A Pilgrimage of HopeThe path to communion with GodCircular of the Superior General

Chapter I

Preparing for the pilgrimage

I have written this circular for us, Brothers of the Institute, and also for the people with whom we share our life and our mission. Through it I want to underscore the need and the urgency for us to return to the essence of our lives, faithful to the charism we have received from Father André Coindre, a charism incarnated and handed down to us by Venerable Brother Polycarp and our predecessors.

It is not easy to say something meaningful and useful for people of such a wide range of [cultures and] mentalities. I would be quite content for this circular to be of at least some encouragement in helping us live more deeply the spirit of the General Chapter of 2006, and spur us on to undertake our pilgrimage of hope with a sincere desire for conversion and with a desire to experience the Father’s great love in an intimate encounter with Jesus-Brother (cf. General Chapter of 2006, Ordinance).

In addition to my trust in God and the support of my Brothers another reality encouraged me to accept the role of service as Superior General of the Institute. I would not have to concern myself with drawing up a new program. It has always been quite clear to me that our own religious life is founded on the Word of God and on the charism of André Coindre as we find them expressed in our Rule of Life and the legacy of our predecessors. Our latest General Chapter indicated to us the salient points of this program. My task is simply to be attentive to them, to listen to and discover the voice of the Spirit.

Last April 8, the Sunday of the Resurrection of the Lord, we [the members of the general council] published the booklet of the account of the proceedings of the Chapter of 2006 and its decisions. In the introduction, we wrote that the chapter members “Urged on by Hope,” desired to launch out into “deep waters,” that is to say to live religious life today in a radical way. As a means of doing this, they proposed that the Institute undertake “a pilgrimage of hope on the path of communion.” We were also asserting that in the words “pilgrimage,” “hope,” “path”, and “communion,” could be found the key “for our living religious life authentically and for being signs of hope in our present world” (A Pilgrimage of Hope, p. 3). I think it is important that I pause here and explain each one of those words.

Brothers, I invite you to undertake our pilgrimage with eyes and hearts turned towards the Heart of God who is calling us to live out our communion with Him with ever-greater intimacy. Brothers and collaborators, it is through such intimacy that we will advance in our pilgrimage of hope on the path to fraternal communion and in our communion in charism and mission.

A Pilgrimage, a path“I was glad when I heard it said,

‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’ ”(Ps 122:1)

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!My soul longs, indeed it faints, for the courts of the Lord;

my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.Even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest,

where she may lay her young, at your altars,

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o Lord of hosts, my king and my God.”(Ps 84:2-4)

Journeying is characteristic of the human person. Before becoming sedentary, humans were nomadic. They moved from place to place in order to find food and meet their other various needs. Today this characteristic manifests itself in a thirst for travel, a desire to discover new worlds, almost as if today’s human beings were in a constant search for something missing in their lives. But the journey sometimes even becomes a flight, a means to avoid having to be with self or with others.

To set off on a journey is also a Christian attitude. Christian life has from earliest times been seen as a pilgrimage: we come from God and we are returning to God. The people of Israel wandered for forty years in the desert. Jesus walked upon the paths of this world as we do. The Virgin Mary, a pilgrim in faith and in hope, also set off to follow a path, as did so many saints, such as James the Greater, Bartholomew, Francis of Assisi, Ignatius of Loyola… not forgetting a along line of missionaries, and so many of our own Brothers.

The religious sets off on the path towards the holy places of God and of his saints. Even from the first century of Christianity the disciples of Jesus made their way towards places like Jerusalem, Rome, St. James of Compostela, Le Puy, Fourvière… I was born in a little village in Navarre, Spain, near the road to St. James of Compostela. Thousands of pilgrims traveled that road in the Middle-Ages. But all of that seemed to belong to a bygone era, when, in the second part of the 20th Century, the pilgrimage to St. James of Compostela was reborn. Today, if you set out at any part of the year, on any day, and at any hour, it is almost impossible not to come across at least some pilgrims traveling to the shrine.

What possible motives can these people have for undertaking such a pilgrimage, on foot, knap-sack on their backs, alone or in groups? There are those who do so to feel themselves free in a world in which there are so many slaves, others do so for the sake of physical exercise to maintain or improve their physical health, others are attracted by the lure of a contact with nature, others are motivated by a love of history or art, others do so as a reaction to the frenetic rhythm of today’s world, others as a gratuitous response to the idol of efficiency, for others it is their personal protest against the comforts of modern society, others do so to experience for themselves their insecurity in the face of thirst and exhaustion, others to plum the depths of their beings or to experience a need for others, or to free themselves from wallowing in the egotism of self, or to leave themselves open to significant encounters with others and to find again the simple joys of being, and finally, still others undertake the pilgrimage to live out a deep experience of God who comes to meet them on the road.

What motives urge me on to undertake the pilgrimage in my religious life as I respond to the call of the Lord? Brothers, I open up my own log book before you. The image of a pilgrim invites me to be a more authentic religious and to make efforts to seek in God the meaning of my religious life. God, Mother-Father, has given me life in the person of Jesus, his Son and my brother. Jesus became my companion on the journey; he gives me his Spirit to love Him and to love my Brothers, and he awaits at the end of the road to welcome me into his house which will become my home. As a religious, I do not minister in the world with exclusively humanitarian goals; I am a consecrated person so as to live out the joyful experience of the “God-alone-is-sufficient-for-me.”

I live out the deep experience of God in an intimate encounter with Jesus-Brother, identifying myself with him in his way of being and living. This leads me to appreciate everything that is good in the world and in today’s culture: concern for nature, interest in learning, scientific and technological advancements, appropriate respect for the human body, awareness of the sufferings of others, solidarity, the dignity of women, etc. But equally these same notions lead me to be critical, to reject the false idols of individualism, materialism, exaggerated

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consumerism, comfort-seeking, the quest for efficiency at any cost, superficiality, and hedonism, etc.

