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“Contemplative Life in the heart of the World” is the goal of this international community of contemplative sisters. Rather than live this out in a monastery, they seek, by preference, to live among those groups that are inaccessible to other forms of Church ministry, such as minorities, or whose day to day life is marked by division, racism, poverty or violence. Their model is Jesus’ life at Nazareth, following the footsteps of the great contemplative of the desert Charles De Foucauld.
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The founding of “the Little Sisters of Jesus” 
The fraternity of the Little Sisters of Jesus was founded at Touggourt in the Sahara Desert of Algeria in 1939 by a French woman, Magdeleine Hutin. Magdeleine was born on April 26, 1898 in a small village on the French-German border, the youngest of six children. By 1925 she was the sole support of her mother, having lost the rest of her immediate family to war or illness.
Growing up along a border which was constantly in question and having been displaced by war, the pain of divisions left a deep imprint upon her spirituality. Magdeleine wanted her life to somehow reach across that which separates people from one another, to be a sign of love to those who were rejected by others. Magdeleine felt a great love for Jesus and thought of becoming a religious, but she could find no religious congregation that reflected her sense of vocation.
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A very decisive moment in Magdeleine’s life happened in her twenties when she read the biography of Charles de Foucauld written by Rene’ Bazin. She was very impressed and inspired by the example of the French military officer, who while serving in the French army in North Africa, had a deep religious conversion and later chose to live as a hermit among the Tuareg tribesmen in the Sahara desert until he was shot and killed by a band of Senusi tribesmen in 1916.
Magdeleine recognized her own life’s dream and calling in Charles de Foucauld’s life.
She later said: “God took me by the hand and blindly I followed.”
“I found in Charles de Foucauld the ideal of which I had been dreaming: living the Gospel, total poverty, becoming one with the most abandoned people… and above all, love in all its fullness: Jesus Caritas, Jesus Love.”
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Foucauld had envisioned a new kind of contemplative life, rooted in the world of the poor and based on the “hidden years” that Jesus spent as a carpenter in Nazareth. In his hermitage in the Sahara, he had conceived of a “fraternity” of men and women who would live among their Muslim neighbors as brothers and sisters, embracing poverty, manual labor, and a spirit of prayer. Thus, they would proclaim the gospel, not with their words, “but with their lives.” For many years Foucauld had patiently prepared the way for followers who never came. In the end he died alone, his message bequeathed to the appreciation of a later generation. Foucauld would have remained unknown to the world without his biography by Rene’ Bazin, written a few years after Foucauld’s death.
Decades later, it was discovered, among others, by Madeleine Hutin. It was upon reading his biography that Magdeleine decided immediately to adopt Foucauld as her spiritual guide and to make his vision her own. The intuition of Foucauld of his vocation as a truly contemplative life rooted in the ordinary life of the poor in imitation of the life of Jesus at Nazareth, and of the “desert spirituality”, lived by a fraternity that abandons itself completely on Jesus (the prayer of abandon), are at the origins of the way of life of the Little Sisters of Jesus.
Charles de Foucauld was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on November 13, 2005 and is considered a martyr of the Church.
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While Magdeleine desired to be a religious, due to poor health none of the orders she knew of would accept her. She waited many years for some kind of sign that she should go to North Africa to follow in the footsteps of Charles de Foucauld.
Her dreams were considered foolishness. The hoped for sign finally came in the form of a potentially crippling bout of rheumatism when her doctor advised her to go somewhere where it never rained…
She immediately left for Algeria (1936) with her mother and one companion, Anne, who eventually left.
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Soon she was introduced to a French priest, Father Rene’ Voillaume, who had been converted by the same biography of Foucauld and whose Little Brothers of Jesus had been living in the desert since 1933. When she had confided to him her sense of vocation he responded with encouragement as well as invaluable assistance in obtaining the support of local church authorities.
After two years of intense work, she was asked by the Bishop to spend some time in the novitiate of the Sisters of Africa (the White Sisters as they were known) where, at the urging of the Bishop, she wrote the Constitutions of her new community and made her first vows on Sept. 8, 1939.
The new community of the Little Sisters of Jesus was finally established under the leadership of Little Sister Magdeleine, as she was henceforth known.
The original French name of the community is “Fraternite’ des Petites Soeurs de Jesus” (Fraternity of the Little Sisters of Jesus). Magdaleine did not aim at founding a new religious order or a well structured religious congregation. Her vision was to create a “fraternity” of sisters willing to share the lives of the poorest, to take up any manual job to support themselves and to understand first-hand the concrete reality lived by so many laypeople.
