Dr. Kelley Mathews

Sharifa Stevens

If you, like most of us in this audience, are Protestant, be prepared for a treat as you listen to this conversation about women saints we should know. Dr. Kelley Mathews joins host Sharifa Stevens to discuss a number of women from the early church who were named saints because of their faith and actions.

You’ll come away excited and perhaps surprised as you hear about these godly women who played major roles in church history. They teach us great lessons from their love for the Lord, their tenacity and bold courage.

Recommended resources BOW’s resources on Studying and Teaching the Bible * Hildegard:
A playlist of her music and her biography * The Passions of Perpetua and Felicity* * Augustine’s sermon (#280) on Perpetua & Felicity * Monica We learn most of our content about her in Augustine’s Confessions. * Clare:
Biography
Read her “Rule” * Brigid article

This episode is available on video as well.

Timestamps:00:21 Introductions
02:37 The difference between knowing and venerating the saints
03:40 Perpetua and Felicity, martyrs
12:10 Monica, Augustine’s mother
19:29 Brigid of Kildare
27:35 Hildegard of Bingen
34:18 Clare of Assisi
41:32 Other resources

TranscriptSharifa >> Welcome to Beyond Ordinary Women. I’ll be your host for today, Sharifa Stevens. And today our topic is going to be about women, saints that we all should know about. I’m really excited to dig into this topic, and we’re going to have our expert Dr. Kelley Mathews, explain more to us about these women whom we should know.

And I want to tell you about Kelley. I bet most of you know Dr. Kelley already. But let me tell you a little bit more, just in case. Kelley Mathews, Dr. Kelley Mathews, has ministered to the church through writing and editing for over 25 years. She’s a coauthor of eight books, including 40 Questions About Women in Ministry. And also she’s a freelance writer and editor. A former women’s ministry director and Bible study teacher.

Kelley has been married to John, a school administrator, for almost 29 years. They are parents to four active, mostly grown children. Kelley earned her Master of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary and earned a Doctor of Ministry in New Testament from Houston Theological Seminary just in 2025.

Welcome. Now, I can’t call you Dr. Kelley. Why?

Kelley >> You kind of overdid it there. That’s all.

Sharifa >> That’s my job. It’s my job to overdo it.

Kelley >> Okay. Okay. I’ll take it from you. Not from anybody else, though. No, it’s so new. It’s still very strange to hear it. So that’s all.

Sharifa >> You earned it. So I’m using it.

Kelley >> I had a lot of fun in that program, so if I could still go back to class, I would. You know, I shouldn’t say that too loudly around here.

Sharifa >> Tuition-free class? Yeah.

Kelley >> Yeah. No, it was a great program over in Houston. So and that’s a lot of what we’re going to cover today is what I studied there. So yeah.

Sharifa >> Excellent. Well let’s dive in. We’re discussing women saints who we should know. But before we get into the specific saints, I just wanted to know, is knowing the saints the same as venerating or worshiping them?

Kelley >> No. Absolutely not. This is basically history. And I was a history major for my bachelor’s degree. And so coming full circle with this theological study, I naturally went to the history of the church. So New Testament kind of morphed also into the early church, those first few centuries of what was the church getting up to? And so knowing the people.

I mean I would assume that a lot of Christians would recognize names like Augustine or Aquinas or maybe Saint Francis or Luther. We’re just giving you female equivalents, basically. So, yes, just as there were fathers of the church, there were mothers of the church.

Sharifa >> I dig it. Thank you.

Okay, so let’s get into specifics. We’re talking specifically today about Perpetua and Felicity, Monica, Brigid, Hildegard and Clare. And when I say it like that, it sounds like my girlfriends.

Kelley >> Right?

Sharifa >> These are heroes. These are outsized moms of the faith. So let’s get started with Perpetua and Felicity first.

Kelley >> Yeah, they kind of go together. They very much. Yeah, they’re very different women. But everything that happened, happened to them together. So. Yeah.

Sharifa >> Tell me about them.

Kelley >> Okay. So they we know of them. They are among the earliest that we’re going to talk about. They were martyrs. And of course, during the first few centuries before Christianity became legalized and then really approved, there were pockets of persecution.

And this happened right around the year 200, 203. There was this persecution in North Africa. They were from Carthage or from that area. And they were among a group, yes, on the northern shores. So Christianity had had gone south from Jerusalem and gone north into Europe as well, and also east into India. So but these ladies were in the North African area.

