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Benedictine Sisters

Sister Spotlight: Sister Kathleen Clare

Sister Kathleen ClareSister Kathleen Clare Lahl, OSB was raised in a Protestant family. She attended church and prayed, but something was missing. Drawn to the Catholic faith, she began attending Mass.

“Then one day, at the consecration when the priest elevated the bread, there was a knowing inside me that was so powerful. It was a revelation. I experienced the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist that day.” She became a Catholic.

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee graduate began teaching at a public school in a small town outside Milwaukee but moved to Chicago just a few years later. She adored her students and was active in her local parish. So who would have guessed a small group of monks moving into her neighborhood would have changed her life forever?

“I started attending Vespers and Mass with them and was very taken with their life,” she said. “There was a sense of peace, of deep faith and of commitment.”

Soon, attending Vespers and Mass weren’t enough for her. She showed up for Lauds (morning prayers) and Compline (night prayers) too. The Benedictine Sisters offered to establish a small novitiate at Clyde for the monks as a training opportunity for women interested in religious life. She decided to stay as a volunteer while discerning where God was leading her.

She began to treasure the Sisters’ tremendous sense of hospitality, love and dedication to the Eucharist. She realized she was right at home with them.

“There’s a beautiful balance of monastic life here enabling the inner silence for mindfulness of God’s presence,” she said. “This is where I was meant to be. God was leading me here all along.”

Sister Kathleen Clare entered the BSPA in 1999 and made her first monastic profession in 2002. She lives in our Tucson, Arizona, monastery.