Were Francis and Clare Lovers?

This will be the first of three posts on this topic.

Sts. Francis and Clare became an unusual couple, once Clare came to join the brothers at Portiuncula. The sources all indicate that the two of them had a natural affection for one another. However, it is important to remember (after all of the Hollywoodizing of this tale) that they were not married, and were not a "couple" in any real sense, even though their love for each other was felt palpably by those around them.
G. K. Chesterton calls theirs a “pure and spiritual romance,” an apt description, although they spent very little time together. Clare was an important confidant to Francis, and a link between his childhood (their families seem to have known each other), with all of its extravagant worldliness, and the mature, life-changing decisions that began to mark his early twenties. Their affection for and trust of each other fueled the early Franciscan movement and gave birth to a joy, beauty, and spirit that had long been absent from faith.
However, it has always seemed to make for a better story to have Francis and Clare in love with each other. In fact, some of the early sources give hints that support such a view. Thomas of Celano, the first biographer of each of them, called theirs a “divine attraction”—these two saints wanting to be together. And when Thomas describes Clare’s childhood reputation as a spiritual giant, he also implies that Francis was intent on meeting her. Thomas compares Clare’s holiness to plunder, and Francis to a conquering knight. He writes that Francis “was dedicated to snatching his plunder away from the world.”

Slowing down to read

Bible reading used to be a regular part of our lives, both private and public, and not simply because we all used to go to church more regularly. In a recent phone survey of 13,000 adults, 93 percent of Americans said that they have a Bible at home. In colonial America, this percentage would have been about 99 percent. A Bible was very often the only book to be found in a home, and it was in every home. Also in that recent phone survey, 75 percent of those with a Bible responded that they’ve read at least one passage from it in the last year. In another survey, conducted by Gallup, the number of those who said that they read their Bible “occasionally” was 59 percent, and this compared to 73 percent in the 1980s.
One obstacle to reading and hearing the Bible today is, as it is for poetry, the slowness that it requires. Our time and attention is splintered in ways that Benjamin Franklin never could have imagined possible. As a result, few of us practice the discipline of reading slowly, and the KJV demands the slowest, most careful reading of any translation. Along with classic poetry and certain types of music, appreciating the language of the Bible has almost become a lost art. I wish that Christian parents would still teach their children how to read, and how to read in a way that savors and contemplates the language.