From this certainty with which our Constitutions explain our being together for mission (cf. C 32) we came to Paris for the September 2023 Vincentian Session, 59 Sisters from 26 countries made up this beautiful international community of Daughters of Charity, 7 to 10 years vocation.

Responding to the call, we opened the doors of languages, cultures, continents, ages and ways of service and we turned this Session into a fertile ground where the dream of our Founders may continue to grow. It is God who wanted this Company of young women from different countries to form but one heart;a Company that keeps this end in view, not that of a work that is limited to a style of service, a country, a region or a language. Our purpose, which is to serve Christ in the person of the poor, sends us constantly to make charity an encounter and thus to proclaim our joy in belonging to God.

During those days, we drunk directly from the sources of our charism and experienced how our whole being was imbued with the freshness that comes from returning again and again to the Spirit that moved our Founders, walking on the same grounds of this audacious foundation and recognising and committing ourselves to the challenges that this original audacity continues to pose for us today so as to honour the heritage we have received.

We were made more aware of the commitment to learn to live and journey together, and of the continuous need to renew the heart and spirit by nourishing a solid interior life.

The Company of yesterday and today is no longer part of the books we have studied or news from afar; it has become the places, faces, testimonies, relics, love guarded and sustained from generation to generation. We are certain that the Company is loved by God and we want to continue to be part of this lineage that always hastens to charity, after the example of Mary, our Mother.

We are especially grateful to God, to Sister Françoise and her Councillors and to all those who have worked tirelessly to offer us this vocational gift: from the speakers, the coordinators, and the translators up to the silent and anonymous givers of service. We delight in the unique experience of living internationality and fraternity, of returning to our roots. It confirms our desire to continue to serve Christ in the person of the poor and we ask God that it may only be His Spirit who sends us to break through the gates … 

May Mary of the Visitation urge us to return in haste to our service so that we may bring Jesus to all those we serve with gentleness and cordiality.