“Striving to be beacons of hope, we commit to…articulate and authentically live our vows in ways that witness and speak to today’s realities…”
Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, 2019 Acts of Chapter
Every six years, delegates from each location in our congregation gather for a congregational chapter. During this meeting, they agree on priorities and directions for the life of the congregation for the following six years. In 2019, one of those priorities was to “articulate and authentically live our vows in ways that witness and speak to today’s realities.”
Sharing of the Heart
As part of designing our community, Father Médaille called the first sisters to meet weekly to “confer for a half hour on the state of their congregation and the current works of zeal.” This practice, today understood as the Sharing of the State of the Heart and the Order of the House, gave our sisters the opportunity to discern together about how the Spirit of God was calling them to live their vocation individually and collectively.
Strength for our mission comes from fidelity to community, prayer, our practice of sharing our heart and celebrating the rituals of church and community. In 2020, we created new opportunities for sisters to participate in regular Sharing of the Heart groups with sisters from across the congregation.
Kakehashi
Kakehashi is the Japanese word for “bridge.” The Kakehashi group is a generation of sisters born after the year 1952. Kakehashi works to build a bridge between the past and the future of religious life.
Defined by diversity, Kakehashi is made up of sisters from the continental United States, Perú, Japan and Hawai`i. Their members have a wide variety of ages, ministries and gifts. Through Kakehashi, they have developed a deep-felt sense of oneness and unity.
As Kakehashi, our sisters have committed to prepare for leadership roles in religious life. They express great hope for the future of religious life and look forward to broader conversations with the entire international Family of St. Joseph.
Vow Workbook
Commitment in a religious congregation is first of all a response to God’s call. The initiative comes from God. This implies that God has called each of us to come together in our particular congregation at this unique time. There is something unique that we can achieve together that none of us could accomplish alone—for one another and together for the world.
As Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, we have continued to explore where and how we are able to exercise our charism. We know that the signs of our times call us to flexibility and a spirit of adventure. We may be both excited and watchful because we really do not know where it is all going. But underneath all the unknowns, expectations and concerns, we trust that the One who began this good work among us will continue drawing us more deeply into the mystery of oneness that Christ prayed for.
In 2024, congregational leadership created a simple booklet to spur our sisters to greater conversation and exploration about our life together. The booklet offered reflections on an evolutionary theological perspective, our three vows, our global context, the vocation to religious life and our charism of unifying love in an evolutionary perspective.
Expanding and Deepening Our Partnerships
Association
Associates are women and men from various faith traditions, married and single, who extend the mission and share the spirit of the Sisters of St. Joseph without becoming vowed members. We call them consociates in the St. Paul Province, `ohana in Hawai`i, amigas in Perú and familia de San José in Chile. At present, nearly 800 women and men have made formal commitments as associates.
Association has a long, rich history with the Sisters of St. Joseph, dating back to the founding of the congregation in France in 1650. Today, associates continue to bring our spirit to their jobs, faith communities and families as they share their gifts in works of justice and peace, care for the poor and for Earth.
Agrégées
Another relatively new way of living the charism is a group of people called agrégées. This term is found in the early history of the Sisters of St. Joseph. Although the original documentation does not offer a clear definition, from the beginning, the Spirit’s call impelled women from varied backgrounds and with diverse life commitments to come together for the life of the world.
Agrégées live our charism and mission of unifying love of God and the dear neighbor without distinction. They are called to make a deep commitment to our congregation and to each other in community.
The members of this emerging agrégée community are walking a path of discovery: studying the history, conversing with agrégées in other congregations’ communities, listening closely to the Spirit and having regular conversations with their sister-companions as they discern their future. This group calls us to expand our community and embrace the charism in new ways that honor our tradition.
St. Joseph Workers
The St. Joseph Worker Program is a year-long service opportunity for women ages 21-30 in preparation for a lifelong commitment to social change and personal transformation. Individual growth and development are built on the values of leadership, spirituality, social justice and intentional community grounded in living simply and sustainably.
Every volunteer is matched with a placement, where they spend a 36-hour workweek. One night a week is designated for Sharing of the Heart, a spiritual practice for the Sisters of St. Joseph during which each household spends an evening with spirituality, listening and learning from one another. In addition, the program includes weekly community nights, multiple retreats, social justice opportunities and other development activities to make the year a truly transformative experience.
An Ongoing Effort
As individuals and as a congregation, we have sought to articulate and authentically live our vows in ways that witness and speak to today’s realities. The above list of actions does not catalogue every effort we have made, and we are always called to go deeper and journey farther. Boldness, creativity, and collaboration will be the hallmarks of our future actions.