Our Shepherds Heart

Home , Annum sacrum, Lanspergius, Margaret Mary Alacoque, Mary of the Divine Heart

15TH CENTURY SACRED HEART PRAYER

STUDIES ON GOOD SHEPHERD HERITAGE

OUR SHEPHERD'S HEART

A STUDY ON DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS AND THE HOLY HEART OF MARY IN GOOD SHEPHERD SPIRITUALITY

By Rose-Virginie Warnig, R.G.S.

Project of the Cincinnati Province Sisters of the Good Shepherd 2849 Fischer Place Cincinnati, Ohio 45211 1987

3 STUDIES ON GOOD SHEPHERD HERITAGE

I ONLY LOVED Symposium, 150th anniversary of Sisters of the Good Shepherd, 1985 Rose-Virginie Warnig, R.G.S., Cincinnati Province Nora Dennehy, R.G.S., Washington, D.C. Province Rosaria Baxter, R.G.S., Washington, D.C. Province

ALSO, I VOW ZEAL Part I - Fourth Vow Part II - The Constitutions Rose-Virginie Warnig, R.G.S., Cincinnati Province Marjorie Hamilton, R.G.S., Ed., St. Paul Province

OUR SHEPHERD'S HEART is dedicated in gratitude to all the Good Shepherd Sisters who have so kindly encouraged me to undertake writing what is in my heart of our rich heritage. A special expression of acknowledgment and gratitude goes to the members of the Province Spiritual Life Commission, who have worked together with me for several years to provide means of spiritual development to our sisters. These booklets are part of our common effort: Sister Alena Bernert, assiduous and generous proof-reader, artist, lay-out, and printer contacts, Sister Mary Komar, first revision of this manuscript, Sister Monica Nowak, ingenious provider of typists for the manuscripts.

My special recognition and thanks go to Sister Marjorie Hamilton, of the Saint Paul Province, final editor of the manuscripts.

Sister Rose-Virginie Warnig, RGS

4 OUR SHEPHERD'S HEART

A Study on Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Holy Heart of Mary In Good Shepherd Spirituality

This study was originally presented at a 1986 workshop for sisters in formation, as well as those in formation and vocation ministries in the Good Shepherd Congregation in the United States and English-speaking Canada. Biblical aspects of the themes have not been included in this book but are available in manuscript form.

It is our hope that this beginning will stimulate a deeper study of our rich Good Shepherd heritage and its meaning for our vitality in these times and the future.

Publication approved by Sr. M. Gema Cadena, Superior General, in letter of December 16, 1986

OUR SHEPHERD'S HEART

A Study on Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Holy Heart of Mary In Good Shepherd Spirituality

6 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE DEVOTION 9

The developmental treatment of the devotion, from the earliest ages of the Church through Saint John Eudes and Saint Mary Euphrasia to the present era

Chapter II MEANING, OBJECT AND AIM OF THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE HEARTS OF JESUS AND MARY 25

Saint John Eudes' intuition and doctrine of the devotion and his vision of our response. The basics of his devotion

Chapter III DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEARTS OF JESUS AND MARY IN THE SPIRIT OF SAINT MARY EUPHRASIA PELLETIER 41

Our recent expression of the devotion in the 1985 edition of our Constitutions. Saint Mary Euphrasia's mystical insight and the development of the devotion as she discerned her personal charism

Chapter IV DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS TODAY 62

The devotion today in Church teaching, especially the teaching of Pope Pius XII, other similar devotions. What the doctrine of Saint John Eudes and living the spirituality of Saint Mary Euphrasia may mean to us today

Chapter I

HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE DEVOTION

"With joy you will draw water at the fountain of salvation" Isaiah 12:3

INTRODUCTION

The roots of our spirituality in the Good Shepherd Congregation go deeply into that of a seventeenth century saint, Father John Eudes, founder of the Order of Our Lady of Charity in 1666. Good Shepherd Sisters are an off-shoot of his creation. The foundress of the Good Shepherd Congregation, Saint Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, greatly treasured the aspect of Eudist heritage we are contemplating: devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Like all devotions in the Church, the formal expression of that to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary developed very gradually as contemplatives and saints, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gained more insight into the mystery of God's love. It usually takes centuries for a new devotion to develop and to spread. A fresh intuition of a previously unnoticed mystery of Christ's life becomes for the saints an incentive toward a special devotion, according to the light and grace they receive from the Holy Spirit. They then begin to live this themselves. As they find that it increases their spiritual strength, courage and love, they are drawn to share it with others, and the devotion springs up here and there. It develops and spreads in the measure that its object, aim and purpose become increasingly clear, for every devotion approved by the Church has a definite object and end. and must rest upon the solid ground of scripture.

