Our Spirituality started with Bartolomea Capitanio’s “I want to be a saint…” She radically dedicated herself intent on “pleasing God in all things in the concrete situations of everyday life.” She responded to it with – ‘Blessed charity…everything God has granted me--life, talents, power, words and actions, thoughts, I dedicate to the poor…by reflecting the loving gentleness of the Redeemer.”

Our spirituality is Christ centred, rooted in the imitation of the Crucified Lord – the Redeemer. The Redeemer had to be our Norm, Protector and Guide. The death of Christ on the Cross is the supreme revelation of the love of God for men, so that perfection is attained by imitation of the life of Christ in His highest, most expressive moment. Bartolomea in her desire to please her Spouse, wished to be crucified with Him, to taste His bitterness and humiliation, to conform oneself to Christ Crucified, to be one with Him in His passion, to resemble Him on the cross, to participate in the cross, to live only attached to the cross.

The spirituality of the Institute is that of Redemptive charity. It consists in the imitation of the Redeemer that expresses the mystery of the love of Jesus for mankind, particularly His virtues of simplicity, humility, gentleness, purity of intention, obedience, poverty, detachment from everything and a deep love of God that translates itself into love of the neighbor, in imitation of Christ the Redeemer who shed the last drop of His life blood for us. The imitation of the Suffering Christ also translates itself into a preferential love for the poor, the sick and the needy because Christ continues to suffer even today in these people.

Don Angelo Bosio told our first sisters, ‘Keep fixed in your mind this maxim that the poor are all representatives of Jesus Christ…all that you do for them, Christ receives as done to Himself.” The deep, all embracing experience of the imitation of Christ the Redeemer in Bartolomea’s view was, “Our Lord expects from these persons to do everything possible, to suffer everything and even to shed their blood for the good of the neighbor.” F.D.14. Charity-at-work, like that which Christ practiced on earth would lead them on until they themselves became like the Crucified Christ.

In the Foundation Document St. Bartolomea wrote: “The Institute must be founded on the principles and example of our Lord Jesus Christ so that its rule may be a copy of His actions…He must be our Norm, Protector and Guide…The Institute is not only to be founded on charity, which will constitute its Active life, but the Contemplative life must also be added so that those who consecrate themselves to this Institute may live both forms of life…(F.D.2). The members of this pious Institute must be endowed with every virtue, but hteir characteristic virtue should be Charity, Gentleness and Humility in imitation of our Most Lovable Redeemer. Through these virtues they will be recognized as true followers of the Redeemer…”(F.D.11)