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Fr Medaille's vision - his dream - was that there would be many people who would live a life of love of God in action - the life of double and two-fold union as he called it.
From the outset, Fr Medaille wanted to extend this vision beyond the professed members of the Congregation. His idea was that "there would be Associates living in various places in the surrounding towns and villages, who would carry out the same exercises as the Sisters and who would be attached to our Little Congregation"
In those early days of the Congregation, the number of Sisters was small. Fr Medaille recognised that
Spiritual riches could be shared
The mission could be expanded very rapidly
Then as now, there were many women who for one reason or another could not enter.
This could be done if every Sister had an Associate who would go with her in the work of caring for the sick etc. In turn the Associates themselves would train other people and in this way there would be more apostles. Thus the notion of Associates was born.
The Associates/Groups of women came together on a weekly or monthly basis. They would meet with a Sister and pray together. One of their early "spiritual" tasks for example, was to ensure that someone was always present before the Blessed Sacrament, especially replacing the Sisters when they were otherwise engaged.
From these examples you can see that Fr Medaille really wanted the Associates to have close affiliation with the spirituality and apostolate of the Congregation.
For all sorts of reasons - for example the French Revolution - the concept and practice of having Associates fell into abeyance. It was really with the return to our roots in the wake of Vatican II that the idea was once again brought to the fore.
The role of Associates is not something new - not simply an idea to help us out in times of decreasing numbers and creaking joints - rather Associates are part of our Founder's dream for us and it is for us now to translate that 350 year old dream into a present reality.
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