9 IN THE EARLY CHURCH

We can safely say that all the tender effusions of love which characterized the devotions of Christians even in the earliest ages of the Church, foreshadowed the formal devotion to the Heart of Jesus as we know it. For, from earliest days Christians have considered the love of God made manifest in the Incarnation of the Son of God, and our redemption through his pascal mystery, the central theme, the very core of all Christian devotion. This was expressed in love for God and love for one another. These elements form the very basis of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

However, there is no indication that the Heart of Jesus was ever specifically considered THE SYMBOL or THE SEAT of God's love. Nor was the Heart of Jesus considered to be the symbol of the divine-human love of Jesus for his Father and for humanity. Very early, Christians understood that the piercing of the Heart of Christ on the cross had a deep and mysterious meaning beyond a mere physical wound. From being a symbol of the origin of the Church and of Christ's love for the Church, the Wounded Heart of Jesus in its deeper meaning became a subject of meditation for the Fathers of the Church. Contemplatives and masters of the spiritual life began to focus on the Wounded Heart of Christ, and in doing so found great spiritual rewards. They associated this with devotion to the Wounds of Christ.

In the Middle Ages this developed into devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. St. Bonaventure, the mystics St. Mechtilde and St. Gertrude, St. Brigid, the pious Carthusian Lanspergius, the Venerable Abbot of Blois, and others shed much light upon the theory and the practice of devotion to the Heart of Christ. However, it remained a private devotion. Its aim and object were not yet fully recognized or expressed.

ST. JOHN EUDES, SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

It was Father John Eudes' mission to further this devotion by incorporating it into the public worship of the Church. It began to be firmly established in the Church, therefore, only in the late seventeenth century. During Father Eudes' lifetime it was restricted to France although he greatly desired it to be universal. (1) Father Eudes was declared AUTHOR of the liturgical worship of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary by Pope Leo XIII in 1903. In 1909 Pope Pius X, who beatified him, declared Father Eudes FATHER, DOCTOR AND APOSTLE of this devotion.

10 Public devotion to the Holy Heart of Mary preceeded public devotion to the Heart of Jesus. In 1641 Father Eudes composed the first liturgical Office and Liturgy of the Eucharist in honor of the Heart of Mary. The first public liturgical feast was celebrated in the diocese of Autun on February 8, 1648, twenty-four years before that of the Heart of Jesus. Therefore, Mary prepared the way for public devotion to the Heart of Jesus. During the ensuing years Father Eudes studied and meditated on the earliest devotions to the Wounds and Wounded Heart of Christ Jesus. H.; drew from the writings of the mystics, the Fathers of the Church and from scripture in elaborating his doctrine and method of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

With the approval of several bishops of France the solemn feast of the Heart of Jesus was celebrated for the first time on October 20, 1672, using the Office and Eucharistic Liturgy composed by Father Eudes. He made fifteen drafts of these before being satisfied with his work!

In reality, Father Eudes had always honored the Heart of Jesus and Mary in the one feast of Mary's Heart. A Vespers anthem for the feast reads, "Let us joyfully sing the praises of the Blessed Heart of the Virgin Mary that by her intercession we may become pleasing to the Heart of her Son." (2) Again, "Blessed is your heart, O Mary. It is the brilliant mirror of the life of Christ Jesus and a perfect image of his passion and death." And again, "O Jesus, Heart of Mary, fire, fount of grace, burn, purify, take possession of everyheart!" (3).

Father Eudes sang in one single hymn, "AVE COR SANC- TISSIMUM," the LOVE of the Adorable Heart of Jesus and the LOVE of the Admirable Heart of Mary. The LOVE he praises in both is the very love of Jesus himself. This indicates Father Eudes' profound appreciation of the mystery of sanctification, the mystery of that union in love which transforms and makes us one with God.

In an historical letter to his Congregation of Jesus and Mary, dated July 29,1672, John Eudes clearly stated his inspiration and intention:

It is an inexplicable grace which our most amiable Savior has accorded us in giving our congregation the admirable heart of his most holy mother. But not being content in his infinite goodness to stop there, he has gone even further in giving us his own heart, along with that of his glorious

11 mother, to be the founder and superior, the beginning and end, the heart and life of this congregation.

