After Marie's death, Mother St Joseph - like all good leaders - did not allow her sadness to hinder her work in the Congregation of Mary. Within only five days of her friend's death she founded a new community of sisters in the city of Lyons. In the years that followed other places were begun and the sisters' work grew.
However, something else that seems to happen to good religious leaders is that there comes a time when they are not understood, when their ideas are rejected by others, and when the people who once supported them turn away. It happened to Jesus and it happened to Mother St Joseph.
She was a woman who was not well-educated in the academic sense. She did not use the most refined language in speech or in writing. Her spelling was not always correct. Her manners were not those of of highclass lady. As we have seen she was a simple country-woman, down-toearth, filled with love of God and openness to people. Those qualities made it possible for the Marist sisters to first become established. However, they were not enough, it seems. for the women who later joined them
There was a group who came from a wealthier background who had all been to school in a part of France renowned for its fine education. They had a different idea of what religious women should be like. As it so happened, their thoughts appealed to Fr Jeon-Claude Colin too. The two founders began to disagree about the way the sisters would develop. They wrote letters back and forth, but completely misunderstood each other. One thing led to another and it seemed that it would be best if Mother St Joseph resigned as leader of the Marist Sisters.
When the day came all the sisters had gathered at Bon Repos. It was 30 years since the time when Jeanne-Marie Chavoin and Marie Jotilion had first come to live together in the name of Mary. The sisters were given the opportunity to vote for their leader - they chose Sister Ambrose. Mother St Joseph humbly accepted the outcome and welcomed the new leader. Within a few days, she had packed all her belongings and had gone to live in a much smaller house of the congregation in a quiet little village.
After Marie's death, Mother St Joseph - like all good leaders - did not allow her sadness to hinder her work in the Congregation of Mary. Within only five days of her friend's death she founded a new community of sisters in the city of Lyons. In the years that followed other places were begun and the sisters' work grew.
There was a group who came from a wealthier background who had all been to school in a part of France renowned for its fine education. They had a different idea of what religious women should be like. As it so happened, their thoughts appealed to Fr Jeon-Claude Colin too. The two founders began to disagree about the way the sisters would develop. They wrote letters back and forth, but completely misunderstood each other. One thing led to another and it seemed that it would be best if Mother St Joseph resigned as leader of the Marist Sisters.
