Missionaries of the Sacred Heart at the General Conference in Busan (South Korea, 2019)

We are Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.  We are a missionary congregation in the Catholic Church, founded in 1854 by the Servant of God, Fr. Jules Chevalier (1824-1907) in Issoudun, in the Diocese of Bourges, France. 

Jules Chevalier had a vision of a new world emerging from the heart of Christ.  “One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water” [John 19:34].  Contemplating the Heart of Christ pierced through on Calvary, Chevalier could see the depths of God’s desire to make his love known to humanity.  Such is his love for us that he would give his entire life to us.  Chevalier was moved by this reality, seeing it as the answer to the ills of his time, and this is still the driving force at work in us today.  We want to make known the generosity of God’s love and care for all people, and to evoke a response in every human heart.  As a result, we have come to especially value, love, concern, compassion, understanding, respect and acceptance of each individual person. We are reminded of the command we have been given;

“I give you a new commandment, love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this love you have for one another, you will all know that you are my disciples”. [John 13:34 ff]

Our motto, given to us by our founder, sums up our mission: “May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be loved everywhere. Forever!”   

Chevalier’s desire for all people to come to know and love the Heart of Jesus led not only to the foundation of our “little work of God”, as he called the M.S.C., but also the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, and Confraternities of lay people and diocesan clergy.  Our work today is a work of this Chevalier Family.  We collaborate together with our sister congregations and many Laity of the Chevalier family living out our charism and dedicated to our common spirituality and mission. 

MSC CHARISM

We understand that a charism is a gift received from God, through a person, for the good of the Church and all people; “There are many different gifts, but it is always the same Spirit” [1 Corinthians 12]. We are inspired by the same gift our Founder received. 

In our communion as brothers, we live our faith in the compassionate love of the Lord; at the same time, we are sent into the world to proclaim the Good News of the kindness and tenderness of God our Saviour and to bear witness to it in the whole of our lives; our ways of thinking, our attitudes and our behaviour. 

With our Founder, we contemplate Jesus Christ, united to his Father with bonds of love and trust. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus gave thanks to his Father for having revealed himself to little ones; for he was his Servant, deeply involved with the poor and with sinners. 

God, who in Jesus loves every person with a human heart, wants to manifest this personal love to each of his children.  Our experience of this love manifested in the heart of Christ, calls us to share the life of our brothers and sisters, and to make known to them the love that God has for them.  We carry out this mission not as isolated individuals, but by the witness which we give as MSC religious living community; what our constitutions refer to as; “Brotherhood in Mission”.

SPIRITUALITY OF THE HEART

The key to a Spirituality of the Heart is the love of God in a human heart, shown in the heart of Jesus. This is what is continually revealed to us in all that Jesus said and did.

 Jules Chevalier, found his inspiration in his belief in this love, his Devotion to the Sacred Heart. At the start of the 20th century, he envisioned a new heart for a new world, this new heart for us all. In our 21st-century, we name this vision and way of life as the Spirituality of the heart.  

“ We have to go down to the depths of our own souls in a realisation of our profound personal needs of life, of love and of meaning.  We must find, through faith and reflection, the answer to our own questioning in the Heart of Christ, i.e. in the depths of his personality, where man’s yearning and God’s graciousness meet in redemptive incarnation. Then, fashioned by these forces, our own heart will be an understanding heart, open to, feeling for, and giving to our brothers and sisters in Christ. We will not be discouraged in the face of difficulties. We follow Christ who ‘loved with a human heart’ as Vatican II reminds us; he shared our humanness that we might know that over us all is the everlasting love of the Father. In God’s good time the omnipotent love of God will have its way. It is this love in which we have learned to believe.”, [Fr. E.J. Cuskelly, M.S.C., Superior General, 1968-1981]. 

The Spirituality of the Heart is not merely a devotion which focuses on the performance of external practices. It is a way of being that transforms us.  Contemplation is a necessary attitude for this way of being. We contemplate the sentiments of the “One pierced on Calvary” and let ourselves be loved by Him. In the Spirituality of the Heart, our gazing on the pierced One and coming with contemplative silence are very important.

It is this love, the heart of love which is what inspires us for our lives and for our mission, our spirituality which we want to share. This spirituality, this inspired way of life and outreach to others in compassionate mission, grows in our hearts. 

The first movement of the heart is our being invited to go deeply into ourselves, to encounter there the gracious God who created us, lives in us, loves us, created our world and sustains it. 

This means a second movement of the heart as we discover this is God’s love for us, a loving intimacy, continually revealing God alive within us. 

A third movement is our being transformed, own hearts changed, always vulnerable. We experience a continual conversion of heart. 

The fourth movement is our realisation that this is not just an inward -looking love, only for ourselves, but it invites us to share the compassionate gaze of Jesus towards all, all our sisters and brothers, so that they will share in this same experience. This is mission.

 Spirituality of the Heart is a way of life in the spirit, our sharing in Jesus saying his loving ‘yes’ to the father and his being loved.

MSC MISSION

Our religious profession consecrates us to Christ and his mission. Like him, we are sent into the world to proclaim the Good News that God is a Father who shows his concern for the poor and suffering, and who gives meaning to life by giving us his love.

We will be attentive, as our Founder was, to those who suffer and are in need. We will seek to identify the causes of their suffering, and to discern what our response will be by following the light of the Gospel and by listening to the world and to the Church.

In the poor and the little ones, in all the victims of injustice and violence, we will discover the face of Christ. He asks us to bring his love into their lives. In answer to his call, we will show our compassion towards them by working courageously to guarantee their human rights and to change the hearts of their oppressors.

How can God’s love survive in a man who has enough of this world’s goods yet closes his heart to his brother when he sees him in need? Let us love in deed and not merely talk about it.  [1 John 3:17]

Would that we fully understood the sublimity of the ministry given us! May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be everywhere loved. Our Lord Jesus Christ has opened his Heart to the world in order to bring an effective remedy to modern societies that are rushing into an abyss. And we are those whom he has sent to apply this remedy to the world. [Jules Chevalier, 1900]

Our mission finds expression in specific commitments carried out by MSC members and communities. These commitments are chosen and continually evaluated in the light of our spirit, the needs and mission of the Church and our own missionary tradition.  We are sent into the world to establish new churches and to be at their service; to help churches in need and bring those who are far from the Lord into the community of believers.

In a constant effort to share in the sentiments of the Heart of Christ, we will be attentive to all human needs and aspirations, such as, the need to be respected as persons, the need for love and peace, for freedom, justice and truth, and the search for meaning in life. We will become all things to all people, by respecting different cultures, and by being ready to undertake whatever apostolic services people may need.