more austere house, which had been built by Peter Gambacorta. Our Lady's prophecy of his benefactions was thus fulfilled.

 

    Blessed Mary was favored with many visions and was in almost constant prayer. She became prioress of the house on the death of her friend Blessed Clare Gambacorta and ruled it with justice and holiness until her death.