Over the years, I have come to love just about everything that I have been called to do as a Daughter of St. Paul: working in our Pauline Book and Media Centers, accompanying our young women in formation, going out to meet people in their parishes and reaching out to the “little people of God” in schools with our Pauline editions, helping in our infirmary with our older sisters. Sometimes I tell Jesus, “I want to do it all!” But I am increasingly convinced that no thing that I do has any value unless it is Jesus doing it in me.

I remember one day, several years ago, our now deceased Sr. Concetta, a woman of great wisdom, was sitting on the porch of our convent on a lovely spring afternoon. I had just been about many varied apostolic activities and I was sharing with her about all that I was doing, perhaps showing off a little about my many endeavors. And then I asked her, “And what have you been doing today, Sr Concetta?” Her response has stuck with me forever. “Dearest,” she said, “I have been loving the Lord.” That is the secret of the Pauline life: living in the Lord and living of the Lord’s love on a continual basis, taking on his way of seeing the world, contemplating his way of doing the Father’s will, making my own his way of responding to the people and events that make up my day. The more Jesus fills and penetrates every fiber of my being, the more it will be Jesus who I communicate through any activity I carry out in my life and mission as a Daughter of St. Paul. Mother Thecla, our co-foundress once said, “I become love so that God can speak through my life.”

How much I long to become Jesus so I can give Jesus to a world that is dying to know Him.

Sr. Carmen Christi Pompei, FSP


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The mission of a Daughter of St. Paul is to prolong Christ’s own self-giving in the world of today. All of our life should allow the mystery of Christ to shine through. Like Paul we are overwhelmed by the love of Jesus, “who died for me.” We feel impelled to tell about the Lord, who has “shown us great mercy.”

Daily we seek to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” to be gradually transformed in him. We begin each day at Mass, which roots us in the gift of love, the Eucharist. At the celebration of the Eucharist we encounter Christ glorified, whom we then receive as the humble nourishment that dissolves within us to sustain us.

The hour of Eucharistic adoration is the spiritual treasure of the Pauline life. It is here that a Daughter of St. Paul enters into the deep bond of love the Word shares with the Father. It is here that she takes on the face of Jesus, his desire to save all people, his love to the point of death. The hour of adoration is a time of vital, direct contact with the Master in which the Master penetrates us and transforms us into light: “I am the light of the world. You are the light of the world” (John 9:5; Matthew 5:14). It is before the Eucharist that all our apostolic projects are born.

Individually and communally, we nourish ourselves also on the Bread of the Word, heeding the Lord’s invitation to allow his words to remain in us, allowing ourselves to be evangelized by the “all-surpassing knowledge of Christ.” Gradually our lives are transformed by the living voice of God. The Word becomes rooted in us, and it is out of this word that we speak, write, design—create.

It is from Christ the Master, then, that we expect everything, according to a promise that he made to our Founder: “Do not fear: I am with you. From here [the tabernacle] I will cast light. Be sorry for sin.”