On Wednesday, June 15, 2022,
nine RSCJ, who are in Rome for probation
(a period of intensive preparation for final commitment),
received their name and devíse.
It is a tradition of the Society of the Sacred Heart, from the time of Sophie, that we are given a name and a devise chosen for us as a probation community, which marks our group and serves as a call and a reference point for each one as we begin our journey as finally professed RSCJ.
Today, Superior General Barbara Dawson RSCJ gave this probation group their name and devíse:
From you, we have received your name and devise
as the expression of your deepest experience.
Your name is:
VULNERABLE LOVE OF JESUS THAT UNIFIES
And the devise that accompanies this name:
GO AND ANNOUNCE TO THE WORLD
“I AM CREATING SOMETHING NEW”
Isaiah 43:19
She likewise shared some points that speak, not only to this probation group, but to all of us who are invited to constantly return to the Source and be renewed in the grace of our vocation.
VULNERABLE LOVE OF JESUS THAT UNIFIES
The experience of meeting yourselves in a new way in the home of Sophie, in the church of her childhood, in the vineyard on the hillside marked this probation community. Watching the vines be transformed from seemingly dead branches into the leaves of new life provided a space for you to unfold your own life story and place it, with its joys and sorrows into the blessing cup as you stood humbly before the Lord. You discovered your need of Jesus, the vinedresser, to carefully and tenderly prune you in ways you cannot do alone. It is only in the pruning that new life happens, that life becomes fruitful and capable of nourishing the other.
Most of all we saw how each one of you learned to be vulnerable to God’s love and the love of your sisters. Your relationship with Jesus who made himself vulnerable by becoming a human person invited you to live more unified within yourselves, among yourselves and with others, teaching you to love in the radical way of Jesus. During these months of probation you have recognized in a new way Jesus walking beside you, suffering and rejoicing with you and with all humanity. These experiences have allowed you to leave the spaces of darkness and enter into the light, to move from fragility to strength, from fear to freedom, to become a new creation.
GO AND ANNOUNCE TO THE WORLD “I AM CREATING SOMETHING NEW”
Light, strength and freedom. Security in God’s faithful love. This deep interior journey led you to touch the vulnerability of Jesus, a vulnerability that opened Jesus and you to see and respond in love to the needs of God’s people in the pierced Heart of Jesus. You have heard Jesus’ invitation to join Him in this mission. Your own experience of uncertainty during this last year, being called “the migrant probation” has heightened your sensitivity to the world crisis of migrant people. Living in Europe during a time of war has heightened your awareness of the abuse of power and the violence of war. Living together as a global, intercultural community has taught you to widen the space of your tent, to broaden your understanding and appreciation of the other, to be ready to create something new, to actively participate in creating the One Body.
While you have loved probation, each one of you is ready to return to live the mission among the people with whom you live and work, to discover and reveal the love you have experienced with young people, people who live on the edge of society, with students and the elderly, with whoever you are called to serve– in Congo, Korea, Indonesia, China and Peru and maybe someday beyond the borders of your countries and provinces.
We pray for this probation group and thank them for sharing with us the graces that they have received.
Watch a slideshow of the conference below:
Section |International News
Province |Chad|Democratic Republic of Congo/Chad|Indonesia|Korea/Chinese|Mother House|Peru
