Jesus said, "Abide in me as I abide in you...because apart from me you can do nothing." We seek to be Sisters in Jesus the Lord because Christ, longing for our total surrender, urges us to live in Him. We want to make this longing of His a constant reality in our lives. We desire to be totally consumed in our Lord's will, always remembering that without Him we can do nothing.

Saint Augustine of Hippo, whose Rule we follow.

The Latin version of our name, Canonissae in Jesu Domino, literally translates as Canonesses in Jesus the Lord. Traditionally, the term canonesses has been used to refer to women who are connected to a parish and live an organized religious life according to a rule, or canon. The first canonesses followed the Rule of St. Augustine, the earliest rule for women religious in the western Church.

Sacred Scripture gives us an example of faithful prayer in the temple, and the fruits of it. "And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanu-el, of the tribe of Asher… She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day (Luke 2:36-37).

Following the Rule of St. Augustine allows us to look back to the earliest roots of religious life, but with the eyes of the twenty-first-century Church, so as not to discard that which Holy Mother Church has taught us in the centuries since St. Augustine. We cherish the legacy of the charisms of many of the early twentieth-century missionary groups of the U.S. and Europe, seeking to learn from their successes as well as their failures and experiences.

If, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we have our roots firmly planted in tradition, we will blossom in the present time and bear much fruit in the future, in order that "the life consecrated to God corresponds always more perfectly to the desires of the Divine Heart" (Pope John XXIII, Letter to Women Religious, 2 July 1962).

Eucharistic Adoration in our parish in Vladivostok, Russia.

"Abide in me as I abide in you . . . because apart from me you can do nothing."

John 15: 4-5

"Surrender to me and I will do everything for you."

from the Liturgy of the Hours