In a world in which people are valued according to their purchasing power and by the things they possess, living for God leads me to undertake the pilgrimage with less and lighter equipment, with what is necessary, stripping myself of things and of myself, letting-go of all attachments, constantly searching, always on the alert, far away from mediocrity and self-sufficiency.

As a pilgrim, I strive to let myself be led by the Holy Spirit, and to live in a state of ongoing conversion to the God of Love. This attitude helps me to pray “in spirit and in truth.” This relationship strengthens me and gives shape and form to my life of communion with others, and my commitment for the sake of the Kingdom.

Hope“For God alone my soul waits in silence;

from him comes my salvation.God alone is my rock an my salvation, my fortress;

I shall never be shaken.”(Ps 62:2-3)

“The Lord loves us too much, my dear brother, not to draw us out of the abyss

after having allowed us to see the bottom of it.Let us always live in hope.

Abraham became the father of believersfor having hoped against all hope.”

(ANDRÉ COINDRE, Writings and Documents, 1, Letters 1821-1826, Letter VIII, p. 87)

On June 4, 2005, the feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Brother Bernard Couvillion published the circular entitled “A Patrimony of Hope.” Brothers, I do recommend that you re-read it to refresh your memories. At the risk of repeating some of the ideas that he developed in that circular, I am going to set before you a few considerations on the theme of hope.

God hopes in us

God hopes in us long before we hoped in him. God hopes in us because he loves us. God hopes in us when he created the world; God hopes in us when he created us in his image and likeness. And God manifests hope for mankind, when even after sin, God gives us his only Son, becomes a human being, a son who, “although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Ph 2:6). God hopes in us when Jesus submits to death, suffering and dying with Him on the Cross. And God hopes in us when he raised Jesus as a guarantor of our own resurrection.

God is our hope

God becomes hope for us in Jesus Christ through the action of the Spirit. He is the “God of hope (cf. Rm 15:13), the ‘Father of glory’ who, in his Son, reveals to man ‘His immense glory’ (cf. Ep 1:18) and opens up His kingdom to him (cf. Mk 1:15; Lk 17:21) 1.

1 BORILE, Eros et y otros. Diccionario de pastoral vocational. Salamanca: Ed. Sígueme, 2005, p. 437.

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In Jesus Christ the Father reveals to us his fatherliness. God reveals to us that we are sons, that we are called to intimacy with him and that our life is a path that leads to resurrection. Christ is well and truly our hope, for in him all the promises have already been fulfilled (cf. Ac 2:25-35; Lk 4:21; Rm 8:11; Col 1:18; Heb 10:23).

The text of the first letter of St. Peter says it so much better than any commentary that I might try to make.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for salvation to be revealed in the last time. (1 P 1:3-5)

We hope in God

Hope is an essential element of the human person, dwelling at its very core. Hope is a constant journey between the what-is and the what-will-be; it is a plan which evolves day after day. And in the midst of the tension in anticipation of the what-is-to-come, believers discern a thirst for God. I was saying earlier on that it is God who is first to hope in us. And that is why the complete truth about hope might be expressed as: hope is God’s attraction to us and our attraction to God.

Since Christian hope is a theological virtue, it is not of our making; it is the work of the Holy Spirit. At its source is our participation in the Trinitarian life, since it is through the gift of the Holy Spirit that in Christ we are made Sons of the Father and heirs of God (cf. Rm 8:16-17). Hope emanates from the certainty of the love of God, and consequently, hope leads to a filial abandonment into the hands of the Father. Hope is the trusting assurance of having received the inheritance of being sons of God, in fulfillment of God’s promise to us. For the Christian, the Kingdom has already begun even if it has not yet come to its fullness. Hope is the today of the sons-of-God, pilgrims making their way on the road in the knowledge that they have not yet arrived at their destination.

Since Christ is our hope, hope will remain vibrant in us if we remain rooted in Him (cf. Col 2:6; 1 Co 3:10-11). As with the disciples at Emmaus, our encounter with the Resurrected One will rekindle our hope. Like Jesus, we will be able to hope even in the dark night of our own Gethsemanies. Like Jesus, we will remain confident in the Father, despite his silence, even when there seems to be no reason for hope, and no guarantees of success. Hope is a boldness of faith which can enable us to hope, to hope as Abraham hoped, against all hope (cf. Rm 4:18-19). Hope is the certainty that we will obtain what we do not yet possess.

Called to be hope, called to build up hope

Every day the media inform us of natural disasters, injustices, poverty, hunger, illness, war and death. We can not close ourselves off in an ivory tower to dream of a perfect world to come, shielding our eyes from looking upon reality. We must not allow ourselves to wallow in an attitude of defeatism or pessimism either. The Christian is a realist with hope. The Christian vocation is a call to hope (cf. Ep 4:4). Our optimism has its basis in faith in a Creator-God – “and God saw that it was good” (Gn 1:4) – and in a Liberator-God. It is up to us to know how to read the signs of hope. Let us seek the signs of life, and not be overwhelmed by the signs of death. Like the prophets let us condemn the signs of death and

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let us proclaim the signs of life which are to be found throughout human history and the history of the Church. Let us believe in the goodness of creation and in the threads of our human history with which God weaves the tapestry of the History of salvation. Let us hope always that God who resurrected Jesus will in turn resurrect this humanity of ours.

