Once again, Libania is ready to move on, trusting in God’s Providence—equipped by those nuns in study, work, prayer and reflection to face the ups and downs of life.
By now, she had felt a call to the religious life. She seemed to be at a spiritual crossroad presented by the happenings in her country and occurrences in her own life.
Libania gratefully accepts the invitation from the Marquise of Valada—who considers her as his daughter. There, Libania acts as lady-in-waiting and confidante to the Marchioness for the next few years.
She felt God calling her to deeper things. Seeking tranquility in spending a life totally dedicated to God, she moved to join the Boarding at St. Patrick’s Convent in Lisbon. Here would arrive the turning point in Libania’s life and the starting point of the congregation she would go on to found.
The man who stood at that turning point was Fr. Raimundo dos Anjos Beirão. Libania opens her heart to him and allows him to direct her soul. His advice enlightens her path, though she feels it is not easy to follow.
Libania encounters the Christ of Francis and Clare of Assisi—the poor, humble and crucified Lord. This encounter with the Lord and the irresistible attraction that He exercised upon her heart constituted a strong challenge to the yearning and ardent soul of Libania.
Though Libania joined St. Patrick’s Convent as a boarder, two years later (in 1869), she joins a group of Capuchinhas of Our Lady of Conception and pronounces her vows in the Third Order Secular, adding “the promise to the Immaculate Conception” who—prompted by the Holy Spirit—was hospitable to bearing the Child Jesus in her womb. On the same occasion, Libania gives up her illustrious name for good, receiving instead the name Sister Maria Clara do Menino Jesus (Maria Clara of the Child Jesus).
The lamp had been lit. From then on, she lives the adventure of progressive immersion in the mystery of Christ and, participating in His compassion, she penetrates the disconcerting world of human suffering, to illuminate it with joy and to warm it with the tenderness and mercy of God.
She enters now the path of detachment as she immerses herself in obedience to the Father in poverty, humility and minority.
The heart of Fr. Raimundo dos Anjos Beirão sees in Sr. Maria Clara the woman chosen by the Lord, to start with him a congregation that will bend down, in Samaritan attitudes and gestures, upon the wounds of the Portuguese society of the middle of the 19th century.
However, the very country and society that needed healing was short-sighted towards its own plight and instead had laws that forbade religious professions. Therefore, under Father Beirão’s guidance, Sr. Maria Clara temporarily leaves St. Patricio in February 1870, to make her novitiate in France.
Two days upon return to her country on May 1—in keeping with the orientations from Calais—Fr. Beirão installs Sr. Maria Clara (in the Convent of St. Patricio), as Superior and Mistress of Novices of the Sisters in Lisbon, who adhered to the reform of that group of the Franciscan Tertiaries.
Hence, on 3 May, 1871, comes into existence, the Congregation of the Hospitaller Sisters of the Poor for the Love of God, approved by Pope Pius IX, on 27 March, 1876. In 1964, the Congregation began to be known as the Congregation of the Franciscan Hospitaller Sisters of the Immaculate Conception (CONFHIC).
The poverty of goods was severe in the convent. The Sisters tried to live of the work they did, but very often their income was not sufficient to supply their own most elementary needs and that of the persons whom they helped. Like Jesus, totally dependent on the Father, Sr. Maria Clara lives an experience of receiving everything from the provident hand of the Lord, even the daily bread for her and for her community.
“I see a providential glance of God watching over us.”
Mother Maria Clara of the Child Jesus
In her last circular dated 29 October, 1899
Even though she experienced the painful moments of her passion in this world, and lived at an adverse socio-political juncture, continues fighting in order that the works of beneficence that emerge from her heart may continue to be taken to all the needy, so that they feel the tenderness and mercy of God.
That is why the Sisters are being sent to lessen the needs, to soothe the pain, to console the sad, to inhabit solitudes; it is the poor, the afflicted, the needy families, the sick, the abandoned, the elderly, the children, the orphans—everybody—whom she calls her people. She becomes a mother of all whom she embraces and warms, guides and supports, heals the wounded hearts with the touch of kindness of her heart.
Thus she fulfils, through the Works of Mercy by the side of the destitute, such interventional service and a transformation of such outreach that, history places her as one of the pioneers of Portuguese social action in the 19th century.
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