St. Clare Novena
We are deep into the Solemn Public Novena to our Foundress
and Mother St. Clare in preparation for her
feast on August 11. Many of our friends
are sending in their petitions in response to our newsletter that we sent out a
few weeks ago. If anyone would like to
have their special requests entrusted to St. Clare, please send us an
e-mail: mtstfrancis@gmail.com. For those of you who do not receive our
newsletter, here it is:
Our dear Friends,
Have you
heard them? Our bells, ringing out to
say: This is the day. Yes, it is the day
and it is from the heart of our jubilation for our Mother Abbess’ Silver
Jubilee that we come to greet you as we approach the blessed days of our solemn
novena in honor of our Holy Mother St. Clare.
At this writing, we have just come from the first of our three special
days of celebration with the bells of the Mass with our Bishop DiLorenzo and
six concelebrating priests still echoing in our hearts. They will ring out again in a few days on
Sunday, July 26, when we celebrate the second of our three days of rejoicing
with Father Robert McCreary, O.F.M. Cap., at the altar. As you know from previous editions of this
august publication, one day is never enough to give thanks to the Lord for His
grace and goodness in bringing one of our Sisters to this milestone in her
religious life. And how much more so in
this year especially dedicated to giving thanks for the charism of the
consecrated life in the Church! We were
delighted to have so many of you join us that day, both in body and spirit, and
are sure that you received many special graces from the hand of Mother’s divine
Bridegroom.
But to
backtrack a bit to the place we left you a couple months ago. Our former chaplain, Father Francis Simeone,
led us through our celebrations of Holy Week and Easter this year. It was the first time since his retirement
that he had presided at the entire Triduum.
When we greeted him in the parlor afterwards to thank him for his
presence and for his insightful homilies, he remarked that, for him, too, the
days had been most fulfilling. Those outpoured graces grew and blossomed during
the following weeks as we prepared to send our Mother Abbess and Sister Francis
Maria westward to California . There they joined abbesses and delegates from
each monastery of our Federation of Mary Immaculate as they met in Los Altos
Hills for our triennial chapter. These
events are always a source of blessing for us all, as together we share and
support one another in our way of life, which is such a mystery to those not
called to it. As our Bishop recalled in
his homily at Mother’s Jubilee Mass, that is especially true in our world
today, which seems to be set only on material things. The cloistered life is set instead as a
question mark in the midst of all that, “to keep green among the people of God
the memory of a heavenly homeland” as one of the Council documents puts
it. In other words, to prompt (or
provoke) people to ask “Why?”
Our Sister Maria Christi of the
Immaculate Conception is one of those who heard the answer, and on May 14,
Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord, pledged herself to observe the Holy
Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ by living in obedience, in poverty, and in
chastity, vowing to live in the enclosure, following the path our Father St.
Francis and our Mother St. Clare traced out for us more than 800 years
ago. After such a beginning, we
concluded the Church’s great novena for the coming of the Holy Spirit. with a special Vigil Mass at 11:30 p.m. on
the Saturday before Pentecost. Those of
you who joined us heard readings in Dutch, Hebrew, Hindi, Malayalam, Latin, and
Portuguese, with the responsorial psalms in English. We are planning to do it again next year, but
at an earlier hour. Just a few weeks later, on the feast of the
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, we had the joy of welcoming into the fullness of
community our Sister Mary Prabha who came to us from India several years ago. Approval of Sister’s permanent transfer had
come from her home community in Raiganj in late April, but we wanted an extra
special day for our celebration. Then,
on July 10th, we opened our arms and our hearts to receive into our
midst two more of our Sisters from our monastery in Holland : Sister Margaret Mary and Sister
Petrice. A third, Sister Theresia, had come over in January. The monastery had to close because of a lack
of vocations in secularized Europe . A couple of days later, we sealed our welcome
with a mini-fireworks festival (we had saved a few sparklers and a couple
exploding fountains from the Fourth). It
was our version of a 21-gun salute to these valiant Sisters who had given all
they had to follow Christ along His mysterious and often mystifying ways.
These past few months have also
seen us hosting several young men seeking silence and solitude for their
retreats on the way to diaconal or priestly ordination. You may recall some years back during the
special year for priests we had offered the opportunity to the priests of our
diocese to spend quiet time in our guest area, the only charge being to say our
morning Mass. It seems that the seed planted back then has
taken root as more busy priests have sought to renew their spirits at this
hearth of our holy Mother St. Clare.
Speaking of seeds being planted,
this summer has blossomed with more than its usual share of young women
discerning the call of the Lord. Some
have come and seen that our way is not for them. But others have caught echoes of their
hearts’ desire and have asked to return for deeper listening. Some have come
singly; some as part of a group; all have said they felt graced with a special
meeting with the Lord. Many of you recently met one of those who have heard the
deeper call when Sarah Meier came to St. Bede’s Parish in Williamsburg to ask for help in meeting her
college debt. We would like very much to
express our gratitude to all of you at St. Bede’s who responded so generously
to her appeal and to share the great glad tidings that before you receive this
missive, our enclosure doors will open wide to welcome her into our midst.
Soon our bells will be ringing
again for the joy of Jubilee for our Mother.
We will share more of that in our next issue. A little farther down the
road, on August 2nd, they will sound once more to announce the
beginning of our great novena in honor of our Holy Mother St. Clare. You may notice from the insert included in
this mailing that our novena will be prayed in the evening this year as is
traditional in most of our monasteries.
On the final evening, August 10, there will be a Vigil Mass for the
feast, at which the traditional breads will be blessed. Be assured we will be remembering all of you,
far and near, commending you to the prayers of our Holy Mother who was a light
in the darkness for the people of her own era.
Surely her intercession will bring light into the shadows of our own
times and illumine the rough places in the lives of all who trust in her who
placed her trust so firmly in the One Whom she knew as
“God-with-us,
the God close to us and not merely in the spatial and temporal sense; He is close to us because He has, as it were,
‘espoused’ our humanity; He has taken our condition upon Himself, choosing to
be like us in all things but sin in order to make us become like Him…Christian
joy thus springs from this certainty:
God is close, He is with me, He is with us, in joy and in sorrow, in
sickness and in health, as a friend and faithful spouse. And this joy endures, even in trials, in
suffering itself. It does not remain
only on the surface; it dwells in the depths of the person who entrusts himself
to God and trusts in Him.”
-Pope
Emeritus Benedict XVI
May that Lord be with you always and may you
be with Him always and in every place.
-St. Clare
MONASTERY
EVENTS 2015
August 2 – 9 Novena
in honor of our Holy Mother St. Clare 7:00
each evening
August 10 Vigil Mass of
our Holy Mother St. Clare 6:30 p.m.
August 11 Solemnity of
our Holy Mother St. Clare Morning Mass 8:00 a.m.
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