Sr Joanna Coleiro
"It 's no longer I who live, Christ lives in me"
Still at university, I remember when I first started visiting the Daughters of St Paul at their convent in Adelaide. I began to gain an understanding of what community life was all about. I remember this odd feeling in the pit of my stomach – this way of life was oddly familiar yet very different. All I had ever known was family life. Community was like family but not the same as family. There were no blood ties here; yet the warmth and “at-homeness” I witnessed among the Sisters told me they were “sister” to one another.
As Religious Sisters sharing life in community, we are called to live the Gospel together with a group of women who start out as strangers. Often, they are from a very different place, era, culture, and social context to me. Finding common ground takes work. Yet, strangely, each one of us has been called by God, drawn by the same inspiration of the Spirit, to the Daughters of St Paul. Each of us shares a similar spiritual concern for humanity. Each of us shares a profound experience of Jesus that we just could not ignore. Each of us is drawn to worship God with the whole of our being, through the Word and the Eucharist, and to live our life united in Christ. We are different but we are family.
Even today, when I spend time with Sisters from other parts of the world, I never cease to be amazed at how much we have in common. Our differences are real. They make us the individuals we are. Yet we share a common goal, a common life purpose.
God works to call women from every culture and generation, stirring up in them a profound desire that the people around them should know God’s extraordinary love for them and God’s desire to be in relationship with them. The ministry of a Daughter of St Paul is constantly trying to build that relationship between God and the individual people we meet. ❦