So they were among a group, men and women who were arrested and sentenced to the arena, which, you know, we think of the Colosseum and the Lions. And this is one of those situations in Carthage. So their story, we only know about it because Perpetua left a diary and we still have that diary. So that’s pretty unique.

So she is one of the earliest Christian women whose writings we still have.

Sharifa >> Wow.

Kelley >> And there was an addendum put on by someone else to kind of write out what happened to her. But we have her words as the majority of the document. And part of the story is that she had a young child. We don’t hear much about her husband, if anything, but we do know she had a young child who was still not weaned yet, probably 1 or 2 years old, and her father was adamant that she recant her faith and come home.

It was his honor at stake, those sorts of things. And she’s like, no, I’m a Christian, right? And so she eventually gave her son into her father’s custody to take care of him and raise him. So. But you could read all about it in this biography, you could literally just Google it. And it’s there for anyone to read.

Felicity was a slave woman. She was also pregnant, like heavily pregnant at the time of their arrest. So think about a woman, a young woman, a slave woman without any social power, pregnant in a dungeon, basically in a very rudimentary prison with men and women alike. And while—she was not able to go into the arena with her group of friends because of her pregnancy, because the baby was not legally able to be killed, right?

So they had to wait for her to have the baby.

Sharifa >> Had more legal rights to live. Right? Okay.

Kelley >> So they had to wait for her to give birth and to not be separated from her group. She prayed for an early delivery, and she indeed gave birth early in her eighth month instead of her ninth. And while she was in prison, the guards were taunting her about the pain she was going to endure in the arena.

And I wrote down the quote, so let me look at it. And then taunting her also about this pain of delivery, like watching her go through labor. Right. And she says, “Now I suffer what I suffer. But then,” talking about the arena, “then another will be in me who will suffer for me because I have suffered for him.” Okay, so I get chills reading that.

So we remember them because the church recognized the extraordinary lives and deaths of people like the martyrs were very highly honored in the early church. They gave everything for the faith. And so they were given a feast day. That’s what we think of. And that is to us Protestants that’s a very Catholic thing or an Orthodox (capital O, Orthodox) thing to give a day of the year to a certain person to remember them.

But those dates were their death dates, not their birthdays, because in the early church thinking, you were born again the day you died for Christ, so that was your second birth, that into eternity. So the day of theirs is March 7th. So that was the day that they died. By the way. Felicity was allowed to go with her friends. And they she did. Yes. So they because she delivered early, she was able to go into the arena with, with that group.

Sharifa >> So Perpetua and Felicity. Were they friends with each other?

Kelley >>We don’t know.

Sharifa >>Why are they always associated together?

Kelley >> Felicity’s story is included in Perpetua Journal. So we just we know. And whoever the editor was who added on the end made sure that we know about both of them.

Now, it’s not to say that Felicity was Perpetua’s slave like for a while there. I kept getting that mixed up, but they were just in this group together, who were arrested.

So what happens with the feast days is that that was one of the mechanisms that the church, as the centuries went on, could remember the people from the past and go, “Let us tell you the stories of the heroes of our faith.” And so because usually it was a death date, there was a story behind that death or that martyrdom.

And of course, later you get people like Augustine. And he didn’t necessarily die as a martyr, but he definitely gave his life to God, right? He was a theologian and a pastor and that kind of thing. So there’s many, many people remembered through these sort of feast days.

Sharifa >> What a wonderful way to pass on our history and celebrate people who were so, a lot of us in protestant tradition don’t.

Kelley >> Yeah.

It’s one of those traditions that got tossed out with everything else after the Reformation, to our detriment, I think. Not that we venerate them, it’s that we remember God’s faithfulness in their lives as encouragement for his faithfulness in ours.

Sharifa >>Absolutely right.

Kelley >>So Augustine himself would we have several of his sermons in records where he preached about these two women, because—isn’t that fun?

I know! I realized what a nerd I was a few years ago, sitting in my living room reading sermons from Augustine about Perpetua and Felicity and going, wow, he was a great speaker.

Sharifa >> So that’s good to know because we have, you know, we have City of God.

Kelley >> Yeah.

Sharifa >> We have he’s such an outsized literary, inheritance from Augustine. But I love knowing tidbits like that. It’s just and it humanizes both him and them.

Kelley >> Yes.

