Pastoral Care Manager
Sister Margaret SADLER celebrates a wedding in Manitoba
In northern Manitoba, faced with the lack of a priest, Sister Margaret Sadler, Sister of the Child Jesus, has been appointed as pastoral minister and is responsible for baptisms, weddings, catechesis and lay formation as well as the administration of the parish. The community of Lynn Lake, in the Archdiocese of Keewatin-Le Pas, is occasionally visited by a priest.
I chose the Sisters of the Child Jesus by the will of God. As a young girl, I met them in their home as a student and became interested in the Congregation.
I really liked the way these sisters lived. They were for me a very good example of life. I was closer to Sister Jean-Gabriel, may she rest in peace! I believe that it is all that she lived as an apostolate that pushed me and energized me to choose this Congregation.
Why I am involved
Sister Thérèse Bédel was also a light for this choice. She has been a second mother to me. Many other sisters known in Sassandra in the years 1998-2002 were the source of this orientation that I find very important.
I also read a little about the life of the founder, Anne Marie Martel, and I really appreciated her works. I continued my research and discoveries until the day I began my training.
From my experience in the novitiate, I learned to know myself better and to live the charism, the spirituality, to discern, to become aware of the consecration in the Church through the study of the three evangelical counsels. I also learned to live a strong time of prayer (prayer, recollection, retreat) and interiorization with the Lord in silence. I learned that difficulties are means of personal and spiritual growth, a call to discover the positive aspects of my life and to mature my vocation.
I am committed to the apostolate of accompanying young Jecists in Dassouri, Burkina Faso. Some elements of my religious formation help me for this accompaniment. In doing so, I am deepening the importance of apostolic service which is linked to some texts studied in the French School. Patience and dynamism are important when working together. The catechism group teaches me to be attentive, docile, patient, and available for each one of them.
I committed myself by Vows in April, 2008. This has a very important meaning because it is a choice of love for the Kingdom of Heaven: to abandon myself into the hands of God in order to serve Him by serving the Church, my brothers and sisters, trying to imitate Christ and letting myself be guided by the Holy Spirit.
I have no preference of apostolate, I will welcome all kinds of apostolic activities that the Lord will give me. I am open and available for what the Congregation and the community will find necessary, according to the spirit of the charism and the realities of our different environments. In all this my desire is to live our motto "Glory to God / Peace to men".
A righteous among the righteous
Contacted in January 1944, Sister Marie-Angélique (Alice Chevalier), with the permission of her superior, took in three Jewish girls (9, 12 and 14 years old) in the school she directed, at Vernet-la-Varenne in the Puy de Dôme, a village lost in the mountains. The parents had been arrested on January 3 and sent to Auschwitz where the father died.
Here is an excerpt from his testimony:
Seven months passed without incident. One day, there was a battle near the school. I had the idea to send them all up the nearby hill, along with a sister. After the battle, the sister and the children returned and ate in the upstairs kitchen. The Germans brought their trucks into the courtyard and immediately covered them with branches cut from the lime trees. The little ones had to leave quickly. Through the northern gate, I send the youngest sisters and the little girls to the castle of Montfort to the Sisters of Saint Vincent de Paul.
After three days, the Germans left and I went up to Montfort to get the sisters and children.
Life went on quietly... until the day when the problem of renewing the food cards arose for me... The cards of our little Jewish girls had their real names on them, but since their arrival they had been given a slightly shorter name. This could have had unfortunate consequences.
And I found a solution: spill an inkwell of India ink on the cards so as to cover the names well... Once this was done, I went up to the town hall where I found the mayor sitting at his desk. I hand him the cards and apologize for my clumsiness. With a smile the mayor gives me all the new cards.
At the end of the hostilities, the mother is delivered by the Russians and arrives at Le Vernet in a pitiful state. But with what joy she hugged her children that she found in good health. The little ones cry with happiness.
On April 26, 1998, Sister Marie Angélique received the medal of the Righteous and saw two of the three girls again (the third had died). Her testimony, her courage, remain engraved in our memories as a call to "dare", to "take risks".