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Daily
life in a Poor Clare Monastery is centred round the Eucharist and communal
recitation/ singing of the Divine Office - the Prayer of the Church. Seven
times a day the community gather for the different "Hours" of the Divine
Office - Morning Prayer, the Office of Readings, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers
(Evening Prayer) and Compline. We also have time for private prayer -
one and a half hours - and spiritual reading, as well as Adoration of
the Blessed Sacrament on specific times and days.
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Our Garden |
Saint Clare was devoted to prayer. She said in her Rule for the Sisters, "They ought to desire above all to possess the Spirit of the Lord and His holy working" (Rule X). As a sister lives the life, prayer gradually permeates the whole of her day, not necessarily in words but in the awareness of God's presence everywhere and in all situations. During her lifetime people from Assisi and beyond came to Clare to ask for spiritual and material help. The process of her canonisation records her intercession for needs great and small. |
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People
still visit or contact our Monasteries all over the world to ask for prayer.
When people are worried about illness, are bereaved, anxious about relationships,
family difficulties or anything else, they contact us as they have always
contacted those in contemplative communities over many centuries. We can
and do promise our prayer and we take all the cares and needs of the world
to our hearts.
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Our Convent and Flower Garden
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Humbie Countryside |
In its essentials, Saint Clare's life of prayer is summed up in the advice she wrote to Saint Agnes of Prague. Talking about our relationship with Jesus Christ she wrote, "Love
Him totally who has given |
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which is what we, as Poor Clares today, are trying to do conscious that we are always only "beginners" because, as St Francis said on his death bed, "Up until now we have done nothing." |
A View of our Convent |
