Like their brothers they understand the importance of an authentic search for truth. “One may define the human being as the one who seeks the truth”. (Fides et Ratio no.28) In the world today is it not necessary to purify the intelligence of all a priori stemming from traditions ( familial, religious or political) and of all the imagination which often prevents a true contact with reality ? The imagination, the a priori, the subjectivity are indeed major obstacles to contemplative life. In order to be offered to God, the intelligence must be purified; it must become objective again.

 

For the Sisters, the awakening to a philosophical reflection starting from the experience of reality takes place in the Noviciate and continues in the priories according to the capacity of each sister. The search for true human wisdom renders the sisters more receptive to the life of grace. Far from preventing a genuine reading of the Word of God, as in the case of a meditation which is too intellectual, this search for the truth helps them to receive the Word of God of which they desire to live of as the Blessed Virgin Mary herself did (LK 11:28), without transforming or reducing it to what they have understood of it.

 

“To be consonant with the Word of God, philosophy needs first of all to recover its sapiential dimension as a search for the ultimate and overarching meaning of life.” (Fides et Ratio no.81) This search which consists in an effort to know the human person, and ultimately to discover the existence of a First Being whom religious traditions call God, leads the sisters to a theological research; they study the teaching of the Magisterium and that of St Thomas Aquinas whom they receive from the Church as the “common Doctor”.

 

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