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:

fidelity to the Spirit and to the power of the original call confided to us by the Church, using as a means the probing of our Constitutions; fidelity to the signs of the times, revealed in the diversity of cultures. The role of central government is to communicate trust and freedom, to journey with the new and to learn together in an openness to discernment.

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.