Sisters of St. Joseph Celebrating 375th Anniversary This Year
This year is the 375th anniversary of the founding of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Le Puy-En-Velay, France.
Did you know that the Sisters of St. Joseph were founded by a French Jesuit priest, Fr. Jean Pierre Medaille, in 1650 in Le Puy, France? This year marks the 375th anniversary of our congregation’s founding. Since our founder was a member of the Society of Jesus, or the Jesuits, and tomorrow, July 31, is the memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, this month’s blog will look briefly at the spirituality of St. Ignatius.
St. Ignatius was a Spanish soldier who was wounded in a battle with the French in 1521. While he was recuperating from his leg wound at his brother’s house, he read books on the life of Christ and the lives of the saints. This spiritual reading had a transforming effect on his life, and he went on to write his Spiritual Exercises, and eventually, with a group of friends, founded the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits. The Spiritual Exercises were a guide for someone needing to discern a major decision, and were centered on the life of Jesus. They consisted of four weeks of prayer and silence, usually meeting daily with a director. Before I professed my final vows as a Sister of St. Joseph of St. Augustine I was privileged to make a 30-day Ignatian retreat at Sacred Heart Monastery in Hales Corners, Wisconsin.
One of the goals of Ignatian discernment is to be able to find God in everyday life, to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. Jesuits were to be contemplatives in action, and were to take a special vow of obedience to the pope in addition to vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.
A painting of Jean-Pierre Medaille, S.J.
Father Jean-Pierre Medaille was a gifted spiritual director and a superb preacher. In 1645, he was assigned to preach parish missions. It was during these missionary tours that he encountered several young single women and widows who confided in him their desire to consecrate their lives to God and the service of the people in need while living in the world.
In Le Puy-en-Velay, the Saint-Joseph hospice for orphans and widows was under the authority of Bishop Henri de Maupas. He had been a friend of Saints Vincent de Paul and Francis de Sales. Both of them had founded congregations of women engaging in apostolic works outside the cloister (a requirement for women religious at the time). Fr. Jean-Pierre approached the Bishop with a plan for women who wished to combine holiness of life with apostolic activity, and the Bishop responded favorably. Fr. Jean-Pierre founded the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph in Le Puy, France, a congregation of nuns who should give themselves up wholly and unreservedly to all the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. The design of the congregation was based on the spirituality of the Society of Jesus. Bishop de Maupas, officially accepted the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph giving them canonical status and the habit on 15 October 1650.
In 1866 Bishop Augustin Verot of Savannah and St. Augustine invited the Sisters of St. Joseph in Le Puy to send eight Sisters to educate the freed slaves following the Civil War. They arrived in St. Augustine in September 1866 and have been in Florida ever since. The spirituality of our founder was definitely Ignatian, but tempered by the gentleness, peace and joy of St. Francis de Sales. Fr. Medaille wrote 100 Maxims of the Little Institute for his Sisters, and the Maxims of Perfection for anyone desiring to live a virtuous life. Two Scripture passages of major importance to Fr. Medaille in the Maxims were Philippians 2:5-11 and John 17:21-23. The mission of our Congregation is to foster the total double union of ourselves with God and the Dear Neighbor and of our Dear Neighbor with God and each other, simplified to “that all may be one.” (John 17:21)
As we celebrate the memorial of St. Ignatius of Loyola on July 31 we give thanks for his many gifts to Catholic spirituality, and the many gifts of Jesuits to the Church since they were founded in the 1500s. If Fr. Jean-Pierre Medaille is our spiritual father as Sisters of St. Joseph, we would have to give credit to St. Ignatius as our spiritual grandfather!