Tours (France), 05/03/2023, Sr. Viviane Martínez.- Sharing my impressions as I walk through the documentation room. Having participated in the work on the museographic space of our congregation, and having attended its “end of work pot”, I want to express my joy at seeing it completed after three years of intense reflection.
From an architectural point of view, it is a success, for such a small area that the designer, Madame Sandra Troffigué, in terms of architecture, it is an achievement for such a small area that the project manager, Madame, has designed and built so well, on a "half-moon" and "rough-hewn" area, as she herself puts it, making perfect use of the space she was given.
In the field of Marie Poussepin's thought, her work and her legacy, Mr Bruno Mousset, whose profession is historiographer and a team of sisters, have expressed the different achievements of her life and those of the congregation in the best possible way.
On 18 April 2023, the museographic space was delivered to us, completed.
It begins with an evocation of the life of our Foundress and ends with a close-up of her smiling, benevolent, but intelligent and determined face. We have the joy of seeing it here, as if watching over the intuitions that she placed in the hearts and hands of those who succeeded her: prayer, love of the poor, that is, the service of charity through works of mercy, the service of the Church...
Then we discover the vitality of her institute, unfolding in a well-conceived, chronological and accurately described plan: the different eras, and the many communities and works carried out and supported in their history.
For three centuries, the congregation has gone through, without ever being destroyed, trials that could have been fatal, such as the French Revolution when, after ten years of dispersion in hiding, it resurfaced and started again... It is the Reconstitution.
All the "genius" of the sisters, of the women and men who helped them and of those who benefited from them, is alive today, here, in the form of evocations through words, images, objects and modern means of transmission.
In 1867, it was the foundation in Spain; in 1873, departures to Colombia, the Middle East... Later, Africa and India. Each entity created was then keen to expand its frontiers and develop in other countries in order "to bring the knowledge of Jesus Christ and His Mysteries wherever the sisters might be called." R XXVII. One of the first concerns of our founder was to create an institute with the recognition of the Dominican Order. Faced with apparent failure, she had to give up. But as her work is that of "Providence", she entrusted the project to her daughters...
These are some of the points of history that you will find in this museum, where everything is done with precision and a concern for truth, drawn from the texts themselves and from the interpretation of sisters today.
May all of us be proud of having taken on the laborious task of reading and transcribing, in the structures of the present, the events of the past which are continuing now and will continue in the future. It is also the "work of providence"!
A good visit for those who will be able to come, and a good discovery by video or other means, for those sisters who are far away.