He conferred this great gift upon us at the birth of our congregation, for, although we have heretofore celebrated one special and particular feast of the adorable Heart of Jesus, nevertheless we never intended to separate two hearts, which God has so closely joined together-the most august heart of the Son of God and that of his blessed mother. On the contrary, from the very beginning of our congregation it has been our intention to regard and honor these two hearts as one, in unity of spirit, feeling and affection, as is clearly indicated in the Salutation to the Divine Heart of Jesus and Mary that we recite each day, as well as in the prayer and in several portions of the Office and Mass which we celebrate on the feast of the Holy Heart of Mary.

But Divine Providence, which guides all things with marvelous wisdom, has willed to introduce the feast of the heart of the mother before that of the heart of her Son; in order to prepare the hearts of the faithful for the veneration of his adorable heart, and to dispose them to obtain from heaven the grace of this second feast by the great devotion they have shown in celebrating the first... Although the feast of the Heart of Jesus has been attacked ...by the spirit of the world, which never fails to oppose whatever proceeds from the spirit of God, nevertheless... it has been celebrated with great fervor, and today it is solemnized everywhere in France... there is reason to hope that some day it will be celebrated throughout the universe....

SAINT MARGARET MARY - SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

Indeed, Jesus seemed to desire to give his Sacred Heart to the world and not just to France. A month after the first celebration of the feast prepared by St. John Eudes, Margaret Mary Alacoque, a young sister of twenty-five years of age, made her perpetual profession in the Visitation at Paray-Ie-Monial in Burgundy, France. During the next three years, that is from 1673 to 1675, Christ Jesus appeared to her on many occasions and revealed the love of his heart so often disregarded by people. He charged her to make known his love and to invite Christians to make reparation for offenses committed against his heart. This request was expressed by the practice of the Holy Hour, Holy Communion on First Fridays of the month, and celebration of a feast in honor of his heart.

12 These revelations became known fairly quickly throughout France and some other countries through the writings of the Jesuits, especially Father Claude de la Columbiere, her confessor, Father Croiset, and Father de Gallifet, assistant general of the Jesuits.

In 1675 Pope Clement XIII permitted the public celebration of a Mass in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He did so in order to respond to the many requests he had received from bishops and the faithful, including the Jesuits and the nuns of the Visitation Order. It was John Eudes' liturgical composition that was used and continued to be used for the next fifty years and more.

From then on, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus gradually spread throughout the Catholic Church. At the time of the French Revolution, the devotion was already well established all through France. Louis XVI, from his prison cell, before going to the scaffold, consecrated his country to the Sacred Heart and encouraged family consecration.

Due to the Revolution, Father Eudes' writings, which had been very popular up to that time, were widely scattered and partially destroyed. The houses of his congregation were confiscated, the Eudists were massacred or dispersed throughout Europe and Canada, and the devotional works of Father Eudes became practically unknown. The Eudists were reestablished only in 1826, when a search to recover the printed and manuscript works of Father Eudes began. Many had been lost or destroyed, including his book on DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS.

Providentially, among the twenty volumes and manuscripts recovered was that on the ADMIRABLE HEART OF MARY. It was John Eudes' last work, completed three weeks before his death after twenty years of study and research. The last of its twelve chapters, again providentially, deals with devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. This has been reprinted in a separate book.

His book THE ADMIRABLE HEART OF MARY provides delightful reading and inspirational meditation. For example, in one chapter, "Mary's Heart, The Harp of King David," he likens the strings of this royal harp to the virtues of Mary's Heart, especially her faith, hope, love of God, charity toward her neighbor, religion, humility, purity, obedience, patience, mercy, hatred of sin, love of the cross. On these twelve strings the Divine Spirit played with wondrous harmony melodious canticles of love which so greatly

13 charmed the Eternal Father that he forgot our sins. But the Eternal Father has given his beloved Son yet another harp which is meant to chant the praises of his holy name, and this harp is our own heart. Unlike an ordinary instrument, the harp of our heart cannot remain silent. It must be played either by the hand of God or by the hand of the devil.

To make of our heart a harp of our Savior, the true David, we must pluck out the strings of vice and replace them with the strings of virtue, which must be set in tune with the peace and charity of the hearts of our neighbors. Then we will sound our harp in unison with the inspired music of true Christians and the angels and saints and, above all, with the sublime harp of the Heart of Mary. And we can join in the chorus of praise and love of God, led by the royal harpist, our Lord Jesus Christ.