Are we to limit ourselves to living hope for our own sakes? Certainly not, for ours is a missionary hope, and it urges us on to commit ourselves in the here-and-now as we contribute to the building up of the Kingdom. Hope is incompatible with a Christian life that is disincarnate, cut off and aloof from historical responsibilities. Vatican II declared that “They stray from the truth those who knowing that we have no permanent city here below, but that rather we journey toward the city to come, and yet think to neglect their human responsibilities” (Gaudium et Spes 3). Elsewhere in the same document we read, “[The Church] further teaches that a hope related to the end of time does not diminish the importance of intervening duties but rather underpins their acquittal with fresh incentives” (GS 21).

There is no hope without love. We cannot separate love of God from love of neighbor, and that is why we are called to be hope for others, for children and young people, and among these we are called to be hope for those who are in the greatest need. We will be so in the measure in which we make ours the constant what was the constant concern of Father Coindre, namely, “To rescue young people from ignorance, to prepare them for life, and to give them a knowledge and love of religion.” (Rule of Life, Preamble, p. 15).

Today many people wonder whether religious life will exist in the future. The decrease in the number of Brothers may lead us to wonder about our own future. What’s to be done? We must always remember that fear, despair and anguish do not take root in the person who lives by hope. Nor is that person a prey to passivity, for he knows that Salvation is the fruit of the gift of God and the efforts of man. Let us always live in faithfulness to our vocation; let us work as best we can to encourage vocations and sound formation. Let us live in hope and leave the future in God’s hands.

Communion

These days, populations tend to gravitate to the larger cities. People are housed closer to one another but live much more isolated lives. Loneliness and individualism are characteristic of modern man. But, contrastingly, there is also a patent tendency to strengthen bonds of friendship among people and groups, and to intensify communications and collaboration, exemplified by countless acts of solidarity, by the many national and international associations, and by the many NGOs working for the relief of the most disadvantaged peoples on the planet. Even in the domain of higher thought, the emphasis is on the social dimension of the human person, who can only be truly fulfilled when living among others.

Without wanting to generalize, it would seem that the religious of the past was prone to living out his relationship with God as an individual relationship in which the emphasis was on earning merits for his own salvation. Today the perspective has changed, and the church’s understanding is that faith is also expressed in the living out of communion and service. All of this is in keeping with cultural and sociological changes and with a reading of the Gospel in terms of communion.

There are even some current theological views which present God to us as a “Family-God,” further underscoring the Trinitarian dimension of the divinity. In giving himself totally, the Father engenders or gives rise to the Son, and from their reciprocal gift there arises the Spirit. God, who is essentially gift and communion, creates man in his image and likeness

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(cf. Gn 1:27). Since we are the image and the likeness of God-Communion, we also are called to communion. Such also is the deepest reality of the Church. Love is the very life of God (cf. 1 Jn 4: 8.16; R 1) and love is the essence of the Church and the sign of life: “If I have not love, I am nothing” (1Co 13:2).

The Church is the Sacrament of the Kingdom, which is not of this world (cf. Jn 18:36). The Gospel presents the Kingdom to us a banquet, as a place of encounter and communion for those who live by the Gospel values of Jesus (cf. Mt 22:2).

Over the past fifty years, the Church has emphasized communion as a constituent element of life both Christian and social. This teaching is clearly expressed in the documents of the second Vatican Council. Even in the first paragraphs of the constitution, Lumen Gentium, we read that the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, is “sacrament, that is to say, both sign and means of intimate union with God, and of the unity of the entire human race” (LG 1). More recently the Church has presented itself as a “house and school of communion” (Starting Afresh from Christ 25). The Church is Sacrament of the Kingdom as it lives out and builds up communion.

If the Church has an obligation to live communion, all the more so do religious, and especially religious Brothers, and we Brothers of the Sacred Heart. On October 29, 2005, in a conference to the men and women religious of Colombia, on the identity of the Religious Brother, I pointed out that our Rule of Life, whose post-conciliar version was approved in 1984, follows an outline similar to that of the apostolic exhortation “Vita Consecrata,” published on March 25, 1996. The latter text is made up of three sections: the confessio Trinitatis, the signum fraternitatis and the servitium caritatis. Significantly, our Rule of Life begins by highlighting unity, the signum fraternitatis. This is followed by the confessio Trinitatis (consecration), and finally the servitium caritatis (mission)

We are called and gathered to live communion. This is a challenge to all Brothers to live in communion. But common life, living under the same roof, with a common timetable and common activities is not sufficient. To live in communion implies cultivating dialogue, good relations, mutual understanding, true friendships, in a word, authentic brotherly love, a love which goes as far as selflessness and fraternal correction.

I have often said that the only vocation in this life is the vocation to communion. Communion encompasses both love of God and love of neighbor; for this is “the law and the prophets”. Communion is also our ultimate vocation, and the one we shall live out in its fullness when the Father welcomes us into his eternal presence.

Fraternal communion is not turned in on itself. We are in community for the sake of others. Fraternal communion is the expression of communion with God, and its “raison d’être” is that of forming communion. A Colombian bishop once told me: “What I admire about the Brothers is that they form not only a true community, but that they create community around themselves.”

We can not truly love and truly live in community unless there is deep conversion to the God of love who urges us on to be true sons and true Brothers of all and for all. In order to enter into the Kingdom, it is necessary to go through the narrow door of the gift of self, even to giving up one’s own life in love.

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Chapter II

A pilgrimage of Hope on the Path of Communion

Communion with God

The expression “a pilgrimage of hope on the road to communion” summarizes the fundamental decision of our General Chapter of 2006. The core text of the ordinance reads as follows:

• In response to the urgent questions of the Risen Lord (cf. Jn 21:15ff), we Brothers of the Sacred Heart commit ourselves to take more radical steps along the road of communion for which we have been gathered together. (cf. R 22)

• We reaffirm our hope in this way: that by the grace of communion received at baptism we and our partners in mission, in universal brotherhood, might become signs of hope for our wounded world and for its children.

