Sisters of St Joseph Lochinvar

With all the baptised, we share the call to live the fullness of the Christian life by following Jesus of Nazareth. As Sisters of St Joseph, we live a life of chastity, poverty and obedience as a particular way of loving and of living discipleship according to the Gospel.

Convent Chapel Lochinvar, 1893

Our founders, Father Julian Tenison Woods and St Mary MacKillop, spoke much about God’s love known and experienced through the Sacred Heart, the Eucharist, and the Cross. They encouraged special devotion to Mary the Mother of God and to her spouse, our patron St Joseph.

This living, dynamic spirituality nourished, sustained and strengthened the Sisters in their small, often isolated communities scattered over the less populated areas of the country.

Lochinvar Chapel 2023

Today we seek to live, pray, work and witness as Josephite women incarnating God’s love and faithfulness in our times.

Our spirituality seeks to harmonise with contemporary theology, to support all that promotes the gospel and oppose all that negates it, and to reflect the diversity of our experiences of God.

It is centred on the person of Jesus, acknowledges the place of Mary, Mother of God, as his first disciple, and honours our patron St. Joseph.

We seek to be attentive to the presence of God, the will of God and prayer; and by living simply, generously, among the people, especially attentive and responsive to the poor and marginalised.

Lochinvar Chapel 2023
Sculpture by Leopoldine Mimovich

We seek to imitate St Joseph in his trust in providence, humility, simplicity, poverty, and compassion.

Pray that St Joseph’s humble spirit may guide us. … His was a quiet humility, humility that trusted and depended on God completely. It was a humility that didn’t hinder him from putting himself forward. (Mary MacKillop, 1893).

Our Constitutions: A Future and A Hope, 2000