What are the guiding values for our lives
as Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur?

Our Congregation was founded by St. Julie Billiart, a woman filled with love for God and God's people.  She responded to the call to commit her life completely to God and to spread everywhere the Gospel message that God is indeed good.

• Julie encouraged in her Sisters a deep union with God, liberty of spirit, and courage...qualities needed for an apostolic vocation.

• It was Julie's vision and hope that her Sisters would go throughout the world, proclaiming God's loving care for all people.

• Our common aim is to express in our time, as Julie did in hers, that God is good.

• We seek to follow the way of simplicity, obedience, and charity, which was characteristic of Julie and our first Sisters, a way marked by joy and confidence, by contemplative prayer and action, and by perseverance in the face of difficulties.

• Each local community has its distinctive character which expresses the individuality of its members and their diverse responses to the challenges of the local church.  We welcome and promote cultural diversity as a reflection of the many-faceted revelation of God.  As an international Congregation we try to develop a world-wide perspective.

• We commit ourselves to build community with all those with whom we live and work.  We try to become a vital part of the local churches and of the wider community.

• Our spirituality is apostolic in the tradition of St. Julie whose unique experience of prayer and action enabled her to find God's presence everywhere and in a special way among the poor.

• We too strive to be women of prayer who seek in every aspect of our lives to be united with God and to be responsive to the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of Love.

• Like Mary, whose name we bear, we are called to hear the word of God and keep it.  Our attentive listening shapes in us a contemplative and prophetic attitude toward the whole of life and enables us to act in ways which witness to God's love and justice.

• In our vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience we accept with gratitude God's gift that each day offers us the freedom to give ourselves in the spirit of the beatitudes for the sake of the kingdom.

Which of these values resonate within you?

Which tug at your heart?

What hopes, insights, questions have come to mind
as you have reflected on these values?

Can you see yourself living these words?

Might God be calling you to link your heart with ours?

Let's talk about it....