Stages of Formation to be a Little Sister of the Poor
A young woman visits one of our communities and spends time with the Little Sisters in prayer and service. She may volunteer on a regular basis, or work as an employee in order to experience our life and spirit.
More time spent with a community of Little Sisters and a formal live-in experience in one of our Homes give a young woman exposure to our life in its fullness – prayer, community and mission.
A candidate takes the first step by leaving home and moving into one of our Homes, where she participates in the life of the community while pursuing opportunities to round out her spiritual and human formation, under the direction of a Little Sister formator. The purpose of these first months is to confirm the candidate’s desire to follow Christ as a Little Sister and her ability to live in community in the humble service of the elderly.
A further period of discernment, spent under the direction of a Little Sister formator, which helps the congregation and the postulant to verify her ability to progressively assume the demands of our vocation of humble service. The postulancy begins in one of our Homes and concludes with several months spent in the novitiate.
The novitiate is a fixed two-year period of prayer and study during which the novices are initiated into the radicalism of following Christ as his spouse, according to the congregation’s charism and apostolate. In an atmosphere of trust and openness, the novices direct their generosity toward the total gift of themselves to the Lord in faith, humility and love.
Each year the novices spend several weeks in one of our Homes to gain direct experience of our mission and help them to understand the unity between our prayer life and our daily activities. The novitiate culminates in profession of the vows of chastity, poverty, obedience and hospitality for two years.
Each new Little Sister is sent out on mission to one of the Homes of the congregation, where she participates fully in our life. This period includes an additional year of doctrinal formation, called the Juniorate, and the possibility of further training in the care of the elderly. At the completion of their first two years of vowed life, the young Little Sisters remake their vows, usually for an additional three years.
Before pronouncing perpetual vows, each Little Sister spends a year of “second novitiate” at our motherhouse in France. The spiritual formation received during this international year helps the Little Sisters to acquire the spiritual maturity needed to commit themselves definitively to their vocation as Little Sisters of the Poor.
This time also offers each one the grace of living where Saint Jeanne Jugan spent the final years of her life. During this time, each Little Sister becomes more penetrated with the attitudes of our Mother and the spirit of our religious family.
The second novitiate culminates in perpetual profession, after which each Little Sister may be sent anywhere in the world!
In order to assure creative fidelity to her personal vocation, each Little Sister pursues a personal program of ongoing formation throughout her life. Ongoing formation begins with the first call from the Lord and ends in contemplating him face to face.
“Joyfully undertaken and faithfully lived, this gift of ourselves – which embraces our whole existence – enriches the life of the Church. A vocation is a call which the Lord, always faithful, renews for us until the end of our life … By his grace, we will always better understand its full significance and will respond to it with deeper maturity and greater love, for the greater glory of the one and undivided Trinity” (Constitutions).