Sharifa >> We kind of make them more than human in their ability to choose Jesus and choose Jesus at great cost. But really, they are just like us and so we can learn so much from them. Well, you start talking about Augustine.

Kelley >> Let’s go there.

Sharifa >> Why don’t we segue to Monica?

Kelley >> Yes, Monica was his mother. So all we know about her comes through Augustine. But still, it’s really good. Augustine himself, when you talked about them being, they’re just human. Let’s just put it out there. He was very human. He was very fallen. He was raised in the Christian faith by his mother. He had a kind of a verbally abusive father, not physically. And he was unfaithful to his mother, Monica.

So it’s not like home life was great, but he grew up with his own way and got, for a while was just out there living the life. Right? So he had problems with women. He fathered an illegitimate son.

Then he kind of came back a little bit, but got involved with this, what we would call kind of a heretical sect of Christianity, to where Monica was not happy. She’s like, great, you got rid of all the women. He still had this long term mistress. So he was faithful to her, but not married in the Catholic, you know, Christian faith. So she was still very not happy with him.

But it took years for him to come around theologically. And she was praying the whole time. So her legacy is actually one of prayer, of enduring years long, faithful prayer for her son to come back to the true faith.

And so she was not above—I call her a helicopter mom.

Sharifa >> Okay.

Kelley >> Because she kicked him out of the house, but she still prayed for him, right?

She ran off the mistress. She literally was like, this will not, this is not going to do. She arranged for him to be married respectably. Right? Now, that never came to fruition because he came back to the faith and became a priest and dedicated his life to the church, which was great.

She was like, okay, if I can’t have grandkids, then at least I will have you doing God’s work. So she was good with that.

Sharifa >> Okay.

Kelley >> So later he ends up going to Italy to follow the teachings of Ambrose.

Sharifa >> Okay. So he’s and he’s North African, too. Right?

Kelley >> Yeah. That’s right. I forgot to say that.

Sharifa >> Well, I’m only bringing it up because he went to Italy and so he went to Italy from?

Kelley >> From Hippo which is in North Africa as well.

Sharifa >> Do you know what country that is modern day?

Kelley >> I don’t I don’t think so. Let me look at my notes real quick.

Sharifa >> It’s a on the spot question. So—

Kelley >> Algeria, modern day Algeria.

Sharifa >> Okay. Thank you.

Kelley >> Yes, that’s where she was from, which is very close to Hippo. It’s a little town near Hippo. So, yes.

So she gets on a boat and follows him to Italy. Of course, he didn’t know until he got there and a few weeks or months later, she shows up. And she’s working on Ambrose to work on Augustine.

Sharifa >> What?

Kelley >> Okay, she’s in the background. And so she’s doing everything she can to make sure Augustine lands with the true church, learning the true faith and really doing God’s will.

Sharifa >> Wow.

Kelley >> And he does. You know, he gets baptized. I got to visit when I went to Italy a few years ago. We got to visit the big Duomo, the cathedral in Milan, which is where all of this happened.

And underneath in the crypt area is the remnants of the old church back then. And there’s the baptismal font where Augustine was baptized. And for some people it was, you know, kind of weepy moment to be there. So yeah.

Sharifa >> For all the helicopter moms, it’s like it’s a great place.

Kelley >> Right. Right.

So her and Augustine, she died shortly after all of this happened before they ended up going back to Africa. But again, remember, we’re getting all of this from Augustine. And he loved her and appreciated her consistent, enduring prayers on his behalf.

Sharifa >> So I guess at some point Miss Monica must have let her son know I’m praying for you.

Kelley >> Oh, I’m sure she probably let him know all the time, right? I don’t know, so he actually gives her credit for all the way the church—really, if we’re talking about revering someone, Augustine is way up there, right? For all of the theological guidance that he ended up giving us. And she said he calls her “our mother through whose merit I am all that I am.”

I know, it’s super sweet. Yeah.

Sharifa >> It’s like the ancient version of this athlete getting on the mic my mom, thanks I couldn’t have done it without you.

Of course, yeah, there are more sweeping theological implications.

Kelley >> Yes. No, that’s the same idea. He wrote all of this about her after she was gone. And so as much as she frustrated him, he saw the value that she brought to him eventually. Yeah.

Sharifa >> That is so sweet. It’s completely, completely different from the tone of Felicity and Perpetua.

Kelley >> Right. Right.

