Share the joy of Easter.

Dear friends,

From the water of our baptismal renewal to the altar of communion in our Lord, we are called together as God’s people.   Born from the Water, entering into the Light, we celebrate in Joy the Resurrection.

This year, 2012, has an added luster.  It is the 800^th anniversary of the first community of poor sisters and lesser brothers at the church of San Damiano outside the walls of Assisi, Italy.  We remember particularly Clare and her companions who opened up a new path of ministry, service and prayer for women as partners in a world needing care, mutual respect and reverence.  Faced with misunderstanding, Clare lived her life with quiet conviction which resonates in the “form of life of the poor sisters which the blessed Francis founded” and a small corpus of writings attributed to the poor sisters and lesser brothers who lived gospel community there at San Damiano from 1212-1255.

In 1225 at San Damiano Clare nursed Francis who was suffering from an illness of the eyes.  During this period, the nearly blind Francis composed the Canticle of the Creatures, the song praising God through all creation from the cosmic to the incarnational, calling for peace between the bishop and the mayor, and in the last stanza of the song, welcoming Sister Death as she leads us home to God.

“Praised be you, my Lord, through all your creatures,” and that includes us all,

your Sisters

[View with PicLens]

You were all included in our prayer last evening as we brought the year, 2011, to a close. You were with us in silence, in song and in chanting.  As our Sister Clare of Assisi urges us, let us go forth now in peace entering into this new year, each one of us blest by the Lord, the good guide who has created us, sustains and will be faithful throughout this New Year of 2012.  Your Sisters

How dear those bells whose voices

tell the Savior’s birth!

Let our hearts sing as well

to praise His coming to our needy earth.

With our Christmas greetings and prayer,

your Poor Clare Sisters

The Story of the Bells

What is it about the sound of bells, particularly Church bells, that is so intriguing?  Bells are a communal experience.  They invade public auditory space shared with horns and sirens and birds.   Each has a parcel of sounds communicating a public message to the world at large.  These communitarian sounds call for a response, as did the town crier in days gone by.

Bells are not only outside ourselves but seem to resonate within, awakening a place of longing, a remembered feeling, the home of our soul.  They call us to reflection, and reception of a personal inner message that strikes our hearts with fear or sadness or a tingle of hope.  Bells ringing in a neighborhood evoke the question, “What are those bells?”

We came to this south Minneapolis neighborhood in 1954.  The bells arrived 11 years later, a gift of the Pendergast family.  They were blessed and baptized by Bishop Cowley, associate Bishop of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis/St. Paul.  Named for the donors, Raymond, the larger bell has a diameter of 29 ¾ “, weighs 583 lbs and strikes the musical tone “C.”  Pauline’s diameter is 23 ¾”, weighs 290 pounds and sounds the “E” tone.

Our bells here at the monastery ring seven times a day, each time sounding a call to prayer.  The longer ring remind us of the prayer of the Angel announcing the Incarnation of Christ, the shorter ring calls us to the Liturgy of the Hours prayed 5 times a day here at the monastery, and by individuals and communities throughout the world.  Most neighbors like to hear the bells except at 6:00 in the early morning. That early ringing was terminated within the first week of the installation of our bells.

This Advent/Christmas season, when you hear the bells, remember they ring for you, with our promise of prayer now and in the coming year.

your Sisters of St. Clare