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Mother Mary
of the Sacred Heart, prioress
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The life of a canon is well suited
to women, and it was thought for a long time that St Augustine had written his
Rule for a female monastery. The sisters also follow the Church’s mission
to pray the Divine Praises in their liturgical Office.
St Bernard says of Our Lady that
she is perfectly "Martha and Mary". The canonesses all live Marian,
contemplative and active lives. Their vocation is now well known, thanks to the
beautiful, radiant figure of Mother Yvonne Aimée de Malestroit
(1901-1951). She combined the highest degree of mystical life with an
intense apostolic and loving activity in an uninterrupted harmony of the
supernatural and the human. Simply put, she was an incomparable example of
the balance which the religious life allows and requires in the canonial
order.
The sisters are now based in the
Sacred Heart monastery in Gap, in the French Alps, where they took the
place of their brother Canons who moved to Lagrasse. They are supported by
a priory of priests who remained in the diocese.
The Holy See has
officially approved a "consociatio", which joins our two monasteries under
the authority of the Abbot, while maintaining real autonomy for the female community,
though in a close spiritual and doctrinal union - truly an
inseparable "canonial family". This association allows the Canons and the
Canonesses to help one another by prayer, by formation and by work, through
the complementary abilities of each group.
Geographically, a great
distance separates the Canonesses from the Canons of Lagrasse, but the
fathers and the sisters are brought together by religious
ceremonies several times a year. Their apostolates also sometimes offer - as in families - the
possibility of common work. Although brothers and sisters may carry out different tasks,
there is a harmony of complementarity.
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