• We commit ourselves to undertake, between now and the year 2012, a pilgrimage of hope along the road of communion: descending into the interior life, nourishing our interpersonal relationships, and lighting the fire in the sanctuary of mission.

The ordinance begins, as follows: “In response to the urgent questions of the Risen Lord.” This means that we will not be undertaking the pilgrimage uniquely on our own initiative or through a sense of volunteerism, but because the resurrected Jesus journeys with us on the road of life, just as he did with the disciples of Emmaus (cf. Lk 24:13-35).

The second paragraph underscores how we Brothers and our lay partners in ministry, “in universal brotherhood,” “by the grace of communion received at Baptism,” are called to be signs of hope for our world.

The third paragraph illustrates that the road of communion has three dimensions: “the interior life,” “interpersonal relationships,” and the “mission.” We are therefore called to live communion in each of its three dimensions simultaneously. These dimensions are explained as follows:

It is a communion with the Risen Christ who attracts us intensely and brings us back to the love of the first encounter (cf. Hos 2:16-21). It is founded on the communion of our Trinitarian God so that we may be one as the Father and the Son are one in the Spirit (cf. Jn 17:21).

It is a communion with our brothers because it is the same Lord who keeps calling us to be witnesses of brotherhood in a world looking for meaning and hope. It is also a response to the Church’s call that our communities be houses and schools of communion (cf. Starting afresh from Christ 25).

It is a communion with our partners in ministry so that together, in our shared charism, we may respond to the cry of the most needy young people by being for them witnesses of unity and signs of hope.

For each of these dimensions the chapter proposes concrete means to respond to the Lord’s questions: “Brother, do you love me enough to communicate… to share… to open…?” Our commitment to communion with God, with our brothers

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and with our partners expresses how much we love God, our brothers, the young and all people.

Encountering Jesus“O God, you are my God, it is you I seek.

My soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you as in a dry, weary land where there is no water.”

(Ps 63: 2)

Let us begin our reflection on this theme with the text on the first dimension of communion, as it is explained in the chapter ordinance.

Brother, do you love me enoughto discover daily in events and persons

as well as in your life of prayer, the extent to which I love you?

We greatly desire to experience the Father’s love. He invites us to know him more deeply through an intimate encounter with Jesus our Brother, who wants to fill us with his saving compassion and to transform us for a deeper communion with others.

We place our fragile hope in the grace of the Holy Spirit always at work integrating our life and freeing us from the constraints which prevent us from taking time for heart-to-heart communion with Jesus in prayer.

We dare to risk transforming the hectic rhythm of our lives by taking the necessary way of asceticism “to pray ‘in spirit and in truth’ (Jn 4:23)” (R 131; cf. R 133, 139).

The first paragraph of this text expresses our intense desire to experience the love of the Father, well aware that the first initiative comes from God himself. It is he who awakens in us the desire to know him in an intimate encounter with Jesus-Brother. From this familiarity there emerges love. The continual encounter with Jesus identifies us progressively with Him, fills us with his saving compassion and transforms us for greater communion with others.

To live compassion and communion demands that we come out of ourselves and overcome our tendency to selfishness. This requires the grace of the Holy Spirit, constantly at work in us endeavoring to unify our lives, enabling us to live each moment as an encounter with God who is transforming us into persons of compassion and communion. The same Spirit helps us to overcome our resistances so as to communicate heart to heart with Jesus to a degree that we are able to pray in spirit and in truth.

There are various expressions used to convey communion with God. For example, we may speak in terms of “an encounter with God,” “interior life,” “an experience with God,” or “spirituality.” In the remainder of this circular I shall make frequent use of these last two expressions and especially of the last one. Before speaking of spirituality as a characteristic specific to each human being, I would like to touch on the notion of the fundamental unity of the individual human person.

The human person, a unity

The human person is a union of spirit and body. These days, people who speak of spirituality may be suspected of promoting a disincarnate spiritualism, selfishly seeking their own equilibrium and personal happiness by disconnecting themselves from the world and its needs. This is an attitude of the fuga mundi [flight from the world], a kind of disengagement in

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an effort to construct their own world of passive and irresponsible expectations. This attitude originates, in great measure, in the exclusive enhancement of the spiritual dimension of man, at the cost of his corporal dimension. Thus material realities have no importance, and it matters little that there are people who are lacking in food, appropriate housing, means of sanitation, education, etc. This way of seeing things has nothing of the Gospel about it.

For us, the human person is at one and the same time a union of body and spirit. The human person is formally body and formally spirit. “Man is made up of a psychic substance and of millions of material substances. But all of them together constitute a single structural unit. Each substance possesses its own respective properties, but structure confers on them a unique substantiality in virtue of which human activity becomes absolutely new.”2

The second Vatican Council recognized this substantial unity when it declared: “Though made of body and soul, man is one. Through his bodily composition He gathers to himself the elements of the material world; thus they reach their crown” (Gaudium et Spes 14).

The God of our prayer

Given that, as we shall see, spirituality is the lived expression of our relationship with God, it is important to define clearly our concept of God. Is ours the God of philosophers, or the God of the Old Testament, or the God of Jesus?

For us, God is not simply a faceless energy, the “New Age” God. If this were the case, we could have neither relationship nor dialogue with Him. Nor is He a God of spectacle, performing miracles every other instant, acting on our behalf, and relieving us of any personal responsibility. God is not a kind of heavenly tradesman, giving of himself to us according to what we offer him. He is not a God who wishes us ill, a God who leaves us to complain, “What did I do to deserve this?”

