Each Monday from November 18, 2017 to November 18, 2018, we are urged to join in a Sacred Heart family communal prayer.
On June 4, 1836, St. Madeleine Sophie moved into a new motherhouse in Paris and consecrated it to Our Lady of Sorrows. This is perhaps the first public indication of her deep devotion to Mary under this title. The devotion arose in the 17th century with the Servite Order, and commemorated the “seven sorrows” of Mary: the prophecy of Simeon, the flight into Egypt, the loss of Jesus in the Temple, her encounter with Jesus on the way to Calvary, the death of Jesus, Mary receiving his body from the cross, and the burial of Jesus.
Madeleine Sophie's Prayer to Our Lady of Sorrows and a link to the history of Our Lady of Sorrows in the Society of the Sacred Heart.
The letter for the feast of the Sacred Heart this year includes a gift and a challenge as you receive the enclosed document, "Being Artisans of Hope in Our Blessed and Broken World."
Today we remember with prayer and gratitude the woman whose "yes" began our shared journey as RSCJ.
For this year's Easter Triduum, we offer a reflection guide inspired by some of the writings of Concha Camacho rscj, who served the Society of the Sacred Heart as Superior General in 1970-1982.
"... we have to re-live this process together, following the way that leads to an attitude of poverty, that is to say of hope; since poverty is hope. This path is lived in community, for in community we experience the poverty of searching together."
"A lance "opened the side of God" and it remained open.... It could not remain closed... To have a heart like his can mean a heart with right of entry for the stranger, for the weak, for the sick, for the politically persecuted, for those wounded by war, for the little ones, for the brothers and sisters who think differently. And a heart that is open, like that of God, also allows blood, water, tenderness, friendship and total gift, to flow out...."
For Holy Saturday, as we "remain in silence in poverty of heart before Him" (Constitutions #20), we pray with some reflections offered by Concha.
"We await a new experience in the spirit that we hope will result from a searching together.... It is this which will enable us to enter into a new vision, which will be that of the whole Society seeking in faith to live out the Easter mystery of death-resurrection in today's world."
