From Tarragona to the world: care for universal fraternity

On the day we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, we also remember the Charismatic Foundation of our Institute.

On August 15, 1851, María Antonia París and her first companions made a vow of “fraternal union”, by which they committed themselves not to separate and to undertake together the long and dangerous journey to Cuba.

This is what María Antonia testifies in her autobiography: “Day of the Assumption of Mary most holy. I gather the young ladies I had admitted as companion with a great devotion and fervor, offering ourselves to God by a vow of crossing the seas and go to any part of the world without dividing the group, […] offered ourselves to suffer any kind of trial for love of our Lord Jesus Christ”.

With this “vow of Tarragona” the foundress wanted to strengthen the vocation of the four young women through holy obedience and to assure them that she would never abandon them (cf. Aut. 123).

Mary, strengthen the union among us and with those with whom we walk; confirm us in our first mission, which is to care for life in communion, because only together we can cross geographical and existential frontiers to spread the joy of the Gospel.