This month we share with you a recent acquisition: an essay by the late Helen Condon, RSCJ, on the Special Chapter of 1967, to which she was an elected delegate. She isolated two interconnected themes that have heavily influenced the Society’s self-understanding in the last forty years.

Current research and reflection on the Society’s origins are deepening our understanding of where we have come from and who we are. Some observations on more recent developments may likewise suggest new insights. The present essay was spun from two strands arising out of the Chapter of 1967.

The first strand is the Society’s clear conviction that the call to work for justice is integral to and inseparable from our mission. An apostolic world view is, of course, not new; Madeleine Sophie and Philippine were seized by it long ago. One hundred sixty years of expansion and missionary effort have made the Society international. But our corporate social awareness has had a slower growth, as Margaret Williams explains in The Society of the Sacred Heart.

During the Second Vatican Council the Church gained a new understanding not only of its own identity but of its relationship to the world, the People of God in fellowship with all races and nations and cultures. Pope John XXIII himself symbolized this solidarity.

Vatican II affected the Society’s General Chapter of 1964, which made some significant changes in our religious life, notably regarding cloister. But a wider opening to the world came in 1967. During the two weeks before the Special Chapter of 1967 officially began, the capitulants assembled for preparatory work; there emerged a brief statement, a working outline, which succinctly described us: “The Society of the Sacred Heart, an apostolic institute, in the Church and in the world today,” (1967 Orientations, pp. 17-18). There had been no need to debate our identity as an apostolic congregation, even though for many generations we had thought of ourselves as leading the “mixed life.” In her address for the opening of the Chapter, Mother de Valon clearly situated the Society in the context of the Church and the world (pp. 6-9). A few weeks later she presented a study on the redistribution of personnel, urging the capitulants a more effective regrouping to meet the needs of persons and of dioceses, including new needs caused by increasing urbanization.

It is worth noting that among the eight or ten talks on relevant topics scheduled by the General Council for all the capitulants were three that dealt with social issues, one on social justice by Frank Norris, a layman long active in relief work who was an auditor at Vatican II; one on the means of social communication by Fr. Poisson, a Sulpician working in the Secretariat of the Pontifical Commission for Social Communications, and one on poverty and its implications by Fr. Philip Land, S. J., then at the Secretariat of the Pontifical Commission on Justice and Peace and currently on the staff of the Center of Concern in Washington, D.C.

During the early days of the 1967 Chapter the capitulants, following their working outline, studied the Society as “as apostolic institute in the Church and in the world to- day.” Meeting in small sections first by languages and then in international groups, the capitulants explored the needs, aspirations and values of the contemporary world, then the Society’s service in response. They struggled to come to grips with the meaning and implications of this rather existential definition. Later a small commission reworked the material. Gradually and painfully the final paper evolved, a statement that expressed our opening to the contemporary world, recognized the Society’s failures and called us to a more authentic, more realistic religious life. The statement (pp. 19-22) draws heavily on the documents of Vatican II, especially Gaudium et spes, which had been promulgated at the end of the Council, only two years before the Chapter.

The dignity of the human person, basic rights and values set forth in this first paper approved by the Chapter are key ideas more fully developed in the statement on Apostolic Life (pp~ 60-66). This is a remarkable paper whose significance seems only recently to have been recognized. There is no hedging: God is calling us to broaden our educational mission and to work for social justice.

A careful reading of the 1967 Orientations will reveal some other dimensions of the Chapter’s world-awareness. The paper on prayer has this provocative quotation from Pope Paul VI:

Contemplation and liturgy are the two indispensable and complementary expressions of the Church’s worship. If Christianity lacks a deep and loving prayer, how, amid the countless cries of men, can the prophetic voice proclaim its disturbing and saving message? (p. 40)

The paper on poverty calls for a “virtue...more real, more visible and tangible” asked of us by “the Church and the world” (p. 50) and attitudes of “public witness” and “very real service” that should determine the use and disposition of our grounds and buildings (pp. 53-54).