Sharifa >> It’s like now for something really different. But she I mean, well, you tell me her significance for us is?

Kelley >> Prayer. Faithful prayer, I think. Not following your kid across the ocean to make sure he obeys. Like, don’t do that. No. But trusting your child to God or whoever it is you’re praying for.

Sharifa >> Yeah.

Kelley >> She’s a great model of that.

Sharifa >> Yes. So faithful, faithful prayer, whether it’s your child or not. She is.

And also I would say like you never know what your prayer is going to be in agreement with God’s will. You just you just never know that. We all know Augustine. But Augustine wouldn’t be Augustine

Kelley >> Without Monica.

Sharifa >> And the same is true for so many of us. Like we might not experience the fame or, the renown, but our prayers and our support and instruction are raising a generation, you know, and that’s whether we’re mothers or not. It’s the people who we are around who are entrusted to us.

Kelley >> When I tell my testimony, it’s typically a list of women who built into me from high school onward. Yeah.

Sharifa >> Yes. And we’re so grateful. So.

Okay, we’re going to shift from Monica, the prayer and helicopter mom. You talk about Brigid, and Brigid is from another region. So we have Perpetua and Felicity and Monica and they’re basically North Africa. I’m going to say Algeria and Egypt, I think Egypt.

Kelley >> That’s close enough.

Sharifa >> Okay. And so now we’re moving to Brigid. And when was Brigid alive, and where is she from, and what’s her story?

Kelley >> Right. So remember that Perpetua and Felicity were in 203. That’s when they died. Monica lived in the fourth century. So the three hundreds. And now we’re into the 400s with Brigid of Kildare, which is a town in Ireland. So she is one of the—so the faith has like just think the faith has moved all the way up into the British Isles at this point.

And so Saint Patrick is known as the Saint, the missionary to the Irish. He actually lived a little before her and was an older man when she was born. So there are some stories that perhaps he baptized her as a child. We don’t actually know, but they did cross over their years did cross a little bit.

And so she was—Brigid was an extraordinary person. And the stories we have of her, some of them we know she was historical. We do know that she existed for sure. But what we know about her is somewhat mixed with this legend that the Irish used to have a goddess, Brigid. And so we’re not, you know, we can kind of parse out some of the stories that could be legend versus a historical person, but they—she in Ireland, they’re very mystical even today, their faith, they have no problem with letting those that merge stand. They’re like she’s just a great person to, you know, venerate.

Sharifa >> What are some of these myths like, let’s get into this.

Kelley >> Well, let’s look at the history first. So we know she’s born in the 450s and lived into the like, she was about 75, 80 years old before she died. And so she lived into the 500s. Yes.

So she was born to a chieftain and a slave woman. And the slave woman, the wife did not like this. Think Sarah and Hagar okay. In terms of the wife was not real happy with this slave woman and this baby. So they sold her. But the dad retained rights over the child. So when Brigid was born and grew up, she grew up with mom, who was a Christian. So she learned the Christian faith. But then eventually she went to live with her father, the chieftain.

And by then she was very devout and she was overly generous, shall we say. Dad got real frustrated with her giving all his stuff away to the poor. So she there’s stories of her giving away not just her dinner, but then she turned to the kitchen and basically emptied the kitchen for all the poor who were like, oh, we can go there to get things we need.

So she became known for her generosity to the poor in her charity, to giving everything that she could and just, you know, organizing people to help the needy.

Her dad was not real thrilled. At one point, he tried to go marry her off and took her with him. And when you go into another chieftain’s home, you leave your sword outside, right as a gesture of peace. And he gave it to her to hold. So she couldn’t go in to the negotiations. But she was there. She gave the sword away!

Sharifa >> Nice.

Kelley >> So anyway, so they had a lot of, you know, those stories come, and they make her who she is to the people of Ireland now.

Sharifa >> She never married?

Kelley >> She never did. She basically said, “Forget it, dad, I’m going to be a nun. I’m going to bride of Christ, devote my life to him.”

So that kind of solved those issues. Again, Dad wasn’t super happy because it would have been a nice alliance to build their kingdoms, but she established a monastery in Kildare is a little bit west of Dublin, like an hour by car, which was plenty of distance by foot.

Sharifa >> Yeah.

Kelley >> And she wanted to establish a monastery there. And one of these stories that kind of lingers is that the local regional king kind of laughed her off when she asked for land to do that, and he was like, fine. And so she said, “Well, what if I just get the land that my mantle, my cloak can cover?”