Ours is the Mother-Father God who loves his children with tenderness. He is the Love-God who gives of himself gratuitously to all, even to those who, in our estimation, might not be deserving of it. He is the Family-God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is the Communion-God who created us in his own image and likeness so that we might live communion. He is the Jesus-God, incarnate, one of us, vulnerable, servant, equal to us in all things but sin, suffering, compassionate, journey companion, thirsting for justice, dying for the sake of forgiveness and reconciliation, and resurrecting for the Father. He is the God of life who desires that each person live and be saved. He is the God who respects us as adults and respects our freedom. He is the God of encounter who makes our hearts burn as he explains the Scriptures to us on the way.

Christian spirituality

The word “spirituality” comes from the word “spirit” which means breath, wind or breath-of-life: “The Spirit of God hovered over the waters” (Gn 1:1). This term is also associated with fire: “Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them” (Ac 2:3). But especially, the word refers to the Spirit as the third person of the Blessed Trinity. To live Christian spirituality is to live according to the Spirit of Jesus. And because the Spirit is a relationship of love, we can say that spirituality is the particular way of living our relationship with Him, as well as the consequences of this relationship in our lives.

2 (ZUBIRI, Xavier. Cinco lecciones de filosofía, 2a ed., Madrid : Sociedad de Estudios y Publicaciones, 1970, p. 25.)

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Bauer says that interior life or spirituality is “a high disposition of the love of God based on a deep spirit of faith and trust in Him, a permanent attitude of soul, a joyful promptness of will to do everything that God wants and the way he wants it done.” 3

Relationships: sharing knowledge, sharing feelings, sharing services

In order to deepen somewhat our understanding of Christian spirituality and because we say that spirituality is relationship, it seems to me to be opportune to say that in all interpersonal relationships we exchange knowledge, feelings and services. We could also affirm that spirituality is a permanent relationship with God, a relationship in which we share with him knowledge, feelings and services.

Christian Spirituality a sharing of knowledgeSpirituality in these terms encompasses everything that God tells about himself, what I know of him (thanks especially to his Word) and what I tell him about myself (my thoughts, my hopes, my actions, my life’s experiences…) In my relationship with God I learn to see God as he is, and I learn to see myself as God sees me, that is to say with the eyes of compassion, acceptance, mercy and love. In the same relationship, I learn to see the world and the people in it as God sees them, that is, with eyes of admiration and of love. Spirituality leads us to see in others the face of Christ and to see life with the eyes of God.

Christian Spirituality as a sharing of feelingsThis means that spirituality consists in listening to what God feels for me (in his Word especially) and to express to God my own feelings of admiration, gratefulness, humility, and love. These are the feelings that the Spirit places in my heart. In our relationship with God, we learn to have for him and for ourselves, for others and for all of creation the same feelings as God has, which are also the feelings of Jesus. In this way I am attentive to the counsel of St. Paul, “Among yourselves, have the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus” (Ph 2:5). We live spirituality in our intimate encounters with Jesus-Brother; spirituality is an intimate experience of friendship with God.

Christian spirituality as a sharing of servicesOur God is a Servant-God. From Him we receive physical life, spiritual life, the Sacraments, etc. For our part, we serve him by loving him and by doing good works on behalf of neighbor, since “…in the measure in which you have done it to the least of these my Brothers, you have done it to me” (Mt 25:40), and I can not claim to love God whom I do not see, if I do not love my neighbor whom I do see (cf. Jn 4:20).

Special encounters with God are heightened moments of relationship with Him. During these moments I share knowledge, feelings and services. It is then that I intensify my intimate union with the Father through an intimate encounter with Jesus-Brother who enriches me “with his saving compassion and transforms them for a deeper union with others” (A Pilgrimage of Hope, Ordinance, 1st dimension). These encounters allow me to live compassion and communion in the other activities and moments of my daily pilgrimage as a man of action.

The spiritual person

3 (BAUER, Benito. En la intimidad con Dios. Barcelona : Herder, 1997, 13a edición, p. 204.)

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In the following paragraphs, I will try to present a few characteristics of a spiritual person. In relation to God the spiritual person lives in syntony and intimacy with God for an encounter with Jesus; he meditates on the Word of God, makes time for prayer, celebrates and lives the liturgy and the Sacraments, and accompanies Mary, the woman of prayer, in contemplation of the mysteries of God.

The relation of a spiritual person with himself is characterized by his love of self, by his joy and interior peace, by his emotional equilibrium, by the integration of his life, his capacity for silence, and by his motivations and the dynamism of his life.

The relationship of a spiritual person with others is characterized by his respect, by his capacity for listening, and dialogue, by his sensitivity, his approachability, his receptivity, his helpfulness, his solidarity with others, his affective and effective option for the most deprived, and by his generosity and sense of mission.

The relationship of a spiritual person with creation is distinguished by his love of nature, and by the interest and care that he takes to preserve it.

As a kind of summary of this section it can be said that the spiritual person lives a deep experience of God. The spiritual person comes out of himself in order to come to know the God of Love: to see himself, to see others, and to see the world with the eyes of God. But simultaneously, the spiritual person wishes to love self, love others and love the world with the Heart of God in a lived experience of compassion and service. The life of the spiritual person abounds in the fruits of the Spirit, which are, among others, “love, joy, peace, forbearance, serviceability, goodness, trust in others, gentleness, self-control” (Ga 5:22-23).

The spirituality of the Institute 4

“We must strive to unite ourselves to God, not to enjoy the pleasure of peace,but to be sustained in the heat of the combat.