SAINT M. EUPHRASIA - NINETEENTH CENTURY

At the time of the birth of our foundress St. Mary Euphrasia in 1796, the people of the Island of Noirmoutier, her birthplace, had special devotion to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. In fact, the symbols of the island were the two Hearts. These are seen in the churches and on souvenirs of the island even today. Given the unity of the two devotions to the Heart of Jesus and to the Heart of Mary, it seems evident that John Eudes had some influence there. In fact by 1672 the whole of Christian France practiced devotion to the Heart of Mary and was being initiated to the liturgical devotion to the Heart of Jesus. (4)

In 1856 Pope Pius IX, the pope of Vatican Council I (1869-1870), who as bishop of Perugia, Italy, had come to know John Eudes through the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, extended the liturgical feast of the Heart of Jesus to the universal Church. Thirty-three years later, Pope Leo XIII raised it to a solemnity.

However, this devotion has had its ups and downs. During the liturgical renewal in France around 1855 there was a leveling of all private liturgical feasts to those accorded the universal Church. The devotions of John Eudes to the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary, expressed through his Office and Mass, were examined and removed from the Good Shepherd calendar until 1911. The Eudists and Sisters of Our Lady of Charity were also deprived of them but for a shorter period. At the same time, all during the nineteenth century nations consecrated their countries to the Sacred Heart of Christ. Ecuador is an example in 1873. In 1875 the French parlia-

14 ment voted approval of the construction of a basilica in honor of the Sacred Heart at Montmartre on the outskirts of Paris, now known as the International Shrine of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In 1899 Pope Leo XIII consecrated the entire human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, at the request of Bl. Maria Droste zu Vischering, a Good Shepherd Sister from Munster, living in Portugal. This again gave new impetus to the devotion. From this time, consecration of families and the enthronement of the Sacred Heart in homes became widespread. Devotion to the Sacred Heart was one of the first things children learned in religious instruction.

In 1914, war impelled France to turn to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for help and protection on a massive scale. In 1929 Pope Pius XI published a new encyclical (MISERENTISSIMUS) in which he spoke of the apparitions at Paray-le-Monial. The following year a new Mass in honor of the Sacred Heart (COGITATIONES) replaced the earlier ones of Father Eudes and others, and for the first time emphasized the idea of reparation.

This, however, was to mark a zenith in popular and liturgical devotion to the Heart of Jesus. A decline in the devotion soon began to take place, and by the end of World War II (1945) the devotion had lessened considerably.

One explanation of the decline may be that around 1930 a new generation of Christians formed in the scout movement and Catholic Action appeared on the scene. These nourished their spiritual life on biblical and liturgical sources centered on the Pascal Mystery. They did not feel at home with devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. An example of this is the response of these groups to the rector of the basilica at Montmartre. The rector had invited them to participate in a national congress in honor of the Sacred Heart. Their answer was, "The Sacred Heart does not appeal to young people...Young people have other interests at present."(5)

Pope Pius XII desired to revitalize the devotion in 1956. In honor of the centenary of the universal feast inaugurated by Pius IX he wrote his beautiful encyclical HAURIETIS AQUAS (you will draw water...) for the occasion. He enunciated the fundamental basis of devotion to the Sacred Heart in these words:

The worship of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus is, substantially, the worship of the love of God for us in Jesus and, at the same time, the discharge of our love for God and for our brothers and sisters.(6)

15 This is the spirit of Father Eudes' vision of the devotion.

The 1962-65 Vatican Council 11, which proposed to adapt the expression of the Catholic faith to our times, only mentioned the Sacred Heart indirectly in two of its many documents, and then in a very brief manner. This does not mean, as Pope Paul VI repeated several times, that the Council disregarded devotion to the Sacred Heart. However, it is evident the Council did not emphasize this devotion. The first indirect reference is in the CONSTITUTION ON THE SACRED LITURGY 13:

Popular devotions of the Christian people, provided they conform to the laws of the Church, are to be highly recommended, especially where they are ordered by the Apostolic See. But such devotions should be so drawn up that they harmonize with the liturgical seasons, accord with the sacred liturgy, are in some way derived from it, and lead the people to it, since in fact the liturgy by its very nature is far superior to any of them.

The second reference is from the CHURCH IN THE MODERN WORLD 22:

He who is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15) is himself the perfect man. To the sons of Adam he restores the divine likeness which had been disfigured from the first sin onward. Since human nature as he assumed it was not annulled by that very fact it has been raised up to a divine dignity in our respect too. For by his Incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every person. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, acted by human choice, and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin.