And he’s like, “Sure. Okay.” So the story goes that she got people like four people to hold the edges of it and expand out the four directions, and it just kept going.

Sharifa >> Nice.

Kelley >> And then finally he’s like, “Stop. Okay. Fine.” And it was several acres worth.

Sharifa >> That’s awesome.

Kelley >> So all that to say, there is a sizable monastery there for years that she uses her headquarters.

She became an abbess of a double monastery, which is men and women, monks and nuns were there. It became a center of learning, a scriptorium which where manuscripts were copied. Have you ever read the book or heard of the book How the Irish Saved Civilization?

Sharifa >> No.

Kelley >> It’s a fascinating history book, and this is part of it. How the Irish Church did a lot of the copying of manuscripts through the Middle Ages. So hers was one of those places. And, yeah.

Sharifa >> So at this time in history, there were enough Christians in that region of Ireland to establish a double monastery.

Kelley >> I think. I think clergy came from other places as well, knowing that that sort of monastery had been established, that that was a draw for the intellectual side who wanted to do that sort of work. But at the same time, she also was serving the people around them. Her generosity and service to the needy again became legendary. So she had those both sides to her, to her ministry there.

And she’s just very well, just beloved in the country. She’s now one of the three patron saints of the country, along with Patrick and Columba. So. Columba was a missionary Irish guy monk who went to Scotland.

Sharifa >> Oh, okay. Thank you, because I will I wanted to know who the third was.

Kelley >> Yeah.

Sharifa >> So. Okay. And so the testimony of Brigid for us. What would you say? Why do we need to know her?

Kelley >> Brigid is an example of early female leadership in the church.

However your theology lands on that there’s no denying that she was in abbess and that she was—it was her monastery, and that she led both men and women. So that’s one. But also, I think her ministry to the poor. It started from the very beginning, and that was her way of living out her faith.

Sharifa >> Yeah. What a testimony. Yeah, it was not. It was not in words. It was in deeds.

Kelley >> Yes. Very much.

Sharifa >> Oh, okay. Yeah.

So okay. We’re gonna I’m like, who do we talk about next? Because there’s Clare and Hildegard.

Kelley >> Let’s do Hildegard because we’re going to go chronologically that way.

Sharifa >> Okay. Let’s go to Hildegard of Bingen, who even I have heard of.

Kelley >> Oh, okay.

Sharifa >> She is goated. What, like greatest of all time. She is just amazing. I mean, all of these women are. All of them are. But from what I heard about Miss Hildegard.

Kelley >> Right.

Sharifa >> What an incredible mind.

Kelley >> Yes.

Sharifa >> Go ahead. Just tell us about her. Where is she from? Where is she in the chronology?

Kelley >> She was born in 1008. And so her life was in the 1100s, which is the 12th century. So we’ve jumped a solid 600 years or more here.

Sharifa >> Wait. 1008 is the 12th?

Kelley >> Sorry. 1098, 1098.

Sharifa >> Okay. All right, all right. Okay.

Kelley >> She lived like 80 years. So she was in the late 1100s when she died. So the 1100s is the 12th century.

Sharifa >> Right.

Kelley >> There we go. So, Yeah, she was born in what we know is Germany. So all these Germanic provinces in that area. And she also became a monastery abbess. So double monastery in charge.

She had so many abilities. She was what we call a polymath, which she was like an expert in a wide variety of disciplines, whether it was math or science or music or writing or singing—like she was a genius in each one. That kind of level, right, that most of us don’t—we couldn’t even imagine that. Let’s see. Let me think here.

Sharifa >> Yeah. Where to land. She was so gifted . . .

Kelley >> Right. I think she started . . .

Sharifa >> in so many things.

Kelley >> I think the mysticism again in that time period that was considered very authoritative in the church, these mystics, because we do hear a lot about them in the Middle Ages. And that was an acceptable way for the Lord to speak to people. Like the people acknowledged that that was one of the ways God did communicate.

Sharifa >> When you say one of the ways that God, which—which way?

Kelley >> The mysticism, the vision, people receiving visions and then writing them down or speaking them and teaching through that. So it’s not from the written word. It’s from the received spiritual word that was consistent with the written word so they could test it.

