Being a Poor Clare Today
CLARE'S LIFE and charism live on in the lives of the many Poor Clares living faithfully her spirit in their monasteries today. I would like to share what I see as our message to the world.
Potential Unlimited
I believe that, although we live in a small and rather confined space, we touch the world and the whole world touches us. Not many people get to travel to many places or affect large populations. Most of society is enclosed by family structures, jobs and daily routines. Every life has its limits in time and space.
Our life as Clares speaks of the countless areas of potentiality and creativity that emerge within such limits. The contemplative stance opens eyes, ears and heart and invites the individual to hear the "more."
Ministry of Prayer
The same maple tree can show a new dimension of life to us daily. The same people are ever changing, ever growing and always calling forth new responses from us. Prayer enables us to minister to millions, most of whom we never meet, but for whom we genuinely care. Limited space can either make a world very small and closed in on itself or challenge us to ever keener perceptions and deeper insights.
This is a message of hope and importance to those who are "shut-ins," persons enclosed in their bodies through paralysis, to the exile and the prisoner, and to the ordinary person simply trying to find meaning in small daily chores.
Commitment to the Common Life
We live in a world where commitment is difficult and it seems easier to end a relationship than to try to work it through. Our commitment to sisterhood speaks of our belief in humanity and in the gift we are to one another. We teach that focus on the good unifies.
We know the potential for goodness and grace lies within each person, but that it takes work, encouragement and support to help it grow and surface. Living in relationship is hard, but the Clare life models and encourages the forgiveness, the honesty and the patience that can make it happen.
Less Is More
Consumerism attacks on every side. The commercials on television, the advertisements in magazines and the billboards on our highways all tell us of things we absolutely must have in order to be happy.
Following Clare, we profess that less is more. Who we are is more important than what we have. Living simply opens one to an appreciation of what one already has. Our life teaches appreciation for the little things: a single flower, a homemade birthday card, fresh bread and the smile of another.
Our prayer is the prayer of the ordinary. We claim a mysticism of everyday. It is not a form of prayer reserved for the special, the gifted or the holier. Everyone is called to walk in the presence of God. Our ordinary mysticism is within the reach of all people.
Healing Happens
We live in a hurting world. Suffering overwhelms people. We are not removed from that reality. We see it on the daily news. We hear it in the pleas for prayer contained in the e-mails, letters and phone calls that we receive. We touch it in our neighbors, our families and our own lives. We cannot remove or take away all the pain that we witness. Life is messy; even Jesus did not clean up all the messiness in the lives of the people he encountered.
St. Clare has taught us to bring our messiness to God. God teaches us what we need to know. We are always looking for solutions. Our contemplative life teaches us that answers are not always clearly visible or even available. Yet, our contemplative stance also teaches a way of living peacefully with the questions.
Our way of life is not a way of ignorance or avoidance of reality. It is a way of faith. It is a way of knowing that God is bigger than we are! It is a way of believing that God always comes through.
Circumstances do not always change. Cures do not always happen, but faith, hope and love change people. Inherent in the Poor Clare vocation is the call to be healers. Helping others to be whole is to show them the way to holiness.
Shining a Light on Clare and Her Followers
MORE THAN 20,000 Poor Clares live in 76 countries. Forty-six monasteries exist in the United States, including three houses of Capuchin Poor Clares with roots in Mexico and one Byzantine foundation.
On the Web
While each monastery is autonomous, three federations and one association link U.S. Poor Clares to one another, and Web sites link us to many of them. An umbrella site, http://www.poorclare.org, provides links to a variety of Poor Clare foundations. Many sites offer further history of Clare and illustrate how her legacy is lived out today.