Jesus Caritas

An essential axis

I would like to stress how much, for Little Sister Magdeleine, this desire that the Little Sisters be mixed with the human masses like the leaven in the dough constitutes an essential axis of this "new concept of religious life" (p. 16) which she would defend to the end of her life.

Thus, in 1942, at the beginning of the foundation, she wrote:

 "We are made to be intimately mixed in with the crowd, like Jesus on the roads of Galilee."  

And in September 1989, a few weeks before her death, she repeats firmly:

"Our vocation is to be in the world... I did not found the Community so that we might be at ease among ourselves. I founded the Community to be a witness in the midst of the world. "

Two convictions underpin this fundamental orientation. The first is her passion for unity. We know that with this one word "unity" Little Sister Magdeleine wished to

"define the mission of the Community". In unity "we find the very essence of love since love cannot exist without unity. To love is to want to be one with those we love".

Evidently this is opposed to everything that separates and, on the contrary, it entails taking on a way of life that resembles that of one's neighbours.

The second conviction is that all Christians are called to be contemplatives.

"May these words of contemplative vocation not frighten you. May they not evoke in your eyes the idea of an exceptional vocation, of something so elevated that most people cannot accede to it" (p. 27)

The contemplative life is not reserved to those who live in enclosures; it can be lived in the midst of the world.