Claire Dwyer

Mom, Wife, Interior Life — that’s it in a nutshell. Claire’s been devouring books and pouring the words back out again longer than she can remember. It’s where her love of God and the Catholic faith finds its fullest expression. Claire has a certification in Spiritual Theology from the Avila Institute and is currently in the graduate program at St. Vincent Seminary’s Institute of Ministry Formation for Spiritual Direction. She has an undergraduate degree in Theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville, where she serves on the Advisory Board of the Leadership Institute. Her roles as writer, editor, spiritual director, and lifelong student of the interior life all came together in her first book, “This Present Paradise: A Spiritual Journey with St. Elizabeth of the Trinity.” which quickly became a best-seller, due in part to having the honor of being chosen by the Abiding Together Podcast for its 2021 Lenten Book Study. She is also a contributor to Blessed is She’s Lenten devotional, New Wine, which released in January 2023. She is under contract for another book and between that, working full-time for the Avila Foundation as editor of spiritualdirection.com, coaching, teaching, and raising a handful of growing kids, she still manages to find time for a few slowly-savored pages of reading almost every (tired) night. She has a passion for helping women in particular see the beauty and possibility in their own interior lives and their unrepeatable place in the Church and for Catholic writers to be encouraged and formed in their writing journey. She is co-founder and content director of Write These Words and the PraiseWritersCatholic Writing Membership Community. Most importantly, she has been married for 25 years to her husband Delaney and they have six children and one grandchild. Connect and keep in touch with her at ClaireDwyer.com.

Articles By Claire Dwyer

A Woman For All Seasons: St. Frances of Rome

If you are busy juggling family, friends, work, and prayer, trying to balance works of mercy with your daily duty, prayer time with household chores, and marriage with ministry, then let today’s saint be an inspiration, as she is for Claire Dwyer.

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Living the Hidden Years

Not only is the Christian life redeemed in all its moments by a God who entered them to make them holy – but it is also meant to mysteriously extend Christ’s own life, throughout time, in our own. Claire Dwyer reflects on the hidden years.

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Small Heralds of the Dawn

On this feast of the child saints of Fatima, we do well to mark the words of Pope Saint John Paul II: “…the Church wishes to put on the candelabrum these two candles which God lit to illumine humanity in its dark and anxious hours.” Claire Dwyer remembers their brief lives and eternal message of prayer and hope.

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Thy Face is My Fatherland: Under the Gaze of God

Some of the greatest saints of the Church  – and through Scripture, even God Himself – have used the example of gazing into the eyes of another to try to capture the beautiful and astonishingly real experience of God’s great love in the soul: contemplative prayer.  Claire Dwyer reflects.

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What is Our Response to the Living Word of God?

What is our response to the Word of God? Are we attentive to it? Do we allow ourselves to be moved to praise, repentance, and gratitude? Do we put it on the proper platform in our lives, giving it a place of primacy in our prayer? Claire Dwyer reflects on today’s readings.

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