So Hildegard started out with that. So she from the youngest, she was given into the church. Okay. She was the youngest of ten children, which back then was not that unusual because child mortality was, you know, a thing. And so not all the children would survive. I don’t know how many of her siblings survived, but her parents gave her to the church when she was eight, kind of as a tithe, like, here’s one of our children to serve the Lord this way.

Sharifa >> Wow.

Kelley >> And honestly, maybe they needed help feeding her, like, you know, who knows if that was just a way to provide for her as well. But so all that to say, she ended up in the church under the leadership of nuns very young. So she grew up in this whole world. And then her abilities started to come out.

Eventually, she ended up writing songs, hymns. Mary, the Mother of God, was one of the major topics of her singing. The Magnificat. She’s got like, if you again, you want to Google, you can find Hildegard’s hymns online. That kind of thing.

Sharifa >> Maybe a list that as a resource, along with . . .

Kelley >> I’ll have to find a good link. Yeah.

Sharifa >> her biography that would be great to this resource.

Kelley >> The Pope, I forget who it was at the time, but he approved her on a preaching tour. Even then in those years, women did not publicly preach. But her ability and her theology were so strong that, and at that point, I think her influence was, too, that he gave her permission to go on a tour of the Germanic area and preach. And so she did.

Sharifa >> Wow. So how did she gain this renown in the Middle Ages? Just in Bingen?

Kelley >> It was a center, you know. So it wasn’t the backwoods. They had theologians there. And, you know, of course, she had an abbey. So yes. To do all that, you have to have approval from the clergy authorities by then. So over time now she— there was a misogynist abbot at the time who didn’t want her to found her abbey, but she had wealthy patrons, a female patron. She had the bishop approving. And so she got her place.

Sharifa >> We love this for her.

Kelley >> Right. Right.

Apparently she was not, you know, she used all excess, all resources at her disposal to do what she felt the Lord was leading her to do. But she was just so genius. She was just so smart. And that God gave her this intellectual capacity to serve, and she used it to serve him. So I think that’s

Sharifa >> What’s the message for us?

Kelley >> I think that’s where I would go with her, is that there’s really no limit to what we can do for God. Whatever God has gifted us to do, do it for the Lord and he will open the doors.

And yeah, I mean, why are we limiting anyone, woman or man, boy or girl, like because of our own preconceived notions?

But if we see potential in someone, build it, you know. Nurture it and encourage them to to step into what God has made them to be.

Sharifa >> She really did use everything that she had to glorify God.

Kelley >> Yeah.

Sharifa >> What a testimony!

Kelley >> Yeah. I mean, there’s books written about her. This is obviously just a real basic overview.

Sharifa >> Absolutely.

Kelley >> Yeah, yeah. She is one of four women that the church eventually named a Doctor of the Church. A Doctor of the Church is someone whose contributions to theology or the life of the church are in written form, have informed the life of the church and have stood the test of time.

Sharifa >> Yeah. She should be taught at every seminary.

Kelley >> I never learned about her at any seminary, and I went to two.

Sharifa >> She should be.

Kelley >> I know.

Sharifa >> She should be.

Kelley >> Right.

Sharifa >> Yeah. I’m so glad I learned about her in my secular college education.

Kelley >> Good for you. That’s awesome.

Sharifa >> It was. So let’s end with Clare.

Kelley >> Clare of Assisi. And that might clue a lot of our listeners in.

Sharifa >> Yes.

Kelley >> Yes. So yes, we’ve heard of Francis of Assisi. And that’s a small town in Italy. Again, we got to visit. So Francis was doing his ministry, preaching and teaching, and he had his monastery and his rule of life.

And Clare heard him when she was a young teenager. And she was fascinated with his his mission and his message, and she wanted to follow him. Well, her parents were not real keen on that idea, which is a typical theme when it comes to women wanting to follow God’s call. The parents have other ideas.

Sharifa >> Yes.

Kelley >> So she ran away and she went to follow Francis, and they had to kind of come to grips with, “Okay, fine, I guess you can do this.” And so he took her vows. She was like engaged to be married. She said, “No, I don’t want to do it.”

She went to Francis and pleaded her case and he saw the sincerity of her call.

And so she made her Franciscan vows, and he established her with another group as his second like second group. And eventually she founded—and I say eventually it wasn’t that much longer—I think she was 19 or 20, and she was in charge of a small group of. Yeah. So it became the order of the Poor Ladies, which is what we call The Poor Clares even today. So this still exists.

