Advent Benediction 4:30 p.m. – “So, you see then, by the grace of God it is made clear to us that the soul of a faithful human being, that most distinguished of all created beings, is greater than heaven itself is, since the heavens along with all of creation cannot hold the Creator. No! -only a faithful soul can be his castle and throne, and this solely because of such a soul's love which is lacking to those with no regard for godliness.” – Letter of St. Clare
(1253) The Bishop and his official party returned to Assisi to continue interviewing the townspeople regarding the life of the virgin Clare. They officially interrogated four persons who had known Clare before she entered the monastery, all testifying to her sanctity.
This feast commemorates the approval by Pope Honorius III of the Rule of St. Francis on this day in 1223. St. Clare’s Rule is closely modelled on the Rule of St. Francis.
On this day in 1960 the Convent of Las Descalzas [discalced/barefoot]was open to the public for the first time. This monastery of Poor Clares was built by the Spanish royal family in Madrid as a place for their burials, and as a special place of intercession for the Spanish royals. It is still a monastery, although during parts of the day the cloister is lifted so that tours may come to view the fabulous artwork.
On December 2, 1665, Blessed Maria Angela Astorch died in the Poor Clare Capuchin monastery in Murcia, Spain. She had a profound knowledge of Sacred Scripture and a deep appreciation of the Divine Office. She wrote: “When I am singing the psalms in choir… they seize me in such a way that my soul seems rapt in flight.”
This great missionary had a sister who was in the Poor Clare monastery of Gandia, Spain. His sister, Magdalena de Jasso, convinced their family to allow Francis to continue his studies in Paris, saying she believed that God had great plans for him.
On December 2nd, St. Peter Canisius reached Lucerne, Switzerland, during a missionary journey which he took on foot in 1580. He went out of his way to reach the Poor Clare monastery called “Paradise” in the canton of Thurgau and stayed there several days.
Mother Clara Pfander sent five young Religious from Germany to America on board the Deutschland on December 2, 1875. On December 5th, the ship foundered in the stormy fog off of Breman. Gerard Manley Hopkins commemorated these five, brave young women in his poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland . (See December 6th)
. Theresa Pfaender was born on this day in 1827. She became a religious Sister, taking the name of “Clara,” after St. Clare of Assisi. She founded the Franciscan Sisters of Salzkotten. December 6, 1194 – Birth of Emperor Frederick II, which occurred in Assisi as his mother was travelling and she realized that the baby was coming sooner than expected. His mother, Costanza, had been compelled to leave her monastery and to marry the Duke of Swabia, who later became the Emperor Henry VI. This political marriage finally produced a son nine years later, when Costanza was already in her forties. St. Francis would have been thirteen years old at the time and witnessed the festivities of the event. (Frederick’s grandfather had made Assisi an unwilling vassal of the Emperor, and would culminate in the Assisi Civil War in about 1207. Francis fought on the side against the Emperor.) Frederick was baptized in the same font as St. Francis and St. Clare, as all children born in Assisi are baptized in the font of the Cathedral of San Rufino. Clare, herself, had only been born a few months before. It was Saracen soldiers under orders from Frederick II who assaulted the monastery of San Damiano where St. Clare lived, and who fell back under the force of her prayers. Both Clare’s and Francis’ lives were intertwined with that of Frederick
The letters of St. Ambrose written to his sister, Marcellina, a consecrated virgin in Milan, are classics of spirituality, and were used in the breviary at the time of St. Clare. These letters and homilies focus on Christ as the Bridegroom.
St. Ignatius of Loyola had, from his infancy, contact with the Poor Clares. His cousin María López de Emparan founded the monastery of the Most Pure Conception in Azpeitia in 1497. These nuns today profess the Conceptionist Poor Clare Rule. There were a number of Poor Clares who defended the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, which was not proclaimed a dogma until 1854. One Poor Clare Abbess of the monastery of Santa Clara de Carríon, Madre Luisa de la Ascensíon (1565-1636). “When she learned that the defenders of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God at that time met with opposition from some, she made a vow and an oath to believe and to defend that the sovereign Virgin was conceived without original sin,” wrote Father Daza. She even became the foundress of a confraternity of the Defenders of the Immaculate Conception which at one time numbered 80, 000 people. This zealous nun was defamed and denounced before the Inquisition, and she died in disgrace, confined to an Augustinian monastery. Later, Father Balbas succeeded in establishing her innocence. Her remains were brought back with great devotion to the monastery at Carríon de los Condes on February 5, 1649.