The idea of the service of the world through the Church appears in the papers on Prayer and the Vows (pp. 39, 55-56) and Formation (p. 73). The subheading of the paper on Community Life is “a fraternal community built in Christ at the service of the world” (p. 67). Formation is to include some “knowledge of contemporary society” including the communications media and the social sciences (pp. 79, 83, 87).

It seems clear, then, that the Society during the Chapter of 1967 heard and heeded the call to open itself to the world. The time was surely ripe, Vatican II only two years over, the aggiornamento working in many places as leaven or whirlwind. The desiderata submitted to the Chapter by the Society’s membership had included this thrust. The capitulants were familiar with the documents of Vatican II. Some had read challenging writers on new directions for religious life, beginning with Suenens’ The Nun in the World. Some brought experiences of social changes in their own countries. It is probably true to say that all wanted to open the Society to the world, however differently they may have understood the ways and means to be.

Three years later the General Chapter of 1970 opened the Society more fully to the reality of the world. It is beyond the scope of this essay to develop that generalization. Elaboration is hardly necessary, since the 1970 Chapter document more than anything else the five options, challenging our lives and our ministries. Its movement continues in the 1976 Chapter document, a call to integration on all levels, charism and mission, contemplation and communion, education and the work for justice.

Yet another kind of opening occurred during the 1967 Chapter. This was the opening to the diversity present in one another. The delegates were over twice again more numerous and also more heterogeneous nationally than at any previous chapter or general congregation in our history. They represented different views of the present and visions for the future, different expectations, both hopes and fears. The very effort to communicate was an opening up, often difficult. Some day the history of the Chapter of 1967 will be written, a story not only of evolving documents but of human interaction, profound searching and pain, suffering at a deeper level than intellectual disagreement. With the resignation of Mother de Valon and the hard days that followed there came a time of anguish for every capitulant, all the more because of each one’s love for the Society. In the Lord’s design, renewal had to be effected through the cross and through a kind of transfixion. St. Madeleine Sophie too, during her years of greatest suffering had spoken of “my poor heart, pierced for so long.”

This experience of opening up, being opened, of heart-suffering seemed to find expression in the symbol of the “pierced Heart” and the “open Heart,” words that appear significantly in the 1967 Orientations and subsequently. This is the second strand I wish to trace.

In her opening address Mother de Valon had called the Chapter to face the world: “I think that our Chapter must consider the world today through the Heart of Christ in order to bring it more faith, more hope, more charity” (p. 9). At the end of the Chapter Mother Bultó quoted these words with a noteworthy addition: “The orientations ad experimentum are the fruit of that “gaze fixed on today’s world, seen through the pierced Heart of Christ, so as to bring it more faith, more hope, more love.” And further on: “The pierced Heart of- Christ will be the inexhaustible source and stimulus for this” [a stronger, more authentic Cor Unum and apostolic dedication] (pp. 89-90).

The phrase “pierced Heart” appears in the paper on Prayer and the Vows (p. 39), in that on Apostolic Life (p. 66) and ;n the Preface (p. 14), without any overall decision to use these words.

Near the end of the Chapter all the capitulants went to the Villa Lante where the newly elected superior general repeated the consecration to Our Lady of Sorrows before the picture so dear to St. Madeleine Sophie, and she inserted these words: “Que la transfixion de son Cœur soit à jamais pour nous le signe de cet Amour du Fils de Dieu, venu donner la vie au monde, et le gage de cette vie nouvelle jaillie de son Cœur.” *

And during the entire Chapter, over the podium in the large chapter room, there hung a reproduction of Fra Angelico’s crucifixion with the soldier piercing the side of Jesus.

Mother Bultó’s letter at the close of the Chapter alludes briefly to the experience of suffering.

