The key intuition of Fr Chevalier (Kees Braun MSC)

This first is more of a programme than a promise: If the Blessed Virgin heard their prayers they would take the title Missionaries of the Sacred Heart AND they would strive to carry out fully the meaning of this title.

This indicates the importance of the name of our Congregation for Chevalier. It expresses both the nature and the mission of the Society. Jules Chevalier didn’t want the congregation be called after his family name (some were already calling the group “les Chevaliers du Sacré Coeur”) or after the place of foundation (Issoudun) such as with many other congregations – e.g. Mill Hill Fathers, Verona Fathers, etc (this also nearly happened).

The custom is growing of calling us

Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Issoudun.

protest against it. Let us say simply,

Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

that is our official title. We belong to the Church,

not merely to Issoudun.

Jules Chevalier 1898

For Chevalier, our mission is primarily to be who we really are, Missionaries of the Sacred Heart”. We are men with a mission. And that mission was not to Issoudun alone, but “ubique terrarum” (everywhere). The founder always wanted his congregation to be fully itself, to live out the “beautiful and profound” nature of its identity in the context of and in relation to the developing/changing world. Today, it is not a matter of re-inventing ourselves, or re-founding, but of living our identity in “creative fidelity”.

But what did “Mission” mean for Jules Chevalier? When considering mission we spontaneously consider where we are sent, to whom we are sent and for what we are sent. These are undoubtedly important questions for Chevalier, but for him there is a more fundamental question: “By whom are we sent?”

For Chevalier, John’s Gospel was truly a gospel of mission. John indicates more than forty times that Jesus “is sent by the Father”. God has loved the world so much that he “sends” his Son. In turn, on two occasions in John’s Gospel Jesus hands this mission over to his disciples by “sending” them. “As you sent me into the world, so I sent them into the world” (John 17:18). “ So Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. Just as the Father has sent me, I also send you’” (John 20:21). This sending is accompanied by the gift of the Holy Spirit.

1. Charism of the Founder

In his “Personal Notes” Jules Chevalier writes about a personal experience during his time as a seminarian.

To the treatise on the Incarnation, our professor added a thesis on Devotion to the Sacred Heart; his development was both spiritual and learned and I wrote it down in every detail. My heart was touched and the more deeply I penetrated this doctrine, the more attractive it became. In addition, my confessor lent me the Life of the Blessed Margaret Mary by Bishop Languet. This work stirred up in me a keen desire to become the apostle of this devotion that Our Lord had himself given to the world as a powerful means of sanctification and which he wished to see spread everywhere. To answer his call, I conceived a plan to be realised as a priest – I would bring together some holy and zealous confreres and work to propagate Devotion to the Sacred Heart. I then singled out two of my companions as suitable members of such a group. Fearing the ridicule of others, however, I kept this fine dream to myself, and simply confided it to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

(Jules Chevalier, Personal Notes, p 13)

After all his disappointments with the study of philosophy, especially that of Descartes, he is touched deeply by a treatise on the incarnation. Jules Chevalier came to understand Devotion to the Sacred Heart as rooted in the Incarnation of Christ: “He became one like us”. Devotion to the Sacred Heart was first of all, for him, a profession of faith in the mystery of the incarnation. An essential task for the mission of the Church is inculturation, but this must begin with incarnation. God becomes one of us, as we are. For Chevalier, then, devotion to the Sacred Heart is not just one devotion among others; it is the essence of Christianity and contains all other devotions.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart

is the essence of Christianity

and contains all other devotions.

The Heart of Jesus is the Love of God,

God Himself,

Incarnate

God is love.

Jules Chevalier, 1887

Probably the phrase, “God is Love” (John 4:16) is the one most quoted by Jules Chevalier. The more he realised how much God loved the world, the more he was attracted to it. He wanted to devote himself fully to spread this spirituality throughout the world in a mission not only ad extra, but ubique terrarium – without limits.

In his reflections on the incarnation Jules Chevalier stresses the importance of the Epiphany. “When the kindness of God our Saviour and his love for mankind appeared” (Titus 3,4). This revelation of God’s kindness and love appears, not only in the past, but must also be revealed today.

Although the devotion to Sacred Heart was not new in Jules’ time, he understands it in a new way, a much more biblical way. While it used to be a practice of prayers, for Chevalier the Heart of Christ is the centre on which everything in the old and new Testaments converge, it is the answer for everything.

Jules Chevalier had the Charism of a founder (see accompanying diagram). A charism is not something one makes up oneself; it a gift of the Holy Spirit. For Jules Chevalier it evolved from his personal experience of the discovery of God, revealed in Jesus Christ, who loves us with a human heart. It was particularly inspired by his understanding of the Incarnation and the Epiphany as the revelation of God’s love in the person of Christ. His founding intuition includes a special place for the role of Mary, the first disciple of the Heart of Christ. The personal experience of God’s love was so important for him that it became his mission. In this Jules’ idea of mission was very broad. He had a strong sense of mission ‘without limits’. In the immediate moment his concern was for the ‘mal moderne’ as he saw it in France and in his sense of mission he put a strong emphasis on the uniqueness of every person. But mission for him would not be confined to the “mal moderne” in France, or even just to Issoudun. He had an equally strong sense of mission without limits; one that would be open to all kinds or work/apostolate, be carried out by three “branches” of the MSC family (MSC religious, associated diocesan priests and laity), that would embrace the Gospel with all its consequences, and that would be everywhere (ubique terrarium).

