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Our Charism
When we talk about charism in a religious community, we'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 of that grace, we dedicate ourselves to, and are identified by, that mission -- which our charism calls forth.
For the Congregation of St.
Joseph, the founding grace given by God at the inception of the Sisters
of St. Joseph 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 through 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, with
one another and with all of creation. That is what we mean by an all-inclusive
love.
Today we express our charism
as reconciliation, trying to bring together in love a world that is wounded
and suffering in so many ways. Sisters and associates of St. Joseph minister
in the world by 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. In this way, we work together
to build the kin-dom of God!
