Charism/Spirituality

When you talk about charism in a religious community, you're referring to a founding grace. Consider it as a means to carry out a specific mission passed on by God to a particular group or person in the Church. As a recipient, you dedicate yourself to, and are identified by, that mission -- which your charism calls forth.

For the Sisters of St. Joseph, the founding grace given by God at the inception of our group in 1650 was -- and continues to be -- unity, as in oneness. The way that it was expressed and the way that those first women experienced it was a great desire that everything would be one in God. They talked about being united with God, within themselves and all others with God. We talk about it today as the grace of inclusive love. It is the grace expressed in the Gospel of John 17:21 that Jesus prayed for : that all may be one… that all may be one in relationship with God and with one another... and that is an all inclusive love.

Today we express our charism as reconciliation, trying to bring together in love all which is not one or those people who are not united. Therefore Sisters of St. Joseph minister in the world uniting and bridging the gap between the educated and the uneducated, men and women, poor and rich, citizens and immigrants, healthy and ill, criminals and their victims. It is wonderful that God gives those kinds of graces for the sake of the needs of people throughout the ages.