First, thank you very much, all and each, for all the prayer that upheld our Chapter – your Chapter – in its laborious work, in its difficulty, in the mysterious and very sorrowful paths through which God has led us – God, our God, who comes always, and who is coming to save us... He has willed each of us to be where we are now, consecrated to his Heart wounded out of love for men.

Of the eleven other circular letters written from 1968 to 1970, six contain the words “pierced Heart” or “open Heart,” one with the phrase “ce Cœur qui nous a livré l’Esprit.”

At the beginning of the 1970 Chapter Mother Bultó expressed the group’s desire: “To affirm again our determination to center our lives in CHRIST, and on his LOVE, that love for which the HEART pierced on the Cross is a permanently effective symbol” (1970 Chapter document, p. 2) This brief sentence expresses a theology of devotion to the Sacred Heart, for it points to the Society’s deepest understanding of the Heart symbol: Jesus Christ as the one who reveals and gives the Father’s love.

Six years later Sister Camacho in her opening conference for the Chapter of 1976 linked our reaching out to the world with the Heart of Christ and the heart of humanity:

The opening to the world, the effort to contemplate the Heart of Christ through the pierced heart of humanity, has made us more conscious of oppression, of injustice and of the suffering of our fellow men and women. At the same time, we feel more strongly than ever the weakness of our response to this challenge. That is why, after this acknowledgment, we want to affirm with fresh vigor the decision:

* to put the love of Christ at the center of our lives,
* to look anew at his Heart open upon the cross, a symbol which expresses today as always, what it means to love humanity to the end (1976 Chapter document, p. 54).

The actual document emanating from the 1976 Chapter brings together the same elements:

St. Madeleine Sophie, conscious of the call of her time, saw the body of Christ “outraged” by “impiety;” today we contemplate the pierced Heart of Christ in humanity torn by the injustices of the world, and our charism presses us to be one with others, suffering and searching with them for a more just, more fraternal world (p. 5).

Through over ten years of our history these two strands have thus been joined, the opening to the world through the pierced Heart of Christ. Here epitomized is the new intuition into the meaning of our charism and mission today. The call to bring the love Jesus Christ to others, a constant in the Society’s history and in the vocation of each one, is likewise a call to compassion and to work for justice. The 1976 Chapter has expressed this commitment: “to seek justice with the heart of an educator” (p. 17). And the Church has stated: “Action on behalf of justice...[is]...a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the Gospel.”

As it was long understood and practiced, reparation to the Sacred Heart meant making up for outrages against the Lord, particularly in the Blessed Sacrament, a kind of repayment for and repairing of wrong done, injustice. Now the stress is on undoing the live injustices of our time, wrought against our sisters and brothers. The older idea of being a victim is translated into a more direct service of others and solidarity with them, rooted in love. Justice becomes a new name for reparation.

There is a readiness in us for this new emphasis in our mission. We ourselves have been opened to the world over the past ten years, as a congregation and as individuals. And it is not a dramatic exaggeration to say that each one has suffered, perhaps been pierced at the heart level. Some have suffered because of upheavals in the Church and in religious life, because of too many changes in the Society or too few, because of a seeming loss of precious things, doubts about our survival or a lack of felt corporateness. Some have anguished about their personal call or their very faith. All of us have sorrowed when loved persons have left the Society.

From this whole experience must there not come a wider openness to others, a more sensitive and efficacious love? The Lord has led us along these mysterious paths not for ourselves alone but to make us more deeply responsive to his call to mission today and tomorrow. The Society of the Sacred Heart in every member “must reveal the human love of God” (1967 Orientations, p. 17) in answer to the pressing human needs of our time.

The Church prays for this kind of response in the opening prayer for the feast of the Sacred Heart:

Father,
We honor the Heart of your Son
broken by man’s cruelty
yet symbol of love’s triumph,
pledge of all that man is called to be.
Teach us to see Christ in the lives we touch,
to offer him living worship
by love-filled service to our brothers and sisters.