We live in a hurting world. Suffering overwhelms people. We are not removed from that reality. We see it on the daily news. We hear it in the pleas for prayer contained in the emails, letters and phone calls that we receive. We touch it in our neighbors, our families and our own lives. We cannot remove or take away all the pain that we witness. Life is messy; even Jesus did not clean up all the messiness in the lives of the people he encountered.
St. Clare has taught us to bring our messiness to God. God teaches us what we need to know. We are always looking for solutions. Our contemplative life teaches us that answers are not always clearly visible or even available. Yet, our contemplative stance also teaches a way of living peacefully with the questions.
Our way of life is not a way of ignorance or avoidance of reality. It is a way of faith. It is a way of knowing that God is bigger than we are! It is a way of believing that God always comes through.
—from Franciscan Media’s “Loving St. Clare“
by Sister Claire André Gagliardi, OSC
