The Little Flowers of St. Francis

ONCE St. Clare was grievously sick, so that she could not go at all to say the office in church with the other nuns; and when the festival of the Nativity of Christ was come, all the other nuns went to matins, and she remained abed, sad at heart because she was not able to go with the others and partake of that spiritual consolation. But Jesus Christ, her spouse, willing not to leave her thus disconsolate, caused her to be miraculously carried to the church of St. Francis and to be present at the whole office of matins and of the midnight Mass, and, besides this, to receive the Holy Communion and afterward to be carried back to her bed again. Now the nuns returned to St. Clare, when the office in S. Damiano was over, and said unto her: “O our mother, Sister Clare, what great consolation have we had, this holy Christmas Day! Would that it had been God’s will that you had been with us!” And St. Clare made answer: “Sisters mine and dearest daughters, I give thanks and praise to our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, because in every solemnity of this most holy night, and even more than you, have I had my part to the great comfort of my soul; because, by the intercessions of my father St. Francis and by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, I have been present in the church of my venerable father St. Francis, and with the ears of my body and of my mind have heard all the office and the music of the organs which was made there; and in the same place have I taken the most Holy Communion.