In a meditation on Jeremiah 31:3, which Jules’ recorded in his journal during a retreat in 1904, we can see the strong sense of his faith in the personal love of God for each person, a sense that had continued to deepen throughout his life. His amazement at God’s love is as evident towards the end of his life (1904) as it was in his first discovery of the significance of the incarnation and devotion to the Sacred Heart (recalled in his Personal Notes above). During the 1904 retreat he writes:

God says to me,

I have loved you with an everlasting love!

Me!

It is especially me whom God has so loved,

Ungrateful me, sinful me.

God of surpassing majesty,

God of supreme beauty and of limitless perfection,

God has loved me.

God!... Me!...

What distance!

The infinite!... and nothing!

And God has loved this nothing!

O God of love,

Make me understand this word: Loved!

He who has always existed has always loved me,

And it is through love

That he has decreed my creation from all eternity.

Jules Chevalier, Retraite, p. 17f.

2. Strong sense of mission

Ten years ago while still at the Major Seminary, I was reflecting on the disorders consuming society and I thought, or rather God inspired me with thought, of founding a community of missionary priests who would work to put them right. I spoke of this to my director but he dismissed it as a dream, a specious creation of my imagination. Embarrassed at his reaction, I determined to forget the matter, but in spite of my good intentions, the plan remained in my mind, becoming ever more absorbing as time went by.

A voice I could not ignore persisted within me: you will realise your dream; God wants this work.

With this in mind and with some apprehension I singled out as a likely companion in this undertaking – Abbé X… I never spoke to him about it. But then where would we establish this new community? … Issoudun with its 14.000 inhabitants and its three priests was my spontaneous choice.

Jules Chevalier, Manuscript, 1855-1856

Already as a seminarian he feels called to “found a community of missionary priests who would work to put them [the evils of his time] right”. We have to see this in the context of his experience of French society, the ‘mal moderne’ and his experience of the love of God revealed in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which he saw as the remedy for all evils. His idea of ‘Mission’ is not just of going to foreign countries, but starting where he was, in his case ‘Issoudun’ the most de-Christianised town in the region. Yet, he had also ‘the rest of the world’ in his mind.

3. Mission and prayer

In one of his notes Jules Chevalier writes that a confrere complained and even wrote to the pope that he, and indeed all the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, didn’t pray enough. Jules reacted to this by stating that he was a founder of a religious congregation: Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. This was not a congregation of monks, of contemplatives, but of Missionaries. Yet, he said, we cannot be missionaries without also being disciples. Therefore we have to pray always, and live in a spirit of prayerful openness.

What is the nature of this disciple/missionary balance?

We read in our Constitutions 145,2:

Apostolic action pertains to our very nature as a Society dedicated to works of the apostolate. For this reason, our whole life is to be imbued with an apostolic spirit, just as all our actions are to be animated by a religious spirit.

4. Vatican II - Perfectae Caritatis (On the renewal of Religious Life)

For religious, the challenge of Vatican II, to authentically renew Religious life in the spirit of the founding charism, remains for us today.

2. The up-to-date renewal of the religious life comprises both a constant return to the sources of the whole of Christian life and to the primitive inspiration of the institutes, and their adaptation to the changed conditions of our time. This renewal, under the impulse of the Holy Spirit and with the guidance of the Church, must be promoted in accordance with the following principles:

(a) Since the final norm of the religious life is the following of Christ as it is put before us in the Gospel, this must be taken by all institutes as the supreme rule.

(b) It is for the good of the Church that institutes have their own proper characters and functions. Therefore the spirit and aims of each founder should be faithfully accepted and retained, as indeed should each institute’s sound traditions, for all these constitute the patrimony of an institute.

(c) All institutes should share in the life of the Church. They should make their own and should foster to the best of their ability, in a manner consonant with their own natures, its initiatives and undertakings in biblical, liturgical, dogmatic, pastoral, ecumenical, missionary and social matters.

(d) Institutes should see to it that their members have a proper understanding of men, of the conditions of the times and of the needs of the Church, this to the end that, making wise judgments about the contemporary world in the light of faith, and burning with apostolic zeal, they be able to help men more effectively.

(e) Before all else, religious life is ordered to the following of Christ by its members and to their becoming united with God by the profession of the evangelical counsels. For this reason, it must be seriously and carefully considered that even the best-contrived adaptations to the needs of our time will be of no avail unless they are animated by a spiritual renewal, which must always be assigned primary importance even in the active ministry.

Perfectae Caritatis (Vatican II, 28.10.1965)

Fr Kees Braun sees here a three-fold movement in the process of renewal, with two conditions:

1. The central element and supreme rule is that of evangelical life – following Christ of the Gospels

2. Then it is necessary to accept and retain the spirit and aims of the Founder, along with sound traditions

3. Finally it is also necessary to understand the conditions of the times and the needs of the Church – requiring a thorough social analysis

To make this three-fold movement there are two conditions (points c and e in the text from Perfectae Caritatis above):

1. All institutes should share in the life of the Church

2. All renewal should be animated by a spiritual renewal