Contemplation and manual work, just like Jesus at Nazareth, would fill the little sister’s daily schedule. 
The Little Sisters of Jesus had to learn the culture of the people they lived with.
The word “Little” had special meaning for Magdeleine. During the early years of her vocation she had experienced a number of intense visions inspired by her meditations on the Infant Jesus. The humility, weakness, and vulnerability of a baby were the disguises under which he first appeared. And it seemed appropriate to her that this baby should also be the inspiration and model for those who wished to bear witness to divine love among the poorest and most powerless of the world.
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First hurdles
As World War II was breaking out little sister Magdeleine was forced to return to France. She used that time to share her dream with anyone who would listen to her. Soon others began joining her. It began as a small group geared only to presence among the nomads of the Sahara Desert and in the midst of Islam. 
Little Sister Magdeleine (centre) with an early group of little sisters at the first mother house in France.
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In the beginning, basing her vision on the literal model of Brother Charles, Magdeleine had conceived of the mission of the Little Sisters exclusively in relation to the Muslims of North Africa. It was there that the congregation was born, had taken root and flourished.
But gradually, Magdeleine enlarged her vision to conceive of a universal mission. Hence the fraternities spread throughout the world, attracting women of all races and nationalities. 
By the time of her death in 1989, there were 280 fraternities with 1,400 Little Sisters from 64 different countries. These included Little Sisters who traveled with gypsy caravans in Europe, who lived with nomadic circus troupes, and who even volunteered as prisoners. There were communities among the pygmies of Cameroon, in remote Eskimo villages in Alaska, among boat people in Southeast Asia, and in the slums of London, Beirut, and Washington, D.C.
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2b. In her later life Magdeleine felt a special call to bear witness in the communist countries of the Eastern bloc. Driving in a converted minivan, she made dozens of trips throughout Eastern Europe, including eighteen trips to Russia.
Quietly she was able to establish fraternities in a number of these countries. Whatever the setting, the aim of the Little Sisters was not to evangelize in a formal sense but to serve modestly as a kind of leaven in the midst of the world, imparting a spirit of love.
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It was years before the community was fully recognized by Rome. Along the way it was necessary to overcome many doubts and criticisms arising from the originality of Magdeleine’s vision. Her Little Sisters were neither enclosed contemplatives nor were they engaged in traditional apostolic activities. They lived in small “fraternities,” some consisting of not more than a couple of Sisters. While maintaining an intense commitment to contemplative prayer, they endeavored to enter fully into the life and culture of their poor neighbors. Among other things this meant they wore a simple denim habit adorned with a cross. What was essential to the Little Sisters was that wherever they lived they should find themselves among the very poor. As for misunderstandings, she noted that “the world looks for efficiency more than the unobtrusiveness of a hidden life.” Thus, “Bethlehem and Nazareth will always remain a mystery to it.”
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In 1949 Little Sister Magdeleine formally relinquished leadership of the community. She preferred to play an informal role as mother to her Sisters, traveling constantly around the globe rather than confining herself to the administration of a growing congregation. Although she had been sickly in her youth, she remained remarkably robust into her old age, continuing to do manual labor well into her eighties and undertaking her final exhausting trip to the Soviet Union at the age of ninety-one. She died later that year on November 6, 1989, after celebrating the 50th anniversary of the foundation and receiving the final approval of the constitutions of the congregation that she never really started out to found. She is buried in Rome, at the mother house of the Little Sisters of Jesus. |
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Quotations from Little Sister Magdaleine.
“If I were told to define the mission of our community in a single word, I would not hesitate for a single moment to cry: ‘unity’. All our vocation can be summed up by the word ‘unity’.
We must not content ourselves to speak of brotherly and sisterly love. We must speak of unity in love. I am more and more aware that it is the purest spirit of the Gospel, the pure spirit of Christ whose last message before dying, lovingly remembered and preserved as people's dying words often are, was: ‘May they be one as we are one, me in them and you in me, that they may be made perfect in unity.’”
“I would like to pass on to my little sisters the important ideal of a holiness which is human. I want them to fix their eyes and their heart on the life of Jesus which was so simple, so that they can get the taste for the extraordinary out of their minds forever, unless, of course, it’s a taste for the extraordinarily simple. Then, onto this humanity, we must graft divine love, a love without measure.
Before being religious, be human and Christian in all the strength and beauty of these terms.
Christ was true God and true man, so do not be afraid of being human; for the more you are totally human, the more you will be able to give glory to the Father, who is glorified in his creatures.”