Peace is for the other world.” (ANDRÉ COINDRE, Writings and Documents, 1, Letters 1821-1826, Letter XXII, p. 142)

The multiple facets of spirituality

Christian spirituality is unique, and may be summarized as a life lived according to the Spirit or according to the spirit of Jesus. Now, the person of Jesus is so rich, and so multi-faceted that everyone can have access to Him by any path that a person chooses. For example, the poverty of Jesus, his intimacy with the Father, his obedience to the will of the Father, his commitment to proclaiming the Kingdom, his sensitivity for those who suffer, his preference for the poor, his absolute and unconditional love for all people, etc.

A religious institute gathers together people who share a particular way of living the Gospel, that is to say, a particular way of entering into a relationship with the God of Jesus and to express this relationship by their way of being in their relations with their Brothers and with all of creation in an effort to build up the Kingdom of God. Upon seeing Jesus, this group stops for a few moments before a few characteristic traits of his person, and centers the members’ attention on a few preferred Gospel passages. Their way of seeing Jesus has an influence on its way of seeing themselves, others, all of creation and the Church. As Brothers of the Sacred Heart we have a particular way of accepting and loving ourselves, of seeing our lay

4 In this section, I have drawn a few ideas from conferences given by Brother René Sanctorum in the 1990’s and a few others from the circular of Brother Bernard Couvillion on the “Option for Compassion”

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partners in ministry and the persons whom we serve, of living with others, of seeing the world, and of committing ourselves to building it up.

Our founder, André Coindre, and Brother Polycarp, following in his footsteps, lived an authentic spirituality of the Sacred Heart. We encounter traces of that spirituality in many of their sayings and writings, but neither of them left us with an organized treatise on the topic. Perhaps this accounts for what has been our tendency over the years, namely, understanding spirituality as a series of pious practices, fundamentally good, but patently insufficient.

In the following section, my intention is to present a few characteristics of the spirituality of the Institute. I do not propose to make it an exhaustive presentation, since this would go beyond the intended parameters of this circular. While appreciating the body of research that has already been done on this theme, I am conscious that it will always be possible to hone it, to narrow it down more and more, and to present it in updated language. It is my firm conviction that in our Rule of Life, we may find the nature of our spirituality and the way to live it for today. The Rule presents us with a spirituality centered on Christ, a spirituality arising from contemplation and expressed in love, a spirituality encompassing all of life, allowing us to remain in intimate relation with our mission, a spirituality that gives pride of place to prayer and liturgy, a spirituality in keeping with the presence of Mary, mother, educator and model.

Spirituality centered on Christ

“And it happened that while they were conversing and debating,Jesus himself drew near and walked with them

but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. …Then they said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning (within us)

while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?"(Lk 24:13-35)

The spirituality of our Institute is a Christian spirituality. To say Christian is to say coming from Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life (cf. Jn 14:6). On this topic The Rule of Life, article 112 states, “[Christ] is our reference point and the center of our motivations, just as he is the very principle of our total self-offering and of our apostolic action.” The Brother of the Sacred Heart has the Spirit of Christ: gentle, good, humble, simple, sensitive, serviceable, grateful, filial, fraternal, generous, selfless, firm, courageous etc.

Contemplation of the pierced Christ

Our spirituality “flows from contemplating Christ, whose open heart is a sign and a revelation of the Trinitarian love of God for all” (R 14). John invites us to stand beside him and look upon Jesus with the pierced side. We contemplate the one who has been pierced, that is to say the person of Christ recapitulated in his open heart. John presents the pierced side of Christ with solemnity and emphasis (cf. Jn 19:33-37; 20:19-29), like an artist he wishes to bear testimony to the entire life of a person through the work which he dedicates to him.

Earlier on I was saying that sprituality is a sharing of knowledge. In contemplating the open Heart, we grasp the great love of God (cf. R 113). We welcome what St. John tells us (cf. 1 Jn 4:8) and what we find in the first article of our Rule of Life, namely, “God is love” (R 1). The open side witnesses to the solicitude of the Heart of Jesus for the world (cf. R 64). This looking upon helps us to “believe in the love of God,” to live it and to spread it” (R 13).

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Contemplation of the open side requires us to take great care of our prayer life (cf. R 128-148). And our prayer life will lead us to the Lord every moment of our lives.

We also considered spirituality as a sharing of feelings. Our spirituality consists in clothing ourselves with the sentiments of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, something which involves embracing his chaste, poor and obedient way of life (cf. R 61).

We also said that sprituality is a sharing of services. God gives us his Word, his Son and his Grace; we respond by our prayer, our worship and our service to others. Our spirituality colors our realationships with our Brothers and Sisters (cf. R 15) and the service that we offer to our contemporaries (cf. R 6), to the poor (cf. R 10, 50, 126, 150), to children and young people, especially to the most needy (cf. R 11, 13, 18, 118, 149, 151, 155).

A Spirituality of Love

“Salvation and concern for the perfection of soulsis one of the aims of the Congregation.

The Brothers of the Sacred Heart of Jesuswill often recall these words of Jesus Christ:

“I have come to bring a fire upon the earthand how I wish it were already kindled.”

They shall strive to spread this fire in all hearts,having first themselves been kindled by the fire of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.”

(ANDRÉ COINDRE, Writings and Documents, 2, Rules and Regulations, p. 25)

“Frequently draw near to the one who melts the ice even the coldest hearts.Continue to love our Savior by remaining faithful to him,

since only in him can be found true peace and happiness,the source of love and the treasure of heavenly goods.”

(Positio of Brother Polycarp, P. 439-440)

“May all of you, always and everywhere,abide in the spirit of Jesus Christ,

through your fidelity to all the Christian and Religious virtues.”(Brother Polycarp, Letter to the Brothers in America, February 28, 1847)

The open side invites us to gaze upon the love of a compassionate God who engulfs us in his grace.

