Vocation of The Little Sisters of Jesus
Living in small communities, Little Sisters of Jesus seek to lead a contemplative life in the midst of people. They are inspired by the thirty years Jesus spent in Nazareth and by his humble birth in Bethlehem.
They understand Nazareth not as a particular place, but as the ordinariness of peoples' lives. They share day to day life, living conditions, work and dreams, especially of the less privileged and of those who are on the fringes of society. Often staying in rented accommodation or where poorer people live, they take ordinary jobs or work alongside their neighbours and practice hospitality. You will find them in housing projects, inner-city neighbourhoods, in rural areas as well as among nomadic people. Some work in factories or do low paid manual work others make a livelihood adopting the same lifestyle as those whose life they share. Their lifelong call is a non-professional one: By preference they 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.
Their contemplative life is one of intercession for their neighbours and friends and for everyone, recognising that the presence of Jesus in the Eucharist (which is present in each community's home) cannot be separated from his presence among people, especially among those who are suffering.
Little Sister 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'. All our vocation can be summed up in the word, 'Unity'"
Read more about this topic: Little Sisters Of Jesus
Famous quotes containing the words vocation, sisters and/or jesus:
“Men are born to write. The gardener saves every slip, and seed, and peach-stone: his vocation is to be a planter of plants. Not less does the writer attend his affair. Whatever he beholds or experiences, comes to him as a model, and sits for its picture. He counts it all nonsense that they say, that some things are undescribable. He believes that all that can be thought can be written, first or last; and he would report the Holy Ghost, or attempt it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Good my lord,
You have begot me, bred me, loved me. I
Return those duties back as are right fit,
Obey you, love you, and most honor you.
Why have my sisters husbands if they say
They love you all? Haply, when I shall wed,
That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry
Half my love with him, half my care and duty.
Sure I shall never marry like my sisters,
To love my father all.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“This one fact the world hates; that the soul becomes; for that forever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)