Our Poor Clare Monastery

“All who turn to you shall be glad, and ever cry out their joy. You shelter them; in you they rejoice, those who love your name.”

Psalm 5:12

Nestled on a wooded tract of land…

…just southwest of Chicago is our Poor Clare Monastery of the Immaculate Conception. Our roots go back to Assisi in 1212, when St. Clare embraced the Gospel ideals of St. Francis and became the first of his spiritual daughters, his Poor Ladies, as he called them, and “his own little plant” as she loved to describe herself. Her response was so total, so dedicated, so attractive to the women of her times, that her way of life spread throughout Europe already in her lifetime to nearly fifty monasteries. After her holy death it was carried throughout the world to as many as nine hundred monasteries with eighteen thousand Poor Clares, continuing to follow in her footsteps.

It was brought to this country in 1877 by a founding group of Poor Clares from Germany, first taking root in Cleveland, Ohio, then transplanted to Chicago in 1893. In 1948, that “Right to be Merry” was taken to the Southwest in Roswell, New Mexico by another band of Poor Clare pioneers. The original Chicago monastery had to be closed before the celebration of its centenary in 1992. Then in 1998, the new Archbishop of Chicago, Francis Cardinal George, asked the Roswell Poor Clares for a refoundation of their Chicago motherhouse. So in the Jubilee Year 2000, the circle was completed as we returned to live our blessed vocation once more in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

O LORD, THROUGH THE GREATNESS OF YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, I ENTER YOUR HOUSE. I BOW DOWN BEFORE YOUR HOLY TEMPLE, IN AWE OF YOU.
(Psalm 5:8)

In March 2003…

…his Eminence, Francis Cardinal George dedicated our new monastery and chapel, and our Eucharistic Lord took up his abode with us. Our hearts still thrill to the remembrance of our Cardinal’s words: “Here is the center of the universe, for here is the Body of Christ.”

It is here like our Mother St. Clare that we put down the anchor of our souls, striving as contemplatives situated at the heart of the Church to be “co-workers of God and a support for the frail members of the Mystical Body of Christ.”

At the Heart of the Church

Since those who become the absolute property of God become God’s gift to all, our life as cloistered nuns is truly a gift set at the heart of the mystery of ecclesial communion … A contemplative monastery is a gift also for the local Church to which it belongs, representing what is most intimate to a local Church—its heart, where supplication and thanksgiving rise unceasingly. Thus, our choir grille, symbol of our life hidden with Christ in God, indicates at one and the same time, our physical separation from those in the world and our profound union with them in the Heart of Christ.