OUR LADY of the ANGELS MONASTERY

Who are the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration?

 

…seized by the Light of Christ to live in His Presence

 

There are many different Orders that are cloistered and contemplative. What makes our Order of Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration (PCPA) unique is that our life is centered around Adoration of Our Lord in the Most Holy Eucharist. The goal of our Order is to always have a Sister praying before Our Lord, exposed in the Monstrance, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Each Sister has a personal Holy Hour at some point during the day. We also pray the Hours of the Divine Office together before Our Eucharistic Lord.

 

WE ARE FRANCISCAN

The Son of God has become for us the Way that our blessed father Francis, His true lover and imitator, has shown and taught us by word and example.  - St. Clare    

To capture Franciscan Spirituality into words is to say - it is a call to be in love with Jesus so much so that one desires to imitate His life - literally. His Way is our way. This is why the Gospel is fundamental. And because Franciscan spirituality is concrete and very incarnational, our 3 loves are:

-the Incarnation

What do we see in the Incarnation? God becoming man? This movement to empty Himself of His majesty and power to become an infant, totally dependent on His parents. 

- the Cross

The passion of Our Lord - from beginning to end - is a marvel of unconditional love.

- the Eucharist

For us this is our great LOVE, and continuous lesson - all the mysteries are present in Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. 

 

Living Life according to the Gospel

Following Jesus without conditions -is only for the adventuresome and imaginative hearts, hearts that want to go beyond to go higher, hearts that want to penetrate the divine reality of things. Evangelical living is not for the lukewarm, that is those who do not have the faith that trusts absolutely in the One Who has called them.  Jesus calls us freely, unconditionally; to respond to Him adequately we must respond in the same way. "Why do I follow you?" Because you are Who You are, Lord, and because I rejoice in having been called by You. Let the swiftness of my feet in following You be my unceasing thanksgiving. 

In Community

We live a close communal life striving together for the perfection of charity and aiming as one at the goal of ever-deepening union with our Divine Spouse—growing together towards a life of transformative holiness and total self-gift. Our daily life is a beautiful rhythm of time of common and personal prayer, work, communal meals, and recreation, lived out in a spirit of contemplative recollection, and always centered on the Heart of our Community, Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament.

History of our Order

From the very beginning the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration have been daughters of Mary Immaculate. Founded in France on December 8, 1854 (the very same day on which the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was solemnly defined), our Blessed Mother’s Magnificat has never ceased to ring out in our chapels at the beginning of every hour of Eucharistic Adoration. This beautiful hymn of thanksgiving to God reminds us always of the charism and vocation we have received from God—namely, to adore the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist in the spirit of reparative thanksgiving. Our founder, Fr. Bonaventure Heurlaut, OFM Cap., and our foundress, Mother Marie de Ste. Claire, were inspired by the example of the grateful leper in Luke’s Gospel (17:11-19) to devote our Order to adoring the Most Blessed Sacrament with grateful hearts and interceding for those who have yet to draw near to Him in recognition of His Love.

Our Charism

Our particular charism of adoration and reparation defines us as a unique branch of the Franciscan Order. As Franciscans we seek to serve the Lord in humble love through faithfully living the Gospel and striving for daily conversion. As Poor Clares, we live the Gospel life in a contemplative and monastic setting. Our religious parents, St. Francis and St. Clare, have handed on to us a tradition rooted deeply in the Life of Christ Himself, Who emptied Himself to share in our poverty and by His poverty has made us rich (cf. Phil. 2:7; 2 Cor. 8:9). Saints Francis and Clare have marked out for us the way we should follow, rejoicing with grateful and compassionate love in the gift Our Lord has given us of Himself in His kenosis, which is most evident to us in the mysteries of the Incarnation, the Passion, and the Holy Eucharist.

At Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, we follow in our PCPA heritage of inviting people to share in our life of Adoration through the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament. This gives an added meaning to our enclosure and common life because our hidden presence in the cloister enables us to be entirely available for the adoration that is foundational to the Shrine. We are hidden so that Our Lord may be lifted on high to draw all to Himself in the Sacrament of His Love (cf. Jn. 12:32). At the same time, we are generously sustained by the faith and generosity of God’s people who have always been for us the instrument of Our Heavenly Father’s provident love, and so we see in our lives how God is constantly building up His Church in Divine Love through the working of the Holy Spirit.

Learn more about our Nuns

THE POOR CLARES OF PERPETUAL ADORATION

OUR NUNS