“The Sisters of the Poor Clare Monastery in Roswell have been, and continue to be, a tangible blessing to the people of the Diocese of Las Cruces. Their tireless ministry of prayer on behalf of our Church and its faithful members represents an invaluable support to our mission as People of God in the modern world.” – Bishop Ricardo Ramirez, C.S.B.

History: St. Clare of Assisi

The eldest daughter of an influential Italian family, St. Clare was born in Assisi in 1193 or 1194. The goodness, charm and piety of this favored child seemed to point to a future couched in luxury, wealth, and prestige. Yet God had fashioned the heart of Clare for something greater, and the sparks of that "something" were fanned into a great flame of response at the preaching of her fellow townsman, the future St. Francis of Assisi.

The Gospel ideals of the Little Poor Man found their truest echo in the heart of the young noblewoman, who at midnight of Palm Sunday, 1212, left her paternal home and made her way to the little chapel of St. Mary of the Angels outside Assisi. There she exchanged her finest gown for the rough, cross-form habit of the Order of Penance, after St. Francis himself cut her long golden hair.

Clare was soon joined by her younger sister Agnes, and the two settled in the ancient church of San Damiano. There for forty-two years she spent her life in joyful sacrifice for the needs of the Church and the world, embodying her ideals in the simple Form of Life which she handed on to her daughters of all time as the expression of her whole desire.

First spiritual daughter of St. Francis Foundress of the Order of Poor Clare Nuns

This Rule of Life (the first in the history of the Church written by a woman) received papal approval on August 9, 1253, just two days before Clare's death on August 11. At that time, 125 monasteries were observing the form of life inspired by her courageous following of the Gospel. 

St. Clare was canonized by Pope Alexander IV on August 15, 1255. Her feast day is celebrated on August 11.

 St. Colette of Corbie:

In the centuries following the deaths of Saints Francis and Clare, their soaring ideals were compromised by many of their followers in favor of an era of mitigation and relaxation that reached its height at the end of the fourteenth century. And so it was that God raised up St. Colette of Corbie, born January 13, 1381, to restore their beautiful dream to its first fervor. Granted papal authorization for the restoration of the Franciscan Order to primitive observance, Colette labored tirelessly in the work of reform. By the time of her death on March 6, 1447, she had founded sixteen monasteries faithful to the primitive Rule of St. Clare and had written Constitutions which insured the observance of this Rule as a practical way of life.  

St. Colette was canonized in 1807 and her feast day is celebrated on February 7. Her monastery in Ghent, Belgium, founded in 1442, established a foundation in Tongres in 1845, which in turn sent nuns to Dusseldorf, Germany in 1859.

St.Colette of Corbie

Forced into exile by Bismarck's Kulturkampf, the Dusseldorf Poor Clares carried the primitive ideal first to the Netherlands and then to the United States, establishing the first Poor Clare monastery of the reform of St. Colette in Cleveland, Ohio in 1877. From this Cleveland motherhouse, other American foundations were made, including a monastery in Chicago, Illinois, in 1893.

Charism: our contemplative vocation

But what do these enclosed nuns do? What are they all about? Verbi Sponsa, the document on the contemplative life issued in 1999 by the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life, states clearly and beautifully what the Church expects nuns to do and to be: “The contemplative life is the nun’s particular way of being the Church, of building the communion of the Church, of fulfilling a mission for the good of the whole Church. Cloistered contemplatives therefore are not asked to be involved in new forms of active presence, but to remain at the wellspring of Trinitarian communion, dwelling at the very heart of the Church … by means of constant prayer, the oblation of self and the offering of the sacrifice of praise. Their life thus becomes a mysterious source of apostolic fruitfulness and blessing for the Christian community and for the whole world.” Prayer requests may be sent to the community, which intercedes day and night for all the needs of the world.

Utterly dependent on Divine providence and the alms of the faithful by her solemn vow of poverty, a Poor Clare works hard as the poor must always do. All share alike the work and maintenance of their monastery home. There is gardening, artwork, music, sewing, printing, cooking, and all things else. And so are the works of the cloistered Poor Clares offered to God in a daily symphony of love, each sister aware of the blessed paradox that her work is her own particular grace while yet an indispensable part of the symphonic whole in which each one busy at her own tasks is likewise in blessed measure serving in all tasks.

In a booklet on the contemplative life, Mother Mary Francis describes the call to the cloister in this way: “‘The King has brought me into his rooms.’ A vocation to the cloister is just as simple and yet as incredible, as exquisite and still as demanding as that … The most enduring right to be merry is realized within the King's rooms” (from The King’s Rooms).  

	In a letter to Pope John Paul II written after theSynod of Bishops on Religious Life, she urges, “It is vital that we offer young people a clear and uncompromising modus vivendi as the enclosed contemplative nuns whom we have been called by God to be. What we have to offer the young who seek us out is nothing ‘active’ or ‘useful’ or ‘modern’ as the world might reckon it. It is, rather, the intense interior activity of contemplation which calls us not out of our enclosure but deeply into it from which alone is our religious calling answered.  We can reach the whole world in the ‘activity’ of prayer and compassion and sacrificial love. Young people readily understand that the enclosed contemplative life is ‘useful’ to the Church and to the world. These modern young folk find our ancient way of life an inviting mystery which demands the whole of their modernity to fathom” (Letter to Pope John Paul II, 1994).
The hair of a newly-clothed novice, encircling her crucifix, is placed on the altar step in the nuns’ choir on the day of her Investiture ceremony.
This wondrous call is further explored in Mother’s book, Forth and Abroad: “For what the enclosure encloses is a woman in love. Consecrated spousal love pertains to the core of the heart, and it can make suffering demands, demands in their turn made desirable just because of love.  It is a blessed circle and expressed in the ring circling the Poor Clare’s finger. The ring bears the outline of a heart. And of a cross. Spouseship is, in the end, the most beautiful expression of power, the unleashing of such love and willingness to suffer the lot of the Bridegroom as alone makes for the triumph of womanhood in whatever vocation.
At the ceremony of a Poor Clare’s solemn Profession, when a young nun tosses her life like a song into the Heart of Christ as alms for all in his kingdom, a ring is placed upon her finger. And then a crown of thorns upon her head. That is the proper order of things for it is only love that makes bearing the reality of thorns possible. The newly ringed and crowned young nun who has pronounced her vows with her hands placed in those of the abbess while the bishop looks on in witness lifts her gaze to the eyes of her abbess. It is a moment that never fades.”

Members

The community in Roswell presently numbers twenty-three.  Mother Mary Angela is the abbess. Mother Mary Francis, who served as abbess of the monastery for forty-one years, received the title of “Mother Emerita” in October 2005, four months before her death on February 11, 2006.

Young women between the ages of eighteen and thirty who are interested in a contemplative vocation may contact Mother Angela.