What is the meaning of the symbol of the open heart? Our Rule of Life states, “The Gospel reveals the pierced side of the Savior as the source of the life-giving Spirit, the channel and symbol of divine love” (R 114). The open side of Christ invites us to contemplate the incalculable, mutual love existing between the Father and the Son, and the love of the Father and the Son for us. Jesus is the new Paschal Lamb who gives us life and frees us. From his open side there springs blood and water, that is to say, the Church and the Sacraments by means of which we receive the Life of God (cf. Jn 19:34). From this source of the Love of God, from his heart, there springs a river of graces: creation, redemption, the Word, the Church, the Sacraments, Religious Life, our cherished Institute. And all these realities are tributaries flowing from this river of graces whose source is the Heart of God, manifested in the Heart of Jesus.

It is at the moment of the death of Jesus that God gave himself up totally for us. Knowing our poor hearts’ inability to love, God gives us the Heart of his Son, so that, with Him, and animated by the Spirit, we might be enabled to love the Father in spirit and in truth, and that

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we might also be made capable of loving all our Brothers and Sisters, and all God’s creatures. In this way God, who places in us a thirst and hunger for love, gives us also the water and the bread of this love, so that we may have the strength to continue on our way towards the goal of complete love, towards the moment of the ultimate Agape, when there will be love only.

The open side reveals to us also a humble God, a God slow to anger; a compassionate God who “suffers-with,” as does a mother with her ailing son, a God who “suffers-because-of” like parents when they encounter ingratitude and lack of love from their children, a God who “suffers-for,” like parents who accept no end of work and sacrifices for the welfare of their children.

To suffer with those who suffer implies empathy, and a particular sensitivity towards the neediest, towards our Brothers, our teachers, our students and all people. It also implies listening to others, accepting risks in order to respond to their needs, using appropriate and warm gestures, and it implies accompanying Jesus, whose Passion is prolonged in those who suffer.

Suffering like the Son for the sake of others. We are, all of us, full of imperfections and faults: selfishness, pride jealousy, a tendency to dominate others. All these limitations cause us to wound one another day after day. To suffer patiently our own limitations and those of others requires a great spiritual capacity to forgive and to love others genuinely, despite the difficulties involved.

Suffering with the Father for others. This calls for a commitment from us for the welfare of others in the difficult work of education of children and young people, and it calls us to show particular concern for our ailing Brothers, and those experiencing particular difficulties; it calls us to remain in an ongoing attitude of service.

A unifying spirituality

The incalculable love of God solicits a loving response from us. The experience of His love leads us to an esteem for, and an acceptance of, self. We become more compassionate and more merciful towards ourselves.

Love of God also brings us to love others and to love the world the way God loves, that is to say to live God’s passion for men and women and for the earth. In his relationship with the open Heart the Brother of the Sacred Heart becomes himself, an open heart that spreads goodness, gentleness kindness, appreciation of others, understanding, welcoming, unconditional love, a spirit of conciliation, forgiveness, mercy for all, especially for the children and young people entrusted to that heart. To live the spirituality of the Institute is to be passionate with the passion of a person who loves without measure, because he too has received the gift of love from the Heart of God. To live the spirituality of the Institute is to consider all people with love, even, and especially, those who are difficult; it is to live for them, listen to them, offer them help, service, direction, accompaniment, support and understanding.

The spirituality of the pierced Heart also permeates completely through to our mission. It impels us to witness to the tenderness of God in a world in which so many people lack love, a world in which there are so many children and young people who are unloved, rejected and abandoned. This spirituality leads us to open our hearts to the destitution of the poor, to the discouragement of children and young people experiencing the greatest of difficulties, to the wounded of this life, and to open our hearts to those trapped in the hell of slavery of alcohol or drugs. As a matter of principle, the exclusion of the most difficult students in our

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educational centers ought to be considered as being inconsistent with the Gospel and with Jesus’ way of acting.

The vision which I am presenting is that of a unifying spirituality which intimately unites prayer life, community life and the mission. Spirituality penetrates to the very core of community life and mission; it energizes them by giving them a particular shape. Community life and mission also set their characteristic hallmark on our spirituality. Just as we cannot divide a person into body, intellect and spirit, neither can we separate prayer life, community life and mission. Spirituality is energized by the Spirit of love and finds expression in the practice of an exacting love, “lived in a personal relationship with the Lord, in the life of fraternal communion, in service to each man and woman” (Starting Afresh in Christ 20).

Without spirituality, the mission soon becomes activism, or at best professionalism. It goes without saying that we must be very professional in the exercise of our apostolic mission; but that mission must always bear the hallmark of our intimate relationship with Jesus-Brother who makes us men of God and men for others. Equally, if there is no authentic commitment to the mission, the existence of spirituality can be suspect. All of which serves to emphasize that there exists a very close relationship between spirituality and mission.

The decree Perfectae caritatis emphasizes that religious are called to live a deep spirituality.

“Let those who make profession of the evangelical counsels seek and love above all else God who has first loved us (cf. 1 Jn 4:10) and let them strive to foster in all circumstances a life hidden with Christ in God (cf. Col 3:3). This love of God both excites and energizes that love of one's neighbor which contributes to the salvation of the world and the building up of the Church” (PC 6).

After having affirmed that apostolic action and charitable works are part of the nature of institutes of apostolic life, the same decree goes on to underscore in the following words the unity that exists between spirituality and mission:

“Therefore, the whole religious life of their members should be inspired by an apostolic spirit and all their apostolic activity formed by the spirit of religion. Therefore in order that their members may first correspond to their vocation to follow Christ and serve Him in His members, their apostolic activity must spring from intimate union with Him. Thus love itself towards God and the neighbor is fostered”(PC 8).

