In 1962, when the twenty Sisters of Saint Joseph who were teaching at St. Augustine School in Hartford moved into their new convent during Christmas vacation, they had no crystal ball to reveal the various roles their beautiful home at 40 Clifford Street would play in the future of the Barry Square  neighborhood. At the time of the ceremonial blessing of Saint Augustine Convent, they could see only the days that lay immediately ahead, days filled with the promise of happy years to come.

But in an era when change became the norm, the last sisters to live there left in 1980, when the convent became an adult group home operated by the State of Connecticut.  And fifteen years later, when the state moved the residents out to smaller facilities, other Sisters of Saint Joseph came forward to undertake the task of transforming the building into a community center for the people of the neighborhood and city.

If the first sisters had been able to look ahead thirty-five years to the fall of 1997, they would have seen the lovely house they called home transformed into a welcoming community center known as Jubilee House.  If they had wondered about the reason for the name, we would have told them that we received the keys to the building in 1996—the jubilee of the founding of our religious community in the United States by the sisters who had come from France one hundred years earlier.  In another historical coincidence, Jubilee House welcomed its first students on October 15^th, the anniversary of the date our congregation was founded in France in 1650.

If the sisters who lived here in 1962 were to visit Jubilee House today, they would find it attentive to what is currently taking place in the city, and responsive to its evolving needs.  They would see that the mission continues—always the same, yet always open to change.