Are you imagining things? Good!

Saint Francis of Assisi cuts Clare’s king beautiful hair at her request as she begins efforts to become a nun.

Before Saint Clare’s birth, one biographer wrote, it was revealed to her mother that the child “would be a brilliant light in the world.” As abbess of the first convent of Franciscan sisters, Clare rose from her sickbed to pray for the protection of her sisters from marauders and heard a voice say, “I shall always watch over you.” At her death in 1253 she saw the Virgin Mary coming to meet her. Were these things only products of the imagination? Even if they were, imagination is necessary to making something real. With faith, that imagination might soar all the way to Heaven.