Mission Congregation of the Servants of the Holy Spirit

Arnold Janssen’s Second Foundation

        “I desire to dedicate myself to serving the Gospel with all my love and all my life,” wrote twenty-nine year old Helena Stollenwerk of the little Eifel village of Rollesbroich (Germany) to Arnold Janssen in November 1881.  From early childhood on she was filled with the wish to go to China as a missionary sister and take care of poor and abandoned orphans there.  In Germany, however, there were no religious orders of women with missions anywhere, let alone in China.  Nevertheless, Helena was alive with a fire that no human obstruction could extinguish.  A similar spirit lived in Hendrina Stenmanns of Issum in Germany’s Lower Rhineland.  The same age as Helena, for years she had felt drawn to religious life and service of the poor and the sick but she saw no possibility of following her calling.

        Arnold Janssen had already recognized early on that women were necessary for the proclamation of the Good News.  They were the best pace-setters for the missions and could gain access to people in areas where men were could not go.  He did not actually have any concrete plans, but Helena and Hendrina were prepared to wait and work as kitchen maids in the Mission House.  For seven years they waited patiently until, on December 8, 1889, they could begin their religious-missionary life with four other missionary-minded women.

        The Sisters’ numbers increased rapidly and the first Missionary Sisters set off for overseas already in 1895, although not to China as Helena Stollenwerk would have so very much wished, but to Argentina.  Very soon ministries were also taken on in Togo, New Guinea, the United States and Brazil. Helena Stollenwerk herself was given a different mission: Arnold Janssen, a man of prayer, carried out another long-held plan and established a second group of Sisters, strictly cloistered, who were to pray for the world missions.  Helena transferred to the new community but died there already on February 3, 1900.  

        This is the name given by Arnold Janssen to the Missionary Sisters’ Congregation.  It was not just a name, it was a life program that developed and deepened continually as the Congregation spread to more countries.  The main goal everywhere was and still is to be filled with the Spirit of Jesus and, like him, to pass on to all people the message of the Father’s liberating love.  This is possible only in conscious and close union with Jesus Christ who gave his own life that they may have life and have it abundantly (Jn 10:10).

        Today approximately 3,800 sisters of 40 nationalities minister on every continent – in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Australia, India, Indonesia, Ghana, Togo, Botswana, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Zambia, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, Mexico, Cuba, Siberia, USA, as well as in fifteen European states (Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, England, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Ukraine, Rumania, Russia).  Most recently sisters have taken up apostolates in Antigua (Caribbean) and the Republic of South Africa.

        Missionary activities include pastoral work and catechesis, education, nursing and health care, social work, adult education and many other services designed to promote human dignity.  Global changes in politics, economics and society in recent decades challenge an increasing number of sisters to minister especially to those relegated to the margins of society and whose voices generally remain unheard: women and children, the old and the sick, peoples and minorities under threat, refugees and migrants and, increasingly, those living with HIV/AIDS.

        In all this the Servants of the Holy Spirit ceased long ago to regard their mission as a “one way street” but rather as an exchange between north and south, east and west, as journeying together in the one mission. Today “Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters” from all continents live and work together in international and intercultural communities, uniting their strengths and abilities to realize their missionary service. In this way they fulfill the original vision of Arnold Janssen, Helena Stollenwerk and Hendrina Stenmanns:  “May the love of the Triune God be known everywhere and may the Heart of Jesus live in the hearts of all people.”

  Sr. Maria Petra Schuettenkopf SSpS

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