There are other factors which seem to have dimmed the devotion to the Heart of Jesus, for example,

 an early emphasis on PROPAGATING the devotion rather than living it interiorly

 linking it exclusively with private revelations, which created an artificiality and distracted from the scriptural content of the devotion

 insisting exclusively on REPARATION, which narrowed and limited the devotion

16  the language used, "SACRED HEART," which became like magic and did not lead to the Heart of Jesus

 the images which were used to reflect the devotion, for example, a heart alone separated from the body, and hymns of a sentimental and doleful style

 linking the devotion to the promises as automatic guarantees of fulfillment, which cheapened it and made it into a type of bargaining process

 the use of the devotion for political and patriotic ends. For example, in 1870 many in France openly believed the Sacred Heart would allow France to have its revenge. And in the 1914 war millions of flags carried the image of the Sacred Heart.

All of these elements certainly contributed to bring discredit on devotion to the Heart of Jesus. None of these has any place in the devotion envisioned and taught by St. John Eudes, which was all interior (7)

This, in brief, is the itinerary of private, public and liturgical devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Through the Holy Spirit it gradually became clarified over the years. Then, through his contemplation and study, John Eudes went from the wound in the side of Christ directly to the Heart of Christ. He established the theological basis of the devotion in scripture. He defined its precise object. He provided a suitable liturgical Office and Mass for the proper celebration of the feasts of both the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Admirable Heart of Mary.

By his preaching and his writings he extended these devotions, using the pious associations and confraternities he had founded, whose members dedicated themselves in a special way to practice and to propagate true devotion to these hearts.

John Eudes had practiced and preached devotion to the Heart of Jesus several years before the apparitions to Sister Margaret Mary. He thus prepared the way for a better understanding of its aim and object and for the spread of the devotion throughout the universal Church. The Mass he had composed and which had already been celebrated in his institutes and several other Orders, as well as in the dioceses of Normandy and Brittany, was adopted for the feast requested by the Lord Jesus in one of his revelations to Margaret Mary. The Visitation Nuns and Fr. Eudes' congregations continued to express this liturgical worship using his original compositions until the liturgical reform which followed the French Revolution. The

17 Good Shepherd Sisters used them until 1855, when they were suspended until 1911. Besides his liturgical expressions of devotion, John Eudes wrote many litanies and devout aspirations or salutations to the Heart of Jesus and to the Heart of Mary which express his vision of these devotions. These were passed on from one generation to the next by word of mouth. They were also rediscovered in print during the Eudists' research for his writings which were edited in 1905 and again in 1935.

MARY

In regard to the itinerary of devotion to the Heart of Mary, John Eudes discovered the foundation of this devotion in the gospel itself. Luke tells us twice (2:19, 51) "Mary kept all these words pondering them in her heart... His mother kept all these things in her heart." This meant to Father Eudes that Mary, the mother of Jesus, kept all the words and prophecies of the Old Testament and their fulfillment in her heart, memory and intellect, to be the object of her love, aspirations and affections, thus she could adore and glorify him and reveal them to the apostles and evangelists as faith in Jesus spread around the world.(8)

John Eudes found that his devotion to the Heart of Mary was confirmed by the Fathers of the early Church, from whom he drew ex- tensively. Among these Fathers, St. Augustine wrote(9): "How can we thank you, 0 happy Virgin, who has given your heart's consent to Gabriel's request...The divine maternity could not have profited Mary if she had not first borne Jesus Christ in her HEART more happily and advantageously than in her womb." St. Leo the Great preached in the fourth century, "A royal virgin of the race of David is chosen to be the mother of the Infant-God and to conceive him in her HEART before bearing him in her womb."(10) St. Lawrence Justinian in his book on the AGONY OF CHRIST represented Mary's heart as a clear mirror of Jesus' passion and perfect image of his death. John Eudes expressed this concept in one of the antiphons of his original Office for the feast of the Heart of Mary.(11)

John Eudes' "SALUTATIONS TO THE HEART OF MARY" reflect these teachings of the early Fathers and those of the mystics. His litany also, in which he unites the Hearts of Jesus and Mary, HAIL HEART MOST HOLY, etc., reflects these same in-sights.

Therefore, John Eudes traced his theology of devotion to the Heart of Mary to the gospel and to devout hearts who, down the cen-

18 turies, have contemplated the mysteries of Jesus reflected in Mary, in the plan of our redemption.

Whereas devotion to the Heart of Jesus remained a private expression until the seventeenth century, John Eudes considered devotion to Mary's Heart already approved by the Church in 1503. Julius U, pope at the time of Michelangelo, ordered three aspirations added to the Angelus, one of which was, "0 most glorious Queen of Mercy, I salute your virginal HEART whose most perfect purity was never stained by sin." This devotion to Mary's Heart spread to Canada in 1661 following Father Eudes' liturgical com-positions. In 1674 Pope Clement X gave the Eudists six formal documents of approval.(12)