Sister Clare Crockett; All Or Nothing

By TOM DENNEHY

Clare Crockett, a precocious 17 year old girl with bright blue eyes and chestnut hair, from a very poor area of Derry, was living the dream as an actress. She embraced the show business lifestyle. She enjoyed the party lifestyle as drinking, smoking and dating became her pastimes. Clare Crockett’s greatest desire was to become famous and one day become a film star in Hollywood.

During Holy Week 2000, everything changed. Clare was asked to take the place of someone on a retreat held in Spain. Clare said yes because she thought it was going to be a vacation and an opportunity to party. It turned out to be an intense Catholic spiritual retreat. Little did she know God’s plan for her. She would have a spiritual breakthrough and conversion.

During the Good Friday liturgy, the faithful adore and kiss the Crucifix. Clare joined them. It was a simple gesture, but it was a changing point in her life. When the service was over, a sister found her crying as she repeated, “He died for me, He loves me! Why hasn’t anyone ever told me this before?” Clare had understood how much the Lord loved her and how much He had done for her, she understood that “Love is repaid by love alone” and that the love that the Lord asked of her was a total gift of herself and to live for Him alone.

However when she returned home, the teenage Clare became lost in her old ways and her lifestyle of mortal sin. She got caught up again in the whirlwind of superficiality and sin that the world of cinema offered her. She said, “I lived very badly; I lived in mortal sin, I drank a lot, I smoked a lot, I began to smoke drugs. I continued with my friends, with my boyfriend. I didn’t have the strength to break with all these things, because I didn’t ask the Lord to help me.” At one of her lowest points, she experienced Jesus’ presence, “One night at a party, she over drank once again. She heard Jesus say to her, “Why do you continue to hurt me?” She responded to God’s call with the motto; All or Nothing She was going to be a famous nun and no one could change her mind. Neither her family’s pleas nor her manager’s promises could stop her. On August 11 2001, she gave her life to God in the Servant Sisters of the Home of the Mother. Once she joined the sisters, she found God and experienced His love for her. She was able to begin to resist temptation. Yet Clare had surrendered to Jesus Christ’s immense love for her and there was nothing that would stop her. She herself explained, “At first, I was tempted to look back and say, ‘I want it back’, but I understood that I had found an even greater love.”

Sister Clare began to show her special gift to reach souls of children and young people teaching them the truth and the love of the Lord. Her zeal for souls, especially those of the youth, was immense.

Her life centred around the Eucharist and she transmitted enthusiasm for Jesus in the Eucharist to others. The children picked up on the enthusiasm that she had for the Eucharist. Once you had been with her, you knew you had to pick up that same enthusiasm. Sister Clare had a complete openness to doing the will of God. Whatever He asked, she would do. She allowed the Holy Spirit to possess her, so that when she sang, she demonstrated a total giving of self.

She did everything with great joy, “Everything seems little to me, the lack of sleep, fasting, the heat, having to attend to the people. Everything that could be difficult fills me with joy, because it brings me closer to the Lord.” Clare had confidence that she had reached holiness and was destined for Heaven. “Why should I be afraid of death, if I am going to go with the One I have longed to be with my whole life?”

Clare died when a devastating earthquake hit her school in Ecuador in 2016. The story of her life in a book titled Alone with Christ Alone continues to inspire and there are so many testimonies of people who have been touched by her witness and have decided to return to the sacraments and live their faith with greater intensity. The cause for her canonization was opened in May 2023. Her body rests in Derry City Cemetery and her grave is now a place of pilgrimage.