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The signs which indicate that we have returned to take up our harps
in order to intone a new song are:
A greater clarity in expressing our mission. For
example, in Latin America, the reformulation and updating of the Plan of
Studies of the congregation, and in Spain, the exploration of our pedagogical
style and deepening of the concept of "interiority in Sofie Barat".
In both the United States and Australia the schools form a Network having
common goals and objectives. What was in a former age "formation of the
elite" has been translated today into formation and education of women who
are developing their potential for leadership.
In Hungary, where we returned in 1990, we met a
group of alumnae who have faithfully kept our educational tradition alive,
and who asked us to return to one of the institutions which we had before
the communist regime. But the manner of our presence today, in a new group
of young RSCJ is different. It is in collaborating with other educational
groups and responding to the needs of youth. We realize that our
visibility has to be more through apostolic community than through an
institution. This has meant listening to our young religious and searching
with them for the new song, the new way of living our mission in Hungary
today. Certainly, this way of being present is a way of living religious
life which has attracted them and to which they relate.
The Assembly of Provincials in Chile in 1997 was
a moment of corporate recognition that we have a new song to sing: It was
a joy in the Assembly when we were able to reaffirm that our educational
mission is intimately linked to our charism, that its source is in
contemplation, which gives it its dimension of faith and its inner spirit
and which opens it to the calls of the world, giving priority to young
people, to women and to those who are exluded and impoverished. We also
experienced the urgency to establish deeper, more open relationships with
lay people and a more evangelical government at the service of the life
and growth of the body in order to fulfill its vocation.
For us, to speak of refounding is to speak of this
new song, a new expression of feminine religious life. We need to
develop it, to lay its theological foundations, to reflect on our experience
and share it with other congregations and with all those with whom we
collaborate.
Paradoxically, it is often non-believers and persons
of other religious traditions who have a deep sense of who we are. A marxist
professor at the University of Leeds said of an RSCJ in introducing her to a
friend: "Mary belongs to a commune of religious women who put their goods
in common, live in a marginal area and share their salaries so that they may
help and serve poor people." Never had she heard such a clear explanation
of the meaning of our solidarity and vow of poverty!
I also remember talking to the father of Hozana, a
young religious in Brazil. He himself had been a "desplazado"
(displaced from his land). In speaking of his daughter's vocation to the
Society he said: "I told her: if you want to work for your people, if you
want to give your life in solidarity with your people for justice' sake, or if
you want to do good works, you can do those things without entering religious
life. But if you have heard Jesus calling you to follow him more closely, and
to have a deeper relationship with him, then you must follow him." He had
grasped by intuition the real meaning of religious life.
The challenge of refounding for us is to discover this
prophetic form of religious life in a feminine space, visible in a local
community, close to people, working from a perspective of justice and
solidarity, wherever we are, be it in universities or in barrios. We are called
to be contemplative-educators.
Already in 1970 the General Chapter experienced a
strong call to conversion, to the need for new life: a sisterly life, a life
open to others in the spirit of the gospel. We had to come face to face with a
very serious question: Either we live our fellowship authentically, in the spirit
of the Beatitudes, or our life ceases to have meaning. We knew that this
longing for universal brother/sisterhood, for solidarity and service would be
real only in the measure that it was lived in communities which were truly
evangelical.
What we need from the institutional Church is the
trust and the space to develop this new religious life.
And we RSCJ need to return to the intensity and
clarity of the vision of Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat, rooted in the Heart of
Jesus.
We will never again be very numerous. Ours is a form
of religious life for the few because it demands an unusual combination of
strength and weakness. It requires as well a certain vulnerability in order to
be ready to collaborate in the building of the Kingdom.
As a congregation we have a double responsibility:
As I gaze at our diversity, the challenge to maintain
unity is great. The "Cor Unum" which was so important to Madeleine
Sophie Barat is being lived through strong relationships and the sense of
belonging to one body which impels us to live a common mission. In this
refounding, which has become enfleshed in a great variety of forms and cultural
expressions, our role as leaders at the central level is to govern by
communication, fostering the creation of spaces of encounter and communion.
Like Madeleine Sophie, we want to be attentive to the
Holy Spirit, communicating by our lives the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ,
in his pierced Heart.
To remain faithful today, is, in a sense, to change
... The times change and we ourselves must change our way of seeing,
Madeleine Sophie wrote to Philippine Duchesne in 1831.
This encourages us and gives us confidence to continue
journeying with hope as we sing a new song.
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