Spirituality of the Sisters of St. Joseph: "that all may be one"
Our spirituality is rooted in the Gospel calling us to the love of God and of neighbor. We live in the midst of others in communities where people can feel at home, welcomed for who they are. We have a hope that Jesus incarnated in a sign: bread broken and a cup of wine shared with the disciples. While others tell stories of violence and injustice, we offer the good news of Jesus who places himself in our hands offering himself: “This is my body given for you”. Thus, we place our lives in the hands of our brothers and sisters to do with as they wish.
How can we Sisters of Saint Joseph be a sign of hope in a divided world? One way is the welcome our uncertain future with joy. Our vows are a public commitment to remain open to the God of surprises who upsets all our plans for the future and asks us to do things we never imagined.
They say that if you want to make God laugh, tell him your stories. We want to share them also with our brothers and sisters. We welcome cultural and ethnic differences in our communities and outside of them, learning to live with foreign languages and different food, inserted in the very fabric of the lives of others, caring for one another, nourishing forgiveness and exchanging reconciliation.
We share a rich spiritual patrimony with all the Sisters of Saint Joseph scattered throughout the world, and we work together to create a society in which those who are marginalized by the powerful find a place. We continue today to live the words of our founder, the Jesuit Jean-Pierre Médaille, in the hope of becoming “the Congregation of the great love of God”. We carry forward the heritage given to us by him and by the first six French women who lived community without the cloister and religious habit, in total devotion to the needs of those around them and with the one goal of sharing a deep desire of union with God and with the dear neighbor.
