Clare of Assisi

You don't draw your strength from noise but from silence, and it is precisely there that you make your most radical decisions. Clare is exactly that: under cover of night she slips out of her family's palace, lets her hair be cut off, and chooses poverty, for good. She follows Francis and, against every papal misgiving, wins the Privilege of Poverty: no possessions. When mercenaries threaten her convent, she meets them, according to tradition, with the monstrance in her hands, defenseless, holding the Eucharist, and yet unconquerable. And she becomes the first woman to write a religious rule for her sisters. And you, where do you find the silence from which such courage can grow?