What does refounding mean to us?

As women who are situated in the world, allowing ourselves to be confronted by it, we have undertaken a process which, during the last thirty years, has profoundly changed our style of life, of government and of formation, and has given us a different outlook on our spirituality, mission and community life.

Before Vatican II we had a certainty about our identity and our place in the Church and the world and we did not speak of refounding. Like every religious congregation, we passed through a crisis, and this crisis led us to experience not only the struggle for survival but the beginning a serious and deep journey which would not be merely a renewal.

We have understood that religious life is not the only "way of perfection", but rather a way of living out our Christianity in the following of Jesus, in an apostolic congregation, by means of the vows and in the context of community.

We have taken seriously the reflection on our experience and the last General Chapters have given us direction and helped us to define with greater clarity what we want to live.

In 1982 we revised our Constitutions and they were approved in 1987. The Society of the Sacred Heart, from its origens has been characterized by a contemplation of the situation of the world - the contemporary reality. That reality in France, at the beginning of the nineteenth century impelled Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat to gather together a group of women in order to give a response to the crisis of faith engendered by the French Revolution. Conscious of the situation of women, and with a vision of their role in the family and society, she saw the education of women as an urgent need.

The manner in which we situate ourselves in the world and contemplate reality, going from the pierced Heart of Jesus to the pierced heart of humanity, was one of the factors which moved us and led us to search for a new way to address the challenges which the world and the Church presented to us as urgent needs to which we had to respond. Vatican Council II led us to see the world with new eyes and to situate ourselves in it in a way that is more inserted and in solidarity with the sufferings and hopes of humanity. This shift in focus meant changing, for apostolic reasons, from a more conventual to a more open community life. It was no longer a question of waiting for people to come to us, but rather of going out in search of them. What we saw then as a necessary renewal we understand now as needing a further step: the Church as well as religious life is being called to a refounding.

It was necessary for us to experience some chaos before arriving at creative responses. We went through a crisis of institutional mistrust, in which there was much self-questioning and strong differences among us regarding the meaning of religious life and the form of living it, and a consequent diversity of responses.

Today we can speak of refounding because we we find ourselves in a new situation with more hope and energy and because we know that it is urgent to continue on the road of searching to express what religious life is today.