(ZENIT News / Dakota del Norte, USA, 26.02.2024).- January 6, 2024, witnessed the canonical beginning of the Congregation of Servants of the Children of Light, which seeks to promote the Montessori method of education. The initiator of the method, Maria Montessori, had this dream but never saw it implemented in life.
The founding took place with the perpetual profession of Sister Chiara Therese, and the beginning of Lucia Rose’s life as a novice. So a new Congregation has started in the Catholic Church — a Religious Community dedicated to Catholic Montessori education.
74 years have now gone by since Maria Montessori’s death, but these women religious seek to continue her legacy. The Community has established itself in Bismarck, North Dakota, from where they plan to promote this project.
When Sister Chiara was asked why they started this endeavour, she said it was the Holy Spirit that moved them to do so because, when there is a need in the Church, He inspires a charism to respond to that need.
A public Association of Christian Faithful already existed since 2020, but it has now been given a new boost with the foundation of this new Congregation.
Sister Chiara explained that her main duty as a Religious, which means to be Bride of Christ, is to be with Him through daily prayer, and in her apostolic work, to assist and teach in the Christ the King Catholic Montessori School in Mandan, North Dakota.
A characteristic of the religious living of this Congregation is that, in addition to taking vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, a fourth is taken to honour Christ in the child, which denotes the importance this Congregation gives to children, as Jesus Himself did: “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 19:14).
Sister Chiara also pointed out that, from the very beginning, Dr Montessori created it as a Catholic method and that, to separate it from those roots, impedes its reaching its fulness, as she conceived it from the start, her method being one that offers an integral and harmonious formation.
In the words of the initiator: “the Montessori [teacher] must be, at the same time, holy and scientific. She must observe the child with a heart full of amazement and wonder, guide the child to the appropriate materials in the surroundings prepared, which will help it in its development and then purify its soul from all that is not God.”
Finally, Sister Chiara described her role as educator as an “instrument in the hands of Divine Providence, assisting the Creator in this ever more urgent task to honour Him in the child.”
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