The Society of the Sacred Heart is an apostolic institute, founded in 1800 by Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat, who was born in Joigny, France in 1779. We are currently present on the five continents and number some 3600 religious. Like most congregations, we are experiencing a gradual diminishment in numbers, which we look upon as something natural. What is important is the quality of our lives, coming from a conviction that our charism, mission and spirituality have something to offer to today's world.

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 of a serious and deep journey which would be not merely for 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 origins 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 presented to us by the world and the Church 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, in solidarity with the sufferings and the hopes of humanity. This shift in focus meant changing, for apostolic reasons, from a conventual to a more open community life. It was no longer a question of waiting for people to come to us, but rather a 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 confidence as an institution, in which there were strong differences and much self-questioning 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 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.

The image which best reflects this process for me is the biblical image of exile: during the years after Vatican II we experienced an exile, characterized by the loss of clear direction. A whole way of life which had had meaning was being "de-constructed" around us, "un-founded". That is this image.

• The change of our place in the Church: as we moved from a place which was privileged and "special" to a place within the People of God, we lacked the clarity to "find ourselves.
• The change of educational models which was imposed on us caused us to lose the particular "stamp" of our education and, in some places, to question our educational institutions. In many other places, the State demanded more control, and our ability to have influence in them diminished.
• The departure of some sisters from the congregation and religious life.
• The loss of visibility: as our presence in institutions diminished and as we began to live in more inserted communities.

We lost our supports and our confidence. We were in a strange land. As Psalm 137 says: "By the rivers of Babylon - there we sat down and there we wept when we remembered Zion. On the willows there we hung up our harps."

During the last 10 years, since the approbation of our Constitutions, we have begun to take up our harps again. And the song which we sing today is a new song, still being composed.

This moment is characterized by two key elements which give new energy:

• Our spirituality has been evolving, and the contributions of different cultural modalities (e.g. Korea, Japan, India, Latin America, Africa...) are enriching us in the understanding and practice of the fundamental intuition of Madeleine Sophie: contemplation, reparation, adoration, education.

The emphasis on the pierced Heart of Jesus as opening us to the depths of the mystery of God and to the pain of humanity, making us enter into his single movement of adoration of the Father and love for all, especially the poor, is what impels us and fires apostolic energy.

• The reformulation of our mission of discovering and revealing the love of the Heart of Jesus, united to our service of education, inspires us to live our common mission and the demands which flow from it. Beginning in the '70s our educational efforts have shifted toward the poor, and this has supposed new training, mistakes as well as successes.

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 Sophie Barat". In both the United States and Australia the schools form a Network having common goals and objectives.

• 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. This has meant listening to our young religious and searching with them for the new way of living our mission in Hungary today.
• The Assembly of Provincials in Chile in 1997 was a moment of corporate recognition:

• The diversification of ministeries is leading us to discover how to live our mission corporately and how to strengthen our sense of belonging to one apostolic body. The local community is coming to be seen as the place where this corporate mission is shaped and where each one is sent to her particular ministry.

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.

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 barrios. We are called to be contemplative educators.

Already in 1970 the General Chapter experienced a strong call to conversion, to the need for a 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.

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 deepening 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.

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 acommon 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, communication 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.

Patricia Garcia de Quevedo, rscJ

Superior General