Sharifa >> Even today!

Kelley >> Oh, yes. Yes. So in the Catholic world, if you want to be a nun, there’s any number of orders that you could choose from, and so this is still one of them. And their big defining characteristic is poverty. and it’s kind of extreme poverty.

So she ended up Assisi is built on a big hill and at the bottom of the hill. And let me tell you, it’s a steep walk. Okay?

Sharifa >> Okay.

Kelley >> It was exercise for sure.

Sharifaa >> I feel like you lived that.

Kelley >> I did. Going back up was the hard part, but there’s this little convent at the bottom, San Damiana, Saint Damien’s. And so we got to walk through, like we saw where she slept in the corner, on the floor and that kind of thing. Her. She didn’t. She lived into her 50s, I believe, but she ended up dying because she was on the starvation kind of diet.

And it just it affected her health too much. So she was a little. Yeah. She just starved herself over time. So. Right. So giving the food away, relying on the neighbors to to bring whatever it is that they needed.

Their big ministry was prayer. She also would serve they would serve their local community. She was I mean, her big claim to fame, I guess, within the Catholic world is that she was the first woman to write her own monastic rule. Like this is the rule of life. Benedict had his own, you know, everybody who founded their order figured out this is the way we’re going to live. And so that’s she wrote hers.

Sharifa >> Wow. So what is what do you think is the—why should we know who Clara is? What is her significance?

Which it’s hard to distill because—

Kelley >> It is.

Sharifa >> I think that she from what you said, she exemplifies the passion and devotion to Christ that supersedes traditional obligations.

Kelley >> Yes.

Sharifa >> She exhibits a selflessness. Also she’s a young leader. Just her determination and devotion is also coupled with the ability to lead at a very young age.

Kelley >> Definitely she knew her mind. She knew her faith and what she wanted to do. I don’t know that I would recommend, like running away from mom and dad and say, “I’m just going to live life this way.” Those sorts of things are culturally different from the way we are now, but as parents, we would never want to dismiss the faith of our children just because they’re children.

Sharifa >> Right.

Kelley >> Right. And so it’s worth listening to them and being in conversation with them and helping guide them and pray alongside them. What is God doing in your life here? What is he teaching? Where is he leading you? So I think that’s one thing that we can take from her, but her devotion to what she considered her ministry was all in. Like they did not—I forget the word I’m looking for. She renounced wealth to serve God in poverty. Like that’s drastic.

Sharifa >> Her possessions it sounds like.

Kelley >> Yes. Like they gave everything away and they relied on the community to feed them, to give them anything that they needed.

She actually had influence outside of her convent. People came, you know, even the Pope came at the end, realized what an influence that she was and affirmed her order, her rule, and said, “Okay, fine, it’s official. It can be yours.” Two days before she died, like so. It was a lifelong. So I would say she was determined. She was a steadfast kind of person and would not be swayed from what she believed God was calling her to do.

Sharifa >> Yeah. What a strong what a strong woman.

Kelley >> Yeah, And yet she gave her life to serve others.

Sharifa >> Yes.

Kelley >> Yeah.

Sharifa >> Which is strength.

Kelley >> Yeah. And I think that’s kind of a theme through all of these women. I don’t know that I picked them for that reason, but that’s probably one of the reasons they’re all still known to us today.

Sharifa >> Yes.

Kelley >> Is that they were not about themselves.

Sharifa >> What a testimony, especially in a time where there’s so much “me first” energy in our culture, so much self-focused energy. They really, exemplified the foot-washing servant leadership of our savior. In such a beautiful way. I am so thankful that you have spent time with us going into detail about these women that we absolutely should know about, and it makes me wonder who else?

Kelley >> Oh. So many, so many.

Sharifa >> There are so many. It’s a veritable cloud of witnesses that are. Just their lives are an encouragement and an example to follow us. So thank you so much, Dr., for talking with us about this today.

And for our viewers and listeners. You can find many other podcasts and videos that pertain to church history.

You can do so by going to our website at BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org, and then clicking the resources dropdown menu, and then scrolling to studying and teaching the Bible. Thanks again, Dr. Kelley, for your time with us.

Kelley >> Thanks, Sharifa. You’re the best hostess. So this is always fun, I love it.

Sharifa >> It’s really fun for me, too. So thank you and thank all of you for listening and viewing. We’ll catch you next time.

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