Summer 2000
Bethlehem Monastery of Poor Clares
www.poor-clares.org
Dear Friends, near and far,
The Great Jubilee is more than half over. Wondrously we Poor Clares have used this time and our Franciscan charism to draw wealth from poverty, to create something from almost nothing, to find incredible beauty from the very ordinary, and from everything, to extract love! Let us invite you into our ongoing Poor Clare adventure!
No, we have not left the enclosure, but we have been pilgrims trekking along the magnificent heights of the Church's Holy Year. It has been a peak to peak experience thus far as we continue to use the itinerary mapped out by the Vatican. We have not missed one event, be it the Jubilee of Priests on our Holy Father's eightieth birthday or the Jubilee of Migrants, or the International Eucharistic Congress. Our noontime refectory reading (that is, reading at meals) has covered these events in some way, and in twenty-five minute installments at our short evening repast, we have at least a full year's portion of reading from Witness to Hope, the official biography of Pope John Paul II by George Weigel. We thank all the fellow pilgrims who have come to our chapel, either for private prayer or to share our liturgical prayer and adoration. Again we remind all of you that our chapel has been designated as a pilgrimage site by our Bishop for gaining the Jubilee Indulgence. "You who have no money, come! Come without cost and without pay!" (Isaiah 55:1). The treasury of the Heart of Christ, which He bequeathed to the Church, lies open...and we are all heirs.
Enclosed nuns in different monasteries are capable of forging a closeness among themselves that is seldom achieved by society at large. The usual way for achieving this is by being hidden with Christ in God and living by the same Rule and Constitutions. However, in May, our Poor Clare Federation of Mary Immaculate was brought closer together than usual. The abbess and an elected delegate from each of the eleven houses were summoned to our monastery in Santa Barbara for a Triennial Chapter. It is no small privilege or task to host a chapter, and the welcome and tending of our Santa Barbara community is now proverbial. Eleven variations on the theme of living the Poor Clare life were shared so fully in the span of a week that now, with our Mother and Sister back at home, we in Bethlehem Monastery can continually tap into those riches. No, we probably won't see our other sisters again for another three years, but the bonds are as sure as those that bind us to God Himself.
June is always a season of fullness and love. Graduations, weddings, and the first wave of summer vacations fill family calendars. Our monastic-liturgical calendar has been more like the unfurling of banners: seven brilliant solemnities with time enough between them only for the ebb and flow of preparation and contemplation.
We always welcome those who would come to pray with us, and we provide the texts and music for II Vespers of all these great days as well as each Sunday, the original feast day. Our Corpus Christi Procession, led by our pastor, Msgr. Michael McCarron, and two other priests, was an outstanding moment of public witness of our faith. We thank the many faithful lovers of the Blessed Sacrament who joined us. June also was a month of birth for our Poor Clare federation. As of June, we have a new sister-house in Chicago Illinois.
We are beginning to wonder if the extra rooms we took out of our new monastery plans may have to be included after all. In our last newsletter, even as we announced to you the name of our newest novice, Sister Marie Emmanuel of our Lady of Bethlehem, Postulant Mai was preparing for her own entrance into the novitiate. June 24, the birth of St. John the Baptist, was a perfect day for her investiture. Like the child of Elizabeth and Zachary, she also received a new name...no, not John, but Sister Marie Bernadette of the Mother of Jesus. Our eldest novice, Sister Maria Grace completes the little trinity of novices, and they are preparing a place in the novitiate quarters for Carolyn who, after graduating from William and Mary College later this year, will enter as a postulant. "God, our God, has blessed us!" (Ps. 67).
Yes, God our God has blessed us! We not only rejoice in new life in the monastery, but even more over lives faithfully given over to God for many years. In late summer and into autumn, besides our usual gathering of
vegetables from our garden, there will be a far more special harvest! Sister Mary Colette and Sister Pia Marie, the first two postulants to enter after we came here from New Mexico in 1971-72, are marking twenty-five years in vows,
and our Sister Mary Pius will give thanks for forty years of religious profession. Every vocation is a precious gift of God, to be fostered from the first letter an applicant writes to that final summons into Eternity. We rejoice to pause along our pilgrim way with our Sisters for these milestones of remembrance, thanksgiving, and renewal.
Our plans to relocate are more secure in the kairos (eternal time) of God rather than the chronos (temporal time) of exact schedules and deadlines. Over the months we have been working hard with our architects, and our plans are more and more refined with each effort and interchange. However, we have had to move the date of our groundbreaking from this August 6 to early next Spring. There are two reasons for the change.
First of all, we really want our ceremonial groundbreaking to inaugurate the actual construction of our monastery. When each sister in the community turns a shovel full of Virginia soil on Mt. St. Francis we want the heavy machinery to be poised in the background and ready to begin the next day. We have some giant steps to take in the meantime, and many details to attend to before this can happen. This is our one opportunity to build a monastery and so even a small decision is important to us.
Secondly, giant steps still need to be taken by way of fund-raising. We are overwhelmed by the generous giving of so very many of you. Whether it be the selling of stock by some, the drawing from savings or surplus by others, or the little by little contributions set aside regularly by so many, we know that each gift is sacrificial, and no gift is small to us. 
Entire parishes in the diocese have willingly taken up collections for us, and now we feel even more bonded and spiritually obligated to these parishes. We ourselves are saving and trying to make sacrifices. We have worked to increase orders for our altar breads and the community is striving to trim down its own operating budget (a good exercise for Poor Clares at any time). We have been poring over grant catalogues to find any foundations that may help fund our project. Construction of a whole monastery and a monastery church is a challenge on every level!
Our invitation to you is multiform. Do you know of foundations where we can apply for grants? Do you know any individuals or groups to whom we can present our project and our need? If your parish has not taken up a collection for us, do you think it may be open to the idea? We want to be true to our vow of enclosure and so we need the hands and feet and voices of others who may be able to seek, knock, ask, and thus open doors for us. May each of your be rewarded generously by the good God for all you have done for us.
COMING EVENTS
The Novena to Our Mother St. Clare: August 7-10 at 7 p.m.
The Celebration of the Eucharist on her Solemnity, August 11th at 7 a.m.
A joint Celebration of the Silver Jubilee of Profession of
Sister Mary Colette of Our Lady and
Sister Pia Marie of the Sacred Stigmata
on Saturday, September 23 at 9 a.m.
Main Celebrant: Most Rev. Walter F. Sullivan, Bishop of Richmond
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Entire parishes in the diocese have willingly taken up collections for us, and now we feel even more bonded and spiritually obligated to these parishes. We ourselves are saving and trying to make sacrifices. We have worked to increase orders for our altar breads and the community is striving to trim down its own operating budget (a good exercise for Poor Clares at any time). We have been poring over grant catalogues to find any foundations that may help fund our project. Construction of a whole monastery and a monastery church is a challenge on every level!