>Epictetus.Com - Poor Clare Colletines of Lemont, IL
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The Poor Clares in Lemont, Illinois, have Mass in their chapel at 7:00AM every day.
On Tuesday, October 4th, 2005, Feast of Saint Francis, there will also be Eucharistic Adoration from 2:00 to 5:00PM, with Benediction at 5:00PM.
Poor Clare Nuns of The FOUNDATION OF THE POOR CLARE MONASTERY
OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION
CHICAG0
1893
The World's Fair was in progress in Chicago in 1893 when a little band of Poor Clare Nuns led by Mother Mary Veronica von Elmendorff came from Cleveland, Ohio to make a foundation of the Order of St. Clare here in the gateway to the west. The Franciscan friars had preceded them to Chicago and already in 1888 had purchased a site for the future monastery on the comer of Laflin Street. When the pioneer band of Poor Clares arrived, only one wing of the monastery had been constructed and the immediate surroundings presented nothing but heaps of yellow clay mingled with stones and debris left by the builders. One of the nuns later chronicled the response of their foundress. Mother Mary Veronica von Elmendorff: "How pleased dear Mother Veronica was to find it looked so delightfully poor. We could have kissed the walls for very joy that it was to be our home. The ruggedness and homely color of the bricks brought one back to the Middle Ages."
The roots of their Order did indeed go back to March 18,1212 when St. Clare of Assisi embraced the Gospel ideal of poverty espoused by her fellow townsman St. Francis and became the first of his Poor Ladies. Her response was so total, so dedicated, so attractive to the women of her times that the Order of the Poor Sisters quickly spread during her lifetime to nearly fifty monasteries in Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Holland, Poland and Bohemia
In 1875 the Poor Clare Nuns of Dusseldorf, Germany went into exile in Holland after the government of Otto von Bismarck decreed the closing of all monasteries and houses of religious communities of both men and women. One of the positive effects of this apparently disastrous law was Ihe founding of numerous Franciscan friaries in the United States, and providentially, a monastery of Poor Clares in Cleveland, Ohio in 1877. The five founding sisters arrived from Holland on December 15, 1877. Mother Mary Veronica von Elmendorff was appointed Ihe first abbess and the community nourished under her leadership, attracting new members, so that only sixteen years later, she was able to lead the pioneer group of sisters to Chicago.
Mother Mary Veronica was bom on June 16,1846, the oldest daughter of the von Elmendorff noble family. After the death of her mother, she cared for her younger sister and brothers, until at the age of twenty-three, she was able to enter the Poor Clare Monastery in Dusseldorf. Germany. At age thirty-two she was the youngest member of the founding group coming to America in 1877. Her knowledge of the English language was a great help to the new foundation and throughout the years she labored unceasingly for the welfare and happiness of her sisters. The original Poor Clare Monastery in Chicago was constructed according to the plans she had designed and the initial wing was expanded to the quadrangle monastery she had envisaged, when building materials became available after the closing of the World's Fair.
During Holy Week in 1904, Mother Veronica suffered a stroke which left her partially incapacitated. In the only photograph we have of her as a Poor Clare she is seated in a wheelchair, but her face is radiant with the sweetness and serenity which always characterized her. On November 9,1905, she went peacefully home to God in her sixtieth year of age and thirty-fifth of profession. Her life, hidden with Christ in God, like that of her Mother St. Clare, was also a light to the world and to the Church in Chicago.
This legacy continued after her death as her vicaress and companion pioneer, Mother M. Josepha, succeeded her as abbess and continued to lead the community in fidelity to the Poor Clare ideal, until her death on September 12,1908. On the first anniversary of Mother Josepha's death, a seventeen year old girl from Chicago entered the monastery. In 1943 when the Chicago community celebrated its Golden Jubilee of foundation, there were almost fifty sisters and this young woman was now their abbess, Mother Mary Immaculata. After the conclusion of the World War, plans could begin for a new foundation, and on August 5,1948, Samuel Cardral Stritch himself brought the monastery the rescript from Rome authorizing the foundation. On the feast of St. Clare, Mother Mary Immaculata and her companion, Sister Mary Armuntjata, departed for Roswell, New Mexico to prepare the way for the founding group which set out from Chicago on November 7.
The story of the foundation was recounted by the youngest pioneer, Sister Mary Francis, in A RIGHT TO BE MERRY. Another young pioneer was a namesake of Mother Veronica and a Chicago girl, Sister Mary Veronica. In 1964, Mother Mary Francis and Mother Mary Veronica became abbess and vicaress of the Roswell foundation. In the centenary year of the initial foundation in Cleveland, the Roswell monastery made a foundation in Alexandria, Virginia, also sending sisters through the years to Newport News, Virginia; Los Altos Hills, California; Belleville, Illinois and back to Holland in 1990.
Then in 1999, the new Archbishop of Chicago, Francis Cardinal George visited the Roswell monastery to ask for a refoundation of the Poor Clare Monastery in Chicago since the original monastery had been closed shortly before the celebration of its centenary. In the jubilee year of the Incarnation 2000, Mother Mary Francis led a group of her daughters to refound Poor Clare life in this historic location. The sisters were given temporary lodging in the convent of St. Symphorosa parish while plans were made for the building of a permanent monastery in the forest preserve area near Lemont on a tract of land donated by the archdiocese.
On Laetare Sunday, March 30, 2003, the new monastery was dedicated by his Eminence Francis Cardinal George, and on August 11, he returned for the celebration of the 750th anniversary of the death of St. Clare in this 110th anniversary year of the foundation in Chicago. A special event was the erection of the bell named CLARA VERONICA which, coincidently, had been cast in 1888 when the land was purchased for the Poor Clare Monastery on Laflin Street. Together with the MARIA MICHAEL bell previously given to the sisters, they ring out the hours of prayer as the nuns gather all the needs of the local and universal Church and all the particular intentions entrusted to their prayers.
Prayer petitions and donations may be sent to the monastery and copies of A RIGHT TO BE MERRY may be obtained from:
