#religious vocation

Les Petites Sœurs Disciples de l’Agneau, or The Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb, was founded by the “joining of two vocations,” Mother Line told CNA in a translated interview.

In 1985, a young woman with Down syndrome — Sister Veronica — met Mother Line. Sister Veronica had already received her vocational calling to become a nun but had been turned away by several religious communities.

Mother Line recognized Sister Veronica’s call to become a nun, so the two began living together — hoping that other young women with Down syndrome who felt a call to religious life would join the community.

Mother Line said that at the time, the Church and religious communities did not understand “how a person with Down syndrome could have a call from God” to join religious life.

But Mother Line, who had studied psychology and taught the Catechism for many years, saw that the people she worked with who had Down syndrome were “very spiritually inclined.”

As time went on, more women with Down syndrome joined the community, and the Church saw the need for its existence.

In 1999, the Little Sisters was established as an official religious institute of contemplative life by the archbishop of Bourges, Pierre Plateau.

"As soon as I believed there was a God, I understood I could do nothing else but live for him, my religious vocation dates from the same moment as my faith: God is so great. There is such a difference between God and everything that is not.”

Like, maybe it’s just because I grew up in a not entirely perfect Catholic school that basically told us “marriage is the last sacrament you can receive before death... if you’re a guy you can become a priest, I guess, if you really don’t want to be married :/,” but the lack of education and acceptance of non-marriage vocations (especially those outside of priesthood) is discouraging to say the least.

Like, my own mother discourages me from discerning if I am called to religious life because I “haven’t found The One yet” or I’m “running away from my responsibilities.” So many Catholics judge those called to the single holy life for being workaholics or not “really searching for their vocation” without even speaking to the person in question. I know those who have agonized about the single religious life because everyone around them expected them to marry or, “at least” join a religious order.