Our Spirituality
Jesus Crucified
St. Magdalene of Canossa’s mystical experience “Inspice et fac secundum Exemplar” is an unchanging source of inspiration and of life for all of us.
Like Magdalene, we too are called and empowered to contemplate the love of Christ Crucified and to communicate it to all. We seek only the glory of God and the salvation of every person through a life of consecration, communion and humble service.
Attentive to the love that shines on the Cross, we model our way of loving on that of the Lord, in humility and radical detachment. We seek to let the same mind be in us that was in Christ Jesus, and to let every action of ours be animated by His Spirit, “a spirit of charity, gentleness, meekness and humility; a spirit of zeal and fortitude; a most amiable, most generous and most patient spirit” (UR , 1812, RL No. 5)
Our Lady of Sorrows
With Mary, Mother of Charity at the foot of the Cross.
St. Magdalene of Canossa acknowledged Mary, “Mother of Charity at the foot of the Cross” as the true Mother and Foundress of the Institute. She exhorts us to love Mary in order “to fulfill a duty of justice, truth and gratitude” and to spread devotion to her in the world, because the memory of the Mother’s sorrows cannot be separated from the passion of her Son. (RL No. 6)
Her attitude teaches us to grasp the presence of God in the ordinariness of life. At the foot of the Cross, she does not faint, she does not walk away… and so she teaches us to hope against hope, to keep a firm confidence in God’s intervention, that life will come through death.
Like Mary, we carry the Word within us, we meet people where they are, recognizing the deep desires of life and of good that the Spirit awakens in each one and proclaiming Jesus as the accomplishment of these aspirations, generating the joy of faith. (16th GC, 2014)