Over the past 50 years, as new knowledge has vastly increased and our experience of life has changed, we find our sense of our place as human persons in the world changing, too. We may feel out of step, confused and overwhelmed at times, and less in control than we thought as we find that many of our previous assumptions are no longer true. Meanwhile, the pace of life has accelerated. We are exposed to more because of information technology, travel, and urban living, making it difficult for us to integrate all that is new with what life has taught us up to now.

Recently, I was asked to give a talk at a Spirit Alive Retreat for colleagues, friends of RSCJ and those interested in the Society of the Sacred Heart. The theme was our life and mission. As those who know the Society are aware, St. Madeleine Sophie founded the Society in the midst of the French Revolution, when the fabric of society and religion were in disarray. Madeleine Sophie felt called to bring the light of faith through education to a time in history when darkness seemed to prevail.

Each year almost 200,000 women and about 1,600 men in the United States are diagnosed with breast cancer. Breast cancer accounts for approximately 44,000 deaths each year. (National Cancer Institute, Harvard School of Public Health) The numbers in the United States and around the world are staggering. Almost as impressive, though, are the numbers of people who participate in the Susan G. Komen Foundation “Race for the Cure.” This year in St. Louis alone almost 50,000 people walked/ran the 5 kilometer course through the streets of downtown St. Louis and raised more than $1 million for breast cancer research and prevention initiatives.

I have discovered many people in the Province for whom Centering Prayer is, as it is for me, very important. Especially in this time of tragic divisions in our world, it is, I think, a particularly helpful way not only of focusing on our oneness with God, but also of being taken into the common center of humanity. There is another kind of breath prayer offered us by Buddhism—a practice called “Tonglen”—which can be very useful, particularly when we are feeling overwhelmed by the world’s crises and by our inability to respond to them in meaningful ways.

Dear President Bush: We, the Leadership of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of the United States Province, are deeply saddened that our country has made a preemptive strike against the people of Iraq. We grieve the senseless loss of life of Iraqi citizens and of our own young men and women in military service.

Dear Sisters and Friends, I imagine nearly all of you were gathered around televisions last evening, listening to President George Bush’s address to the nation. We were united across the Province in a shared horror of this all-but-inevitable war. For us at the Provincial House, the ultimatum and deadline were even more devastating: we had just had news that Anne Montgomery is again in Iraq with the Christian Peacekeepers Team and expects to stay at least two weeks, perhaps longer.

Dear Sisters and Friends, In the current issue of Update we included our description of a Mission Advancement Office and the mandate we had imagined would guide its launching and direct its initial work: the Mission Advancement Office fosters communication and collaboration among a wide range of people involved in the Province’s mission and promotes fund raising and other efforts that strengthen and extend the mission.

Dear Sisters, As we approach Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, we are reminded that this is a time to return to the source of our calling as RSCJ, as Christians, as women, as human persons inhabiting this fragile earth. Lent provides us with time to go deep into our hearts to clear a way for the energy at the source to course unimpeded through our veins. As we open the path and till the soil, divine energy will enliven our weary bones, heal our hurting hearts and give hope to our budding dreams–the promise of new life once again.

The weekend of February 2-3, 2003 is designated for the celebration of the World Day for Consecrated Life in dioceses throughout the United States. We offer our Vocation Prayer as a way of remembering our own part in the life of the Church and pray that others may join in this work with us.

At the invitation of the US Justice and Peace Committee, 156 RSCJ and Associates of the USA Province, alarmed at the prospect of war with Iraq, gathered on Monday, November 4th, in local (Area) groupings to pray together for world peace. We spent the first half hour in reflection and prayer, and we surfaced hopes, fears, and concerns about our global community. At the teleconference that followed, each group shared a summary of its reflections. An "Open Conversation" revealed a remarkable energy to respond in a variety of ways, including having a Society day of prayer for peace.

Have you ever thought of Advent as “work” time? The priest who gave the homily in the parish where I celebrated the first Sunday of Advent gave a simple but helpful homily about Advent waiting, which he called “work waiting.” He reminded us that this special time of the church year is full of anticipation, of hopeful waiting. It is a time of promise, but according to him it is a time of work-waiting, not idle waiting. The words jarred me as I usually think of Advent as a time of silence, of restful waiting, of emptying, the goal of which is less activity so as to be more ready and open for God’s coming.

Dear Sisters, The 150th anniversary of Philippine‘s death gives us a special opportunity to thank God for the life of this great woman, Madeleine Sophie’s friend and our sister, whose “heart of oak“ was a heart on fire, and to spend some time looking at what her life has to offer us by way of inspiration and example. An anniversary is a time to share stories, especially with the next generations, so that the heritage is not lost but is held in our common memory. Some of us may not know her well. Some may have been put off by her personal austerity that might seem to be the practice of another age. Others might be tempted to romanticize Philippine and project onto her attitudes which, as a woman of her time, she could not have had. But having said that, I think her life has much to say to us today.

Dear Sisters, In this her special anniversary year, what lessons has Philippine Duchesne to teach us? We recall that her character traits were apparent at an early age—deep faith, zealous outreach to people who are poor, love of family and culture, indomitable strength, unbending will, and idealism. With this particular personality she entered into life wholeheartedly, almost recklessly, undaunted by risks and setbacks.

Back in the mid-70s, one of our sisters, a Religious of the Sacred Heart from India, came to the United States for a visit. One of her stops along the way was Princeton, N.J., where she agreed to talk to the seventh grade class I was teaching. Her country was in the throes of a terrible famine at the time, and she explained to the students that when, a few years earlier, Pakistan had suffered the same fate, India had given them her excess grain so now India had nothing to fall back on.

At the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) annual five-day conference this summer, the opening and closing presentations were “bookends” for me, posing today’s challenge to all the faithful: to live out these troubled times with active hope. This struck a familiar chord: the mission plan of United States Province of the Society of the Sacred Heart is entitled “An Act of Hope.”