2008 General Chapter Priorities

 

Gathered around the table of life, where each one offers her bread as nourishment for all, we recognise dialogue as the way to a more human world, a life with Spirit.

We are faithful to the spirit of Sophie, a woman of relationships and dialogue. From her we learn the value of nurturing, intimacy, patience and love as attitudes of the heart which draw us into communion. With a contemplative heart inhabited by the Spirit, we listen to the world as it shares its hopes and suffering. Here we find the Heart of Jesus incarnate in history, which calls us to new relationships with others and with all creation as one body.

General Chapter 2008

Photo by Lolin Menendez rscj

Contemplation

As women rooted in the Heart of Christ, we reaffirm our heritage of contemplation that springs from “a compelling love written in our hearts by the Spirit.”

We are called to stop, to choose silence and to open and let ourselves be opened to our inner depths where the Spirit of God allows us to feel, see and understand life and reality with God’s Heart… Then in the secret place of the heart, the Spirit gradually transforms our feelings and responses, and draws us into an intimate relationship with God.

The Spirit attunes us to the heartbeat of our people to discover the presence and love of God in everyday life. When we contemplate the Heart of Christ we enter into the movement of the Spirit who develops in us a listening heart, bringing us closer to God’s reality, with the desire to promote justice, peace and the care of creation.

General Chapter 2008

Photo by Marisol Chirosa rscj

Community

As RSCJ we are called to follow Jesus in community, in the manner of Sophie. Deeply rooted in our relationship with Jesus, we reaffirm that life in community is a fundamental expression of our spirituality.

Community is a place where we are called to continual personal and communal conversion…

We search for ways to be sisters, to grow in accepting our vulnerabilities and giftedness and to assist one another to take life giving risks. Community is a basic way of organising ourselves, a space where we take decisions together for our lives and mission. Community on all levels is both mission and for mission. 

We desire communities that are open to all, sharing life and faith, dreams and struggles, our goods and resources… Our experience of the joy in living and celebrating together as sisters creates energy within us for building community among ourselves and others wherever we are.

General Chapter 2008

JPIC in Solidarity with Those Who are Most Vulnerable

From our contemplation of the Pierced Heart of Jesus in the heart of wounded humanity flows the desire to commit ourselves with greater passion and compassion to justice, peace, and the integrity of creation.

Journeying with peoples of different contexts, races, and cultures, and listening profoundly to the joys and suffering of humanity have allowed us to be touched by the poverty, inequality, exclusion, violence, and environmental destruction that are present in today’s world. We recognise with greater clarity the interconnectedness of global realities and the impact that these have on our local situations. We are more aware of the marginalising effects of globalisation and of cultures of dominance and exclusion.

We suffer the pain of our peoples. With them and from this depth, we enter into the Open Heart of Christ.

General Chapter 2008

Our Priority for Young People

We hear a strong invitation to walk with young people, sharing our thirst and aspirations in a common effort to build a world where the desires of God will become a reality.

From the depth of our contemplation we are called to see the world through the pierced Heart of Jesus and there we encounter both the strength and the fragility of life. This impels us to renew our commitment to young people with a new passion.

We want to continue to walk with young people. Many have a passion for justice and a concern for the future of the planet. Others are marginalised, lost and have no sense of any future for their world or themselves. Some have a desire to give their lives generously in the service of others. We need to be present with them all in their search for God, meaning and the value of life.

We feel that our spirituality has something important to say to the world today and we want to share this in creative and life-giving ways, conscious that many thirst for an experience of God’s love. As Religious of the Sacred Heart we want to respond with the heart of an educator…

General Chapter 2008