It is easier to have a camel: St. Clare of Assisi, evangelical poverty, and Mary, Mother of the Poor

Quote:> “Amen dico vobis, quia dives difficile intrabit in regnum caelorum. Et iterum dico vobis: facilius est camelum per foramen acus transire, quam divitem intrare in regnum caelorum.” (Matthew 19:23-24)Text:Matthew 19,16-30 begins with the encounter of the rich young man (vv.16-22) and concludes with the promise of the “centuple” for those who have left all (vv.27-30). Starting from verse 23, Tuesday resumes Jesus’ reflection on the difficulty of the rich entering the Kingdom. The disciples’ question, “Who then can be saved?” (Matthew 19:25), is genuinely startling: if even the rich (seen as God’s blessed ones in contemporary Judaism) face difficulties, who can be saved? Jesus’ response: “For humans it is impossible, but for God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26), salvation is not a human achievement but a divine gift.August 11th celebrates the Memory of Saint Clare of Assisi (1194-1253), founder of the Poor Clares (Order of Saint Clare) and disciple of St. Francis of Assisi. Clare lived radically what the rich young man refused: she left a wealthy and noble family in Assisi to embrace absolute poverty. The liturgical coincidence between “facilius est camelum” (Matthew 19:24) and the feast day of the founder of poverty in the Franciscan tradition is the most eloquent testimony about Clare’s life: she passed through the “eye of a needle” because it was not she who passed, but God’s grace that carried her.I. “Difficile diti intrare”: The Logic of Poverty in the Kingdom“A rich person finds it difficult to enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 19:23) is not a condemnation of material wealth as such, but a diagnosis about attachment. The rich who identifies with their wealth carries a “load” that makes passing through the “narrow door” (Matthew 7:13) very challenging. The metaphor of the “camel going through the eye of a needle” describes the real difficulty of inner detachment: not impossibility, but a demand for transformation beyond human forces.Jesus’ answer to the disciples’ consternation is the key theology: “For humans it is impossible, but for God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). The rich person’s salvation is not impossible, it is supernatural: it requires a grace that transcends human capacity for detachment. Zacchaeus, the wealthy tax collector who welcomed Jesus into his home and gave half of his possessions to the poor (Luke 19:1-10), is an example of how grace operates transformation beyond human effort.Peter’s question, “We have left everything to follow you” (Matthew 19:27), receives the promise of the “centuple”: “Everyone who has left houses, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children or fields for my sake will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29). The promise is not abstract; St. Clare, who left everything, received the “centuple” of spiritual fertility that continues to bear fruit in Clarissas worldwide eight centuries later.II. St. Clare: The Camel That Passed Through the Needle

Clara of Assisi

Clara of Assisi was born in 1194 into a noble family. In 1212, at the age of 18, she heard Francis preach and decided to leave everything behind. She fled at night, cut her hair at the Church of Porciúncula, and founded with other companions the community of the “Poor Ladies” in San Damiano, near Assisi. The most distinctive element of her spirituality is what she called the “privilege of poverty”: the right to have no property, not even as a monastery.

III. Mary, Mother of the Poor: The Magnificat and the Anawim

Mary, in the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55), is the voice of the “anawim,” the poor of Yahweh from the Old Testament: Anna of 1 Samuel 2, the Psalms of the poor (Psalms 34, 69, 86), and Zephaniah 2:3 (“Seek the Lord, all you humble ones of the earth”). Mary, who describes herself as “a humble servant” (Luke 1:48) and proclaims that God “exalts the humble” and “fills the hungry with good things,” is the voice of all those who have nothing and place all their hope in God.Mary’s poverty is not only spiritual but concrete and historical: the young woman from Nazareth belonged to the lowest layers of Galilean society. In Bethlehem, she found no room at the inn. At her Presentation in the Temple, she offered “two turtledoves or a pair of pigeons” (Luke 2:24), the poor’s offering as per Leviticus 12:8. The Holy Family that lived in Nazareth from Joseph’s carpentry shop is the historical realization of the Magnificat: God becoming poor to exalt the poor.Clara of Assisi saw Mary as the model for her vocation: “Lady Poverty,” which Francis and Clara embraced, had the face of Mary, who had nowhere to lay her head when she gave birth to the Son of God. Franciscan Mariology, especially through Bonaventure and Duns Scotus, developed this intuition: Mary as the supreme “pauper Christi,” who lived most fully the poverty of her Son.

IV. “Centuplum accipietis”: The Fertility of Poverty

“You will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29), Jesus’ promise to those who have left everything, finds its two most eloquent historical verifications in Clara and Mary. Clara, who left a noble family from Assisi, generated an Order with thousands of nuns worldwide and produced mystics like Saint Veronica Giuliani and Blessed Maria de Jesús de Ágreda. The “hundredfold” of Clara is a verifiable reality in time.Mary who left her plans in life to say “fiat” received the most extraordinary “céntuplo” (centuple) in history: divine Maternity, the company of the Son for thirty years, presence at the foot of the Cross, and Assumption into Heaven. Mary’s “céntuplo” is also ecclesial: she is Mother of all who believe, a spiritual motherhood that transcends biology and history.St. Clara and Mary teach the same lesson to the disciple bewildered by “facilius est camelum” (it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle): evangelical poverty is not suppression of life but its intensification. The camel that passes through the needle does not diminish, it transforms. Life given up for love of the Kingdom is not lost, it is multiplied centuplely. This is the “impossibility for men” that God makes “possible”: transforming poverty into wealth, loss into gain, and the dead grain into abundant fruit.