Little Sisters of Jesus (LSJ) – based in Walsingham

In his series about the Religious Congregations living and working in the Diocese of East Anglia, Fr Karol Porczak MS, Vicar for the Religious, introduces the Little Sisters of Jesus, based in Walsingham.

The name, “Little Sisters of Jesus” is not a title but a gift and a call. The gift is to be “of Jesus” and the call is to become little and a sister. It is a life lived out in the Nazareths of today’s world, in imitation of the choice made by the Holy Family, who did not live out their contemplative life in the shelter of a monastery but in the world of the working poor.

Saint Fr Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916), their founder, was struck by the fact that Jesus “went down to Nazareth.” In Nazareth God made himself little. They were years when he did not teach or heal and yet so much of what he would later preach flowed from what he had contemplated there… shepherds and farmers at work, young boys dreaming of life in the big city. Jesus would always be the man from Nazareth.

Charles de Foucauld died alone among the Tuareg people of the Saharan desert in 1916. Inspired by him, Madeleine Hutin (1898 – 1989), taking the name of Little Sister Magdeleine of Jesus, began the first community of Little Sisters of Jesus in 1939, but gave that littleness a further, more tender, dimension by speaking of Bethlehem where God made himself a baby. That is why the infant of the crib is present in the Sisters’ chapels all year round. It is that image of God which we contemplate and which we want to pass on to others. How? Charles de Foucauld spoke of “crying the Gospel with your life”. Therefore, as a part of their charism, the Sisters do not hold onto their last names precisely in order to remain “little” – they are simply Little Sister(s) of Jesus.

The Little Sisters live in family size communities of 3 or 4. There are 900 sisters around the world in 45 countries, with their Generalate (Mother House) in Tre Fontane, Rome, Italy. They have been present in Walsingham, England’s Nazareth, since 1969. Presently, Little Sister Elsamma works at the Shrine welcoming pilgrims, Little Sister Patricia is retired and has more time for the neighbours. Little Sister Kathleen and Little Sister Kasia both work in Wells-next-the-Sea: one as a housekeeper in a hotel and the other in a supermarket.

The people they meet at work or in the neighbourhood all come with the question, “What do these Little Sisters have to tell us about their God?” The co-workers often don’t know much about what it is to be a nun or to be a Christian. But it is always a surprise to them that they are here, part of the Church that goes into the peripheries and awakens the happy discovery that “Truly God was in this place and I never knew it.”

Pictured above are, left to right: Little Sr Kasia, Little Sr Elsamma, Little Sr Kathleen and Little Sr Patricia.

Comments