Courtney McGrailCelebrating World Day for Consecrated Life
Little Sisters of Jesus
The spirituality of Charles de Foucauld is the foundation of our way of life. He was born in France in 1858. He lost his faith as an adolescent and had a taste for easy living. At the age of 25, he undertook a risky exploration of Morocco. Seeing the way Muslims expressed their faith caused him to question.
He was 28 years old when he rediscovered God and a pilgrimage to the Holy Land revealed his vocation to him: to follow Jesus in his life at Nazareth. He spent seven years as a Trappist monk, then moved to a convent of Poor Clares in Nazareth to lead a simple life of prayer and adoration.
Ordained a priest at the age of 43, he left for the Sahara, living mostly among the nomadic people, the Tuaregs of the Hoggar. He wanted to be among those who were “the furthest removed, the most abandoned”.
In 1916, he was killed by a band of marauders. He had always dreamed of sharing his vocation for this “life of Nazareth” with others and he wrote several rules for religious life, but he died alone.
In 2005, Charles became ‘Blessed Brother Charles of Jesus’. Today his spiritual family encompasses several associations of the faithful, religious communities and secular institutes.
One of those who were attracted by Charles’ way of living the Gospel, was a French woman Magdeleine Hutin. Twenty years after his death, she set off for the Sahara to follow in his footsteps. Urged by a bishop, she wrote the Constitutions and made her first vows in 1939, and so began a new congregation, the Little Sisters of Jesus.
Nomads
Initially we were exclusively dedicated to the Saharan nomads, but with time Magdeleine realised that this same form of contemplative presence could be lived anywhere.
We now number about 1,200 little sisters from 67 nationalities living in 70 countries worldwide. In keeping with the inspiration of our foundation, we maintain a large number of communities among Muslims around the world.
Our vocation is to be a reminder of the hidden life of Jesus in Nazareth and of God’s tenderness revealed to us in Bethlehem. As a contemplative community, our primary mission is to be women of prayer. At the heart of our way of prayer is a deeply Eucharistic spirituality with the Blessed Sacrament present in each community. Every day each one of us has one hour of adoration and everything we do, we try to do in His presence.
We live our contemplative vocation not in a cloistered way, but among people. We share the living conditions, work and dreams of the less privileged and people on the fringes of society. We seek to live among those who are inaccessible to other forms of Church ministry or whose day-to-day life is marked by division, racism, poverty or violence. Often we stay in rented accommodation and work ordinary jobs like our neighbours. True to our nomadic roots, some of our communities are present among migrants, gypsies, travelling circuses and carnival workers.
Visible sign
Sr Magdeleine summed up the vocation of the Little Sisters of Jesus in these words: “If I were told to define the mission of our community in a single word, I would not hesitate for a single moment to cry, ‘unity’.” This important aspect of our charism is lived in many of our communities with sisters of different nationalities coming together as a visible sign of unity in the midst of a divided world.
Here we are Little Sisters in Bishopscourt, a former Royal Air Force base, seven miles from Downpatrick. You can imagine that it is not without a deep commitment the four of us manage to live together: Belgian, French, Japanese and Polish.
We want our effort at living together to be part of the effort at living together made by people in this land as they strive for reconciliation. Firstly, by being Jesus’ little sisters to the people around us (we keep our house open 24/7, practicing ‘cup of tea spirituality’). We are also part of different local cross-communities: Mustard House, Glebe House. We also want to be sisters to those we work with, for example some sisters have worked as cleaners for many years.
This is our Nazareth way of working for unity in the footsteps of Jesus of Nazareth, who made ordinary life the meeting place with God.
littlesistersjesus@btinternet.com