. Bishop Zumárraga – the same who asked St. Juan Diego for a miraculous sign - desired that a monastery of St. Clare would be established so that “young Indian girls… could be brought up, instructed, and educated…” Although this type of arrangement today would not be acceptable, it was not that unusual in those times. (See Letters of Bishop Zumárraga November 24th and 25th of 1536, etc.)
On this day in 1633, Sister Maria Celeste, the daughter of Galileo, wrote her last letter to her father before her own untimely death a few months later, see April 2nd. He was brought home so that he could be near his daughters, but was basically placed under house arrest, forbidden to receive visitors who would discuss scientific theories with him.
In 1537 Juan de Zumarraga, bishop of Mexico, again wrote requesting Poor Clares of the Primitive Rule for his diocese. (Bishop Zumarraga himself was a Franciscan Friar. He is famous for being the bishop to whom Juan Diego went regarding the apparitions of Our Lady of Guadalupe.) December12 Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. On this day in 1693, the Capuchin Poor Clare Saint Veronica Giuliani began to write her diary. This precious document recounts not only her supernatural revelations, including the mystical marriage with Christ on Easter Sunday of 1694, but also her reflections and prayers.
On this day in 1693, the Capuchin Poor Clare Saint Veronica Giuliani began to write her diary. This precious document recounts not only her supernatural revelations, including the mystical marriage with Christ on Easter Sunday of 1694, but also her reflections and prayers.
Death in 1250 of the Emperor Frederick II. This Holy Roman Emperor was a contemporary of Sts. Francis and St. Clare. After the death of his wife, he asked to marry St. Agnes of Prague, who rejected him and then became a Poor Clare. He also asked St. Elizabeth of Hungary to wed him, but she turned him down also. It is well that they did, as his wives kept “dying”. (See December 6th and June 22nd) The German Poor Clare Colettines arrived in the United States on December 13, 1877. This was the second successful foundation in America. The Italian Poor Clares came just a few years ahead of them, arriving on October 12, 1875.
In Combermere, Canada, Catherine de Hueck Doherty died on December 14, 1985. She once wrote a poem for a Poor Clare: “In Poverty she walks / … Yet a Bride is she / Bedecked in splendor of His choice…”
The extraordinary abbess of the monastery of St. Clare in Nuremberg, Germany, Caritas Pirkheimer (+1532), composed a Prayer Book which enjoyed great popularity among her contemporaries. Along with her other writings - for Caritas was fluent in German and Latin – the manuscript is now kept in the Munich State Library. In this Prayer Book she invokes the coming Christ Child, “the divine Infant who is the Savior awaited by all people.” (See July 30th, December 19th, and August 19th)
In 1490, the Ven. Marina de Villesca, widow of Garcia de Montemayor, was authorized to change from the Third Order Rule to that of St. Clare, in the monastery of S. Isabel de los Angeles, Cordoba, Spain. She was also allowed to receive the less-strict Urbanist Poor Clares without repeating the Novitiate. These nuns became known as “Discalced”, and spread to other cities in Spain.
Birth on December 18, 1819, of Isaac Hecker, a future convert to the Catholic faith. Later, he became a Redemptorist priest. He left this Congregation in order to found a religious Order for former Protestants, the Paulists. Father Hecker met Mother Mary Maddalena Bentivoglio in New York, and was of much help to her.
The Poor Clares in Galway have a precious wooden statue that is over 350 years old. They pass the statue of the Christ Child and His Mother on their way to the Choir. Mother Bonaventure Browne mentions this statue in her chronicle, which she wrote in the 1600’s: “The soldiers sett fire to ye Convent, and burned it with all that was therein, only that God preserved miraculously the Tabernacle in which the Most Blessed Sacrament used to be kept in the quire and wherein the said holy Sacrament was, when they prayed before it, with the aforesaid fervor to be delivered from their enemies, and likewise an old Image of our Blessed Lady both made of wood.” This statue formed part of an exhibition of Irish wood sculptures at the National Museum of Ireland in 1948.
