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Our Lives as Poor Clares

Statement of Mission

Poor Clare

Our mission as Poor Clares
is to be a visible sign
of sisterhood through the
contemplative experience
of living in a filial relationship with the Father
in communion with Jesus
in the Holy Spirit.

By inviting people
into this new
and original relationship
we become
a provocative testimony
through which
the Church is enlightened
and salvation brought to the world.

 

Our Gift of Sisterhood

Our Life of Contemplation

The Grace of Poverty

The Call to Mission.

Sisterhood

Our Gift of Sisterhood

Living in ‘unity of mind and heart’ as taught by St Clare…

Let them devote themselves to what they should desire to have above all else, the Spirit of the Lord’s holy manner of working.

Gathered in the name of the Lord and rejoicing in the Charism of Francis and Clare, we celebrate life together as we share its joys and alleviate it’s pain and in the same spirit exemplified by Clare, we care for our aged and sick sisters. Grateful for the gift of one another, we take time to relax together and share one another’s company.

Life in community is the place where the Gospel life is experienced, that is, Christ among us, leading us through his Spirit whose guidance we are committed to follow together in obedience and in daily service of one another.

The daily gathering for prayer (Eucharist and Divine Office) and the weekly meeting in community continually draw the Sisters into this Gospel experience.

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Joanne in Hermitage

Our Life of Contemplation

Place your heart in the figure of the divine substance.
And transform your whole being into the image of the Godhead Itself
through contemplation!

(III letter of Clare to Agnes)

We seek to make prayer our whole way of living; a way of finding God in all things and all things in God. Our life of prayer is the work of the Holy Spirit in the depths of our being, forming us into the image of Christ. In openness to the Spirit, we try to respond ever more generously to the gentle invitation to complete self–surrender to the Father’s will. (Constitutions 36,45,46).

In keeping with the earliest Franciscan tradition, the sisters will live the eremitical form (St Francis’ Rule for Hermitages 1217-1221) much loved by St Francis and St Clare. They take inspiration from St Francis who always sought out solitary places in nature and in the harmony of creation (1 Cel 27). This implies the practice of daily prayer, in solitude, in a hermitage. In this way the Form of Life is rooted in contemplation. (Constitutions N36).

Within the Sisterhood our gift of contemplation has different expressions. What is this gift? It is the call to solitude in the companionship with others. Some sisters have a garden hermitage where she spends the first hours of her day in solitude with God. It is her vocation to rise each morning and abandon all things in search of the One she loves.

They take inspiration from St Francis who always sought out solitary places in nature and in the harmony of creation (1 Cel 27). Whatever the expression all devote time to loving contemplation of the Son of God who is for us the way to the Father.

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Our Grace of Poverty

"I, Brother Francis, the little one, wish to follow the life and poverty of our Most High Lord Jesus Christ, and of his most Holy Mother, and to persevere in this until the end; and I ask and counsel you, my ladies, to live always in this most holy life and in poverty."1 RC1 6:3

"0 holy poverty, to those who possess and desire you, God promises the Kingdom of Heaven and offers, indeed, eternal glory and blessed life!" (letter of St Clare)

‘By our vow of poverty we freely renounce the right to use or dispose of any good of money value without permission of lawful superiors. Earnings, pensions and all we receive as gifts belong to the community, and we do not have an individual claim on them. Our evangelical poverty commits us to a life in common which entails a spirit of penance and dependence as we seek to preserve among ourselves the unity of mutual love. (Const. 22, 21)

Prayer focus

Living highest poverty as taught to us by St Clare

Through this grace of poverty the sisters are called:

  • to embrace the path of conversion,
  • to identify with the poverty of Christ through the work of inner transformation
  • to identify with the humility of Christ through putting themselves at the service of one another’s good and wholeness of life. (Constitutions)

The Sisters support one another in their needs according to their gifts and as work is sent to them in the providence of God. In this way the Sisters experience their dependence on God.

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The Call to Mission

Living in the consciousness of our participation in Christ’s salvific mission (IIILAg.8).

The sisters give expression to the call to mission by this Form of Gospel Life. This is the primary prophetic witness which continues the fulfilment of the prophecy of St Francis, remembered and spoken of by St Clare, where he referred to our vocation, saying,

‘…ladies will dwell here who will glorify our heavenly Father throughout his holy, universal Church by their celebrated and holy manner of life’
(TestCl 13, 14).

The ministries of the sisters are according to their gifts, always bearing in mind the exhortation of St Clare, “The sisters to whom the Lord has given the grace of working are to work faithfully and devotedly…. at work which pertains to a virtuous life and to the common good. They must do this in such a way that, while they banish idleness, the enemy of the soul, they do not extinguish the spirit of holy prayer and devotion to which all other things of our earthly existence must contribute’.
(RCl 7: 1,2) (Constitutions N3)

 

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