Rebel with a Cause

As a child comes of age there is a natural desire to separate their identity from their parents.  This is healthy and important to development, as well as necessary to transition from a child into an adult.  From the child's perspective this is a grand thing- to finally be an individual.  The change is usually somewhat harder to accept  by the parents of teenage offspring.  It is not infrequent that I hear mothers and fathers complaining about how their son or daughter is growing up and doing things differently.  In the movie "Yours, Mine, and Ours" Henry Fonda tells Lucille Ball that, 

"You can't tell her not to see him- that's like shooting off the starting gun",

about her seventeen-year-old teenage daughter.  Similar to this ideology I have heard parents complain about their children not listening, making plans without their consent, deforming their bodies, cutting or growing out their hair, making strange friends, playing loud instruments, and other independent hobbies.  The common term usually placed on this development is usually referred to as rebellion.  Lest anyone be uncertain of the definition of the word "rebellion", stemming from the word "rebel, I have included the definition here.  

Rebel [n., adj. reb-uhl; v. ri-bel] noun,adjective, verb, re·belled, re·bel·ling.

noun

1.

a person who refuses allegiance to, resists, or rises in armsagainst the government 

or ruler of his or her country.

2.

a person who resists any authority, control, or tradition.

adjective

3.

rebellious; defiant.

4.

of or pertaining to rebels.

For reasons known only to me I do not agree with classifying this alteration from child to adult as "rebellion."  After all, it is possible to separate from one's parents, and transition from a child to an adult, without doing something illegal, immoral, or imprudent- just look at Saint Clare.  

SAINT CLARE! I am quite certain that every parent who read the title of my post, "Rebel with a Cause" just fell out of his or her chair.  Really, Gabbie?  You are going to label Saint Clare, foundress of the Poor Clares, friend of Saint Francis, mystic saint, ageless Catholic image, incorruptible saint, as a REBEL!  Yes, yes I am.  Now hold that thought.

Clare was born to the Count of Sasso-Rosso Ortolana, around 1193 in Assisi, Italy.  Assisi was already well known for their Saint Francis who founded the Franciscan order.  When Clare turned fifteen her parents wanted her to marry, after all she was the daughter of a Count.  Clare begged to wait until she turned 18 and her parents and her betrothed consented.  Unfortunately for them their well laid plans fell to ruin when just after her 18th birthday Clare ran away on Palm Sunday.  By the time her parents discovered her absence she was long gone.  

Clare had gone to Francis, telling him that she had heard his sermons and felt called to found an order of nuns.  Francis took pity on her, cut her hair, dressed her in a rough, brown, shapeless dress and a black head covering, and sent her to live with an order of Benedictine nuns. Later she was pulled out of the Benedictine Abbey by her Father.  Soon she left her family again and together with Francis, she began her own monastery in San Damiano, naming the order after their monastery.  In the order changed their name to "The Order of Saint Clare". 

Her parents, were not happy, to say the least.  They tried to steal her back.  They tried to talk her out of it.  They tried to get her to come back home and marry the nice, rich man they had picked out for her.  It did not work.  They probably thought she was being stubborn.  Finally they gave up and went home, assuming she was too stubborn to come back.  Then Clare's sister, Agnes, joined the order.  Soon all manner of women, coming from educated, well off families, were joining Clare in her order that she and Francis had started.  Some reports have indicated that when her mother was widowed, she too joined the order.  

I imagine that it was a difficult choice for her- that it hurt her that she lacked their support- but she still did what she thought was her vocation.  Not because she was stubborn, not because she wanted to disappoint them, but because it was what God was calling her to do. 

*

Rebellion is such a funny.  My think geek calendar suggests that to one person it is rebellion while to another it is leadership.  In Sherman Edwards Broadway musical 1776 Benjamin Franklin suggests,  

"A rebellion is always legal in the first person, such as "our rebellion." It is only in the third person - "their rebellion" - that it becomes illegal."

I don not mean to suggest that I approve of filial disobedience... however if a child must choose between being obedient to their parent or obedient to God, I will always side with God.  After all, if your parents get mad and yell at you, at least you get time off in purgatory.  If God gets mad and yells at you, you will hear about it through eternity. 

*Still image from the movie "Francis and Clare."