The Little Sisters Disciples of the Lamb is a relatively new contemplative order that welcomes women with Down syndrome who feel a call to the religious life but who may have been turned away because of their condition.

Reporting for Aleteia, Kathy Schiffer says that the community relies on Sisters who don’t have Down syndrome but who have committed to sharing their lives with holy women who have the condition.

“The community was founded in 1985 with the support and encouragement of Jerome Lejeune, the French pediatrician and geneticist whose laboratory research uncovered the link to chromosomal abnormalities including Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome),” Schiffer writes.

According to the Order’s mission, the sisters are guided by the wisdom of St. Benedict and “teach our little disabled sisters the manual labor necessary for their development. We live poverty in putting ourselves at their disposal. With them, we share the work of everyday life.”

The Sisters pray the office, the Rosary and engage in adoration, all of which is adapted to the capacities of their Sisters with Down.

“In a spirit of silence, our prayer feeds every day on the Eucharist and on the meditation of the Gospel,” the Order says.

They currently reside in a priory in Blanc where they model their lives after St. Therese of Lisieux’s “Little Way.”

“We follow every day the ‘little way’ taught by St. Therese,” a leaflet for the Order states.

“Knowing that ‘great actions are forbidden to us,’ we learn from her to receive everything from God, to ‘love for the brothers who fight,’ to ‘scatter flowers for Jesus’ and to pray for the intentions entrusted to us.”

In 1990, the group was canonically recognized as a public association by the Archbishop of Tours, and was erected as a religious institute of contemplative life by the archbishop of Bourges in 1999.

The Order is always looking for more women who feel called to participate in this very special mission in life.

“To consecrate one’s life to God, offering it for love of the weakest and most deprived of our neighbors, this is our vocation! By accompanying them, we want to enable young, intellectually disabled girls to offer a consecrated life to God and to the Church . . . To allow those who have the ‘last place’ in the world, to hold in the Church the exceptional place of spouses of Jesus Christ.”

What a beautiful and selfless way to exercise the vocation of spiritual motherhood!

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