On December 20, 1503, the Abbess in Nuremberg resigned, and Caritas Pirkheimer was unanimously elected to succeed her. She was a well-educated woman, and was friends with Erasmus and Albrecht Dürer. She is well-known for her invocations to the coming Child Jesus. (See July 30th, August 19th, December 16th)
Blessed Maria Lorenza Longo, the foundress of the Capuchin Poor Clares, died on this day in 1542. The Capuchin branch of the Poor Clares was begun in Naples in the early 1500’s.
On December 23, 1822, Father Galvão died in the little room next to the Poor Clare Conceptionist monastery which he had founded. This saintly Franciscan is a great favorite in his native Brazil.
St. Catherine of Bologna asked her Abbess’ permission to spend the night before the Lord’s birth. She began her vigil on Christmas Eve, spending the time in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and in prayer. Shortly before Midnight, the Virgin appeared to her and placed the Infant in her arms. St. Catherine is often depicted in this way in paintings.
Once, St. Clare had been too ill to attend the Midnight Mass of Christmas, and was in the dormitory while the rest of the Sisters attended the services. Feeling sorry for herself, St. Clare complained to our Lord that she had been left alone. Suddenly, she could see and hear the Friars in the Basilica of San Francesco, singing the Liturgy for Christmas. Because of this incident, St. Clare was proclaimed the patroness of television on February 14, 1958.
St. Stephen the Protomartyr – Four Poor Clare nuns were expelled from Macao, China, and arrived on January 7, 1645, at the port of Tourane (now called Danang) of Cochin China (Vietnam). At the point of being beheaded by the imperial mandarin, they were transferred to the Court of Húe. There they won the benevolence of the emperor Thuong-Vuong and of the imperial officials, so much so that in four months some 2,000 embraced the faith and were baptized. Fifty of these were relatives of the King. One of them received the name of Stephen in Baptism, died a few days later as a martyr for the Faith.
Saint John the Evangelist - Another ancient feast found in the breviary of Saint Clare. Clare herself quotes from Saint John’s Gospel in her letters. On December 25, 1808, French troops under Napoleon Bonaparte entered the town of Tordesillas, Spain. (There had been a royal monastery of Poor Clares there for centuries, and as happened in Europe, a town grew up around the monastery.) The soldiers locked up the chaplain and several other priests in the parlor of the monastery. They were left without food or water for several days. Through clandestine means the nuns learned the fate of the priests. The Abbess Maria Manuela was ordered to come to see Bonaparte himself. He met her in his room, dressed in uniform and all the insignia of the Empire. He offered her a seat at his side and offered her coffee. With pretended innocence, the Abbess charmed the Emperor, and he said that he would grant any favor she asked him. Naturally, she asked that he spare the lives of the three prisoners at the monastery. This he granted willingly.
We pray for all children, victims of abortion and of abuse. This feast is on this day in the breviary used at San Damiano. December 28, 1808 – At the Poor Clare monastery, the three imprisoned priests are finally let free after the Emperor Napoleon left the area, to the sound of military music. It is not recorded why the three priests had offended the Emperor so much. The Poor Clare Abbess Maria Manuela was instrumental in their release. (See December 27th ) The emperor was so impressed by the Abbess that he had his chief of staff affix to the door of the monastery “an edict imposing the punishment of death on any person of any class, condition or category who would molest the Religious”. Napoleon is also said to have hand-written a poster which was in the Poor Clare monastery: THE EMPEROR HAS BEEN HERE. Obviously, Mother Maria Manuela captivated the Emperor. On December 28, 1877, the first novices in the United States were clothed in the Poor Clare habit in the monastery of Cleveland, Ohio. One was Sister Mary Francis (Anna) Moran and the other Sister Mary Clare (Elizabeth) Baily.
Optional Memorial of St. Thomas Becket, archbishop and martyr – This great champion of the rights of the Church against the unlawful intrusion of the government was celebrated at the time of St. Clare.
Blessed Margaret Colonna Orsini was born shortly after the death of St. Clare in 1253. In 1273 Margaret began a life of retreat in Monte Prenestino, and the following year was invested with the habit of the Poor Clares. She died at Monte Prenestino on December 30, 1280.
Birth in 1706 on December 31st, Blessed Elisabetta Maria Satellico, who entered the Poor Clare monastery of Ostra Vetere, Italy, at the age of 19. Elisabetta received the name Maria Crucified. She oversaw the singing and played the organ as well, all the while having a profound prayer life, focused on the Trinity and the Blessed Sacrament.