I want to emphasize that spirituality expresses a mode of relationship with God which affects totally our way of being and acting, both at the personal and at the communal level. This spirituality cannot be reduced to an individual intimate exchange with God, for it affects all our fraternal relations and all our apostolic actions setting on them a characteristic seal, a special mark, thus contributing to the unity of our existence.

Despite the flaws in all analogies, we might consider spirituality as the perfumed balm of an encounter with the Lord, a balm which preserves the spiritual person, as well as all encounters, all relationships, and all activities. Spirituality challenges our whole being, it sheds light on our intelligence, reinforces our common sense, animates our prayer, guides our options, motivates our will, orders our feelings and informs our decision making.

In my address to the men and women religious of Colombia, I said that we cannot separate spirituality from mission, the love of God from love for the world, passion for Christ from passion for humanity, the following of Jesus from commitment for the sake of the Kingdom, option for Jesus Christ from option for the poor. Likewise, we can not separate meditation from looking after the sick, the Eucharist from teaching a Math class, prayer from the workshop, contemplation of God from the contemplation of people who come to the office:

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children who come to our schools and centers, mothers who devote their lives to looking after them, people overwhelmed by problems and spilling over with bitterness and aggression.

I added that we are Religious twenty-four-seven, whether in the ora et labora, or united in the Lord, in listening to the Word of Life in prayer, spiritual reading, meditation, the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and the Eucharist. We are united with the Lord in the day-to-day in which we incarnate the Word of Life by a life according to the Word. We are active in contemplation, and contemplative in action. If people in today’s world need us, it is not to hear us utter beautiful words; they need us to be living words, incarnate words.

Brothers, I am describing to you the beginning of my pilgrimage as a Religious-Brother. I belong to the Institute because at the beginning of my religious life I lived through an experience of the nearness of God. At that moment, I felt in a very intensive way the love of God for me, and at the same time, there arose from the deepest part of my heart, the desire to respond to this love by doing something for Him and for others. So I firmly decided to give myself totally to God for the rest of my life.

This initial experience of an encounter with the living Jesus still continues to influence my daily life. Throughout my life, sometimes in moments of great animation, sometimes with less, I have always experienced joy in my daily encounters with Jesus, listening to his voice and experiencing the sensitivity of his love. This experience fills me with a peace sufficient to confront life in unpleasant moments and to face up to the difficulties and disappointments of life. The living experience of God animates me, gives me strength, energizes me, and gives me joy and peace.

One of the greatest crosses that I have had to endure since becoming Superior General has been to deal with the requests from a few Brothers to leave the Institute. Each one expresses his reasons: difficulty in living the vows, community life, the apostolate, etc. But the common denominator in the majority of cases, appears to be a lack of spirituality. Brothers, the need to deepen our spirituality is urgent: without spirituality there is no future for religious life. Without spirituality we cannot speak of religious life, only of religious death. A body without a soul is a dead body. It is vital that we evaluate periodically, both personally and in community, the quality of our spirituality as the Rule of Life invites us to do. “We periodically meet to review our community attitudes and actions. In the presence of God and of one another we are willing to examine our apostolic objectives, projects, and availability” (R 27).

Marian spirituality

“The Brothers of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary,” this is the name that Father André Coindre wished to give us. With the passage of time our official name lost its Marian reference. But the spirit and the practice of spiritual encounters with the Lord in the company of Mary, Mother of Jesus and our mother, persisted. Our founder and the Brothers that followed them, throughout our long history, always had the name of Mary on their lips and the love of Mary in their hearts. In the Rule of Life Mary is presented to us as “the exemplar of fidelity to the Lord” (R 66), as the consecrated one par excellence, as the model, “who lives in sustained intimacy with her Lord” (R 74), the mother whom Jesus gave us on the cross (cf. R 119), as the one to whom we address our prayer (cf. R 138), and as “our mother and teacher” (R 178).

Let us recognize in Mary the mother who, as she did at Pentecost, reunites her sons and daughters in the Church, so that they may live communion with God to proclaim and build up His Kingdom. For surely, Mary is also the artisan of our communion.

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Nurtured by our spirituality

Prayer holds a special place in our spirituality. This is the theme that I hope to develop in the next circular to be published in May 2008. We will consider together the way to live out our daily intimate encounters with Jesus-Brother.

For the moment may I invite you, Brothers, to reflect on, to pray with and to share together this circular. May it be for you a help to progress on the pilgrimage of hope on the road to communion with God who, in the person of Jesus, comes daily to meet with us.

May Mary, the pilgrim in faith and in hope, accompany us and protect us.

Rome, September 30, 2007, 186th anniversary of the founding of the Institute

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Suggested questions to aid your personal reflections and for sharing in community 1. What do you understand by the term “spirituality”?

2. What are the hallmarks of the spirituality of the Institute?

3. What signs might lead us to conclude that a brother lives a life of deep spirituality?

4. Recently what Scriptural texts have been most helpful to you in your encounter with Jesus? Choose one or two and explain.

5. Recently what articles from the Rule of Life have most inspired your encounters with Jesus? Choose one and explain.

6. What motives impel you to undertake today your pilgrimage in religious life, to stay with it, and to find fulfillment in it?

7. …

Celebration of the Word In order to encourage spiritual life at both the personal and local community levels may I suggest that your province animation and/or spiritual accompaniment teams prepare for the local communities a few Celebrations of the Word, on one or two themes from this circular, celebrations based on the Word of God and on the Rule of Life. In places where there are no such teams, per se, local communities might organize their own celebrations. It could be helpful to include some signs or symbols in these celebrations. Possible themes are as follows:

1. A pilgrimage of hope;

2. Looking upon the pierced one;

3. An intimate encounter with Jesus.

4. “Give me your heart to love;”

5. Mary, mother of communion.

6. …

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