“I believe more and more that we have not been created merely to achieve our own personal spiritual perfection. Neither have we been called to organize efficient, well-run communities.
Our role is to prepare the ground and to sow the seed...
The whole world is crying out to us. Faith is dying, the spark of love is fading, because there are not enough warm hearths of welcoming love in the world...
I am sure that we must open wide our hearts and souls and the doors of our houses...”
“This Bethlehem crib is so beautiful and so great. It contains the whole Christ, who is both God and man. It contains the workshop of Nazareth, the Passion and the Cross, and all the glory of the Resurrection and of heaven.
That is how our God first appeared, and he wants to be contemplated and adored in this state not only by the lowly but also by the great. He accepted the adoration of both shepherds and wise men and he even led them by a star into the presence of this little baby without grandeur or majesty.
In face of the hatred and anger of the world we must bring the gentleness and the smile of the Infant Jesus of Bethlehem.
In face of the pride of the world we must bring the littleness and powerlessness of the tiny new born baby of the crib.
Be a tiny baby in the Lord's hands. Close your eyes and put your hand in his. Let go and be supple and then he can send you where he wants!”
“Spiritual childhood is the result of a mature faith, and not a childish attitude. It means self-surrender to the will of God in simplicity of heart and a willing spirit.
You will not forget that it is very often the little and the poor who will evangelize you and reveal Jesus to you.”
“I want you to believe that true friendship and profound affection can exist between people who do not come from the same religion, or from the same race, or from the same social background.
Your love must grow, become sensitive and respectful. It is easy to find people who love generously but people who love with sensitivity and respect for each individual person are rare. The Lord's own countenance is in every person.
How our lack of sensitivity and respect in loving must have made him suffer during his agony and passion. He said: ‘What you did to the least of mine, you did to me... and in the measure in which you did not do something for one of these little ones, you did not do it for me either.’”
“Did the Lord Jesus choose? Did he not offer his arms wide open to the nails of the cross so that no one might be excluded from his love, be that person the most selfish and most ungrateful of human beings or the hardest and most unjust of employers. The Lord Jesus suffered and died for all. In the name of his love, all, without exception, have a right to your love.”
“To understand Brother Charles of Jesus totally, you need to forget him and through him see only Jesus.”
“God took me by the hand and blindly I followed.”
“I found in Charkes de Foucauld the ideal of which I had been dreaming: living the Gospel, total poverty, becoming one with the most abandoned people… and above all, love in all its fullness: Jesus Caritas, Jesus Love.”
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Extracts from various Little Sisters’ sharing.
“Our life of prayer is also shaped by the context in which we live. This, too, is in the image of Jesus of Nazareth. All of our homes, whether apartments, trailers or tents have a chapel.
There we have regular times of prayer together as a community as well as silent adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. These times of prayer are a means of making our whole lives become prayer, of simply taking time to dwell a little longer in the mystery of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection that we celebrate in the Eucharistic meal, trying to allow our lives to be permeated by this mystery so as to live more Eucharistic lives.”
“We wish to be present in the midst of the poor. Spiritual childhood is at the foundation of this way of presence. Like the Incarnation itself, it is a way of quietly entering into situations as one who is "little" and who has everything to learn.
It opens doors that might otherwise be closed from fear or suspicion.
It is also a profound way of living in the image of God who chose to come among us as a tiny child.
It fashions the depths of a relationship with God which is sure of being loved and strong enough to trust even in the face of suffering and death.”
“This way of Presence to others is central to our life.
What we do is a very small thing but one which we feel can be an important sign of hope and healing in a broken world.
Not a passive approach, “presence” is what we learn from Jesus through the Incarnation. It is a dynamic way of simply placing oneself within situations in such a way that one’s very life becomes rooted and dependent upon what happens there.
When Jesus ministered in Nazareth, he was among the people. He worked with the people, he prayed with the people, and he lived with the people. Embracing that very culture, we, the Little Sisters of Jesus, a contemplative community, live among ordinary people rather than behind the doors of a monastery.
“As a contemplative community our primary mission is to be women of prayer.
Rather than live this out in a monastery we seek, by preference, to live among those groups that are inaccessible to other forms of Church ministry, are minorities, or whose day to day life is marked by division, racism, poverty or violence.”
Around the world, we simply share their day-to-day life, living conditions, work and dreams with the common person.”
“By our presence in so many places, we hope to be an important sign of hope and healing to a broken world.
The whole point is to show the world we can live peacefully and live together in respect. We are here to give our friendship to those we come across.”
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