Claire's parents had not really wanted her to enter the convent. They had not been blessed with other children and had hoped that at least she might marry a local boy and provide care for them in their old age. They carried on hoping for a long time but in their hearts they had known since she was eight years old and they found her found praying at the convent gates instead of gathering the eggs from their small holding on the edge of the forest that they had lost her. On her eighteenth birthday Claire left the small wooden hut for the last time and walked up the dusty path to the abbey gates. Her parents stood and watched their little girl go but she didn't look back.
Most novitiates found convent life hard, at least at first, but Claire took to it like a duck to water. She was happy to feel hungry, cold and tired because that reminded her of Our Lord's Passion and made her feel close to Him. Indeed at times the Mother Superior would make Claire sit down and eat a bowl of soup, or take a rest from the heaviest gardening work, for fear that she would go too far and cause herself to become seriously ill. After a while though, mortification of the flesh was not enough for Claire and she began to seek other ways to bring her truly close to Our Lord. After spending her days working hard on the land she would spend her nights on her knees in the church, praying that God would send her a sign of what she should do to please him more.
One particularly cold winter's night Claire decided to forgo her supper with the other nuns and went straight to the abbey's undercroft to begin her nightly prayer vigil. For days she had grown more and more troubled, feeling that she was being called to do something for Christ but did not know what. Lighting two candles and placing them at the foot of the crucifix, she knelt and prayed for God to speak to her and show her the way. At first she was aware of the cold in her bones and the hunger in her belly but as she prayed the fatigue and pain began to wash away. It was perhaps only minutes or possibly hours later when she was stirred from her fit of religious ecstasy by a sound. At first she was too transported to respond but it came again and again until she was forced to hear it. It was the sound of weeping.
Looking up in the direction of the sound, Claire saw two tears run down the Christ statue's face. She stared, uncertain of what she had seen. Then the statue spoke.
'Help me Claire'.