Reflection: May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be loved everywhere

As we approach the month in which we celebrate the memory of our founder, we join the whole Church in also celebrating the 98th World Mission Sunday. In his address for this occasion, Pope Francis drew inspiration from the Gospel parable of the wedding banquet (cf. Mt 22:1-14) and presented us with the theme: ‘Go and invite everyone to the banquet’. In this way, we can think of our own missionary identity from the motto left to us by our founder, expressed in number 5 of our Constitutions: ‘May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be loved everywhere’!

When our congregation was founded, mission was seen primarily as the conversion of non-Christians and the expansion of the Church. A missionary congregation had to be willing to travel to distant places, reach unevangelised peoples and, moreover, establish an autonomous ecclesial community. This is why Fr. Jules Chevalier received with great enthusiasm Pope Leo XIII’s proposal that his small congregation take on a mission in a group of islands in Oceania, in Melanesia and Micronesia.

In 1882, the first Missionaries of the Sacred Heart arrived in Papua New Guinea. The challenges they faced were numerous, but the mission was established and produced many fruits: priests, men and women religious, bishops and even a cardinal. The participation of the laity was also significant, with Peter To Rot, the first autochthonous Blessed, standing out. He was a lay MSC who was martyred at the end of the Second World War by Japanese troops who dominated the region and beatified in 1995 by St John Paul II.

Missions such as Papua New Guinea and others across the continents show the Church and the world our missionary charism, but they are no longer the only way to live this dimension of our spirituality. With the advent of the Second Vatican Council, the mission concept was broadened to include interreligious dialogue, the promotion of social justice, the defence of human rights and care for our common home. The ‘everywhere’ of our congregation’s motto includes these realities and makes us realise how much the missionary intuition of Fr. Jules Chevalier is present and current in the Church’s journey.

We can call these different missionary fronts new ministries, and we find them in several of our groups. Some of our provinces have a strong presence in the field of education, living up to the maxim: educating new hearts for a new world; others bear witness to our charism in the field of communication and the digital world, recognised as the sixth continent to be evangelised. In general, we can also highlight the commitment of the entire Chevalier Family to promoting care for Integral Ecology, formerly known as JUPIC. Each month, the prayer intentions and practical suggestions proposed every First Friday help us to make our Spirituality of the Heart incarnate.

At the centre of all these missionary realities, whether in the mission ad gentes or in the new ministries, must always be the human person, as Pope Francis tells us in the speech quoted above: ‘Mission is a tireless journey towards all humanity to invite it to encounter and communion with God’. May the missionary ardour that inflamed the heart of our founder and the intercession of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart help us ever more to live what Fr Julio Chevalier left as his legacy: to make the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus known and loved everywhere! Eternally!

Elinaldo Assunção, MSC