Mission

"I have come that they may have life and have it to the full." John 10:10

Missionary sending is a continuation of God's mission:
Jesus sent among us that we may have life and have it to the full.

Every generation of Christians is called to continue this mission.
In an ever changing world we are given power
to respond with all our creative ability to those
who live in the shadows of non-life.

Hélène de Chappotin was acutely aware of the destructive power of unbridled wealth, corrupt politics, exploitive labour conditions, ignorance and the oppression that came from gender, racial and class discrimination, and caused people to live less than their God-given dignity and potential.

Her missionary actions were focused on the transformation of persons and structures so that the beauty, truth and love of God would be experienced by the poorest and most maginalised.

She worked tirelessly for justice and peace.

As foundress of a missionary institute that would send its members to distant and foreign places she knew she needed to form women who would risk living with hardship, misunderstandings, possible failures and retain their own inner wholeness and capacity to keep on giving of themselves.

They need to be women with a deep interior life.

She gave them Christ in his Eucharistic presence as the centre and strength of their daily lives and their missionary activities.

"In his gift of life poured out for us the Christ whom we contemplate sends us out to their brothers and sisters in whom we discover his hidden presence and our brothers and sisters send us back to the contemplation of Christ."

She also gave them the Franciscan way of living the gospel, by building bridges of communion between different peoples, different cultures, different religions, and the Gospel, and between groups within and without the church.

Women called to love and to willing assume the risk of siding preferably with the poor and the marginalised.

"In the midst of the world following Christ, the humble poor man, simply, peacefully and with joy"