One year can fly by or creep. For Kim King, RSCJ, the anniversary of her final vows is an opportunity to reflect on her vocation and her life as a Religious of the Sacred Heart.

November 18 is celebrated as the Feast of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne. In 1818, with four others, Philippine joyfully and courageously travelled to the United States to found the first American house of the Society of the Sacred Heart, a log cabin at St. Charles, near St. Louis, Missouri.

Today, November 11, we celebrate the anniversary of the birth of Janet Erskine Stuart, one of our founding mothers, born this day in 1857. We thank the campus minister at Villa Duchesne / Oak Hill School for the attached prayer service.

Mater Admirabilis was painted in 1844 by Pauline Perdrau, who at that time was a Sacred Heart postulant. Her feast is celebrated on the 20th October, a special day for Religious of the Sacred Heart, their co-workers and friends throughout the world.

Maureen Glavin, RSCJ offered this reflection at a Reconciliation Service in St. Charles on March 30. Her encouragement on finding the path to holiness is worth a few minutes during this Holy Week.

I have been asked to launch this celebration of harmony and hope. This is a real challenge for me, since I – as I suspect many of you – have found it harder and harder to ‘sing the Lord’s song in this alien land.’ Too often, of late, I have been ready ‘to hang up my harp.’

From July 7 to 11, 2010, approximately 250 RSCJ, Associates, Network colleagues, and collaborators and friends of the Society of the Sacred Heart met at Stone Ridge for a conference entitled Sacred Heart Spirituality in a Globalized World. 

"We all know that we are in the midst of a social and cultural upheaval; a new civilization is being created

We in the US Province affirm our fundamental identity as women summoned by God’s love revealed in Jesus. With a common refrain across the province we acknowledge that our communion with the Triune God, who is Holy Mystery and Sacred Presence in our universe, is the ground of our being. Prayer and intimacy with God in the Pierced Heart of Jesus is the wellspring of all that we are and do, and everything in our lives flows from it. Fed by prolonged times of contemplative silence and solitude, we offer our lives daily, generously, in cooperation with the transforming power of the Spirit, to further God’s work of healing and redemption. The mystery of Incarnation—the conviction that God has taken flesh among us—alerts us to know God in humanness: our own and that of others. We know ourselves as members of the body of Christ where Eucharist is lived daily both in celebration and in acts of solidarity with all. The call to be “wholly contemplative /wholly apostolic” resonates deeply within our hearts and challenges us to be women who engage the world around us with the intuitions and convictions that come from deep within the heart of Christ, a heart that, throughout our lives, we come to know and love above all else.

What is it that fills our hearts?
What is it that we really want?
Are we so pre-occupied with what we have to accomplish, with doing things right, with measuring up, with meeting expectations that we can not attend to the emptiness of our hearts?