Celebrating the Seasons

"We can only comprehend the mysteries of the Eucharist if we are humble."

St. Madeleine Sophie Barat

For the feast of St. Joseph, Juliet Mousseau rscj shares Madeleine Sophie's conference to the novices in 1833.

"What comes to my mind this Ash Wednesday is not the soft and silky ashes made of the burnt palm branches of last year; rather the ‘Ashes’ made by the destructive forces of nature or by the wars and other forces by which we humans exclude others." ~Misao Shimamoto rscj (Japan Province)

"We see Mary enter the Temple, carrying in her arms the praiseworthy offering that she comes to present to the Lord. No one notices their arrival, and the High Priest himself sees in them nothing more than an ordinary infant and woman."

2015 marks the 150th year after the death of St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, foundress of the Society of the Sacred Heart. As we begin this year, we "listen" to her conference on New Year's Eve of 1855.

"Now, in this last week of Advent, are we not invited to the same adventure, to the same encounter: to welcome the Face of the Infant of Bethlehem in all human fragility?" Marie-France Carreel rscj (BFN)

"He will be born there in the faces of the refugee children and of all those who “don’t have a place” in the dwellings of this world. In them, the greatest simplicity and the greatest gift will be revealed to us, and that will be enough for us." Mariola López (ESP)

Let us share photos or paintings, images or symbols of waiting, of hope, of longing.....

Pilar de la Herran RSCJ of the Province of Spain shares this collage of doors -- photos which she took while in Joigny. Dolores Aleixandre RSCJ offers this insight on the “doors" that closed and opened for Sophie and for all of us today.

"Let’s look at the different periods of our life, when we have received more fullness... when a fuller gift of ourselves has particularly attracted us. Let’s look with humility and without discouragement whether we have been careful to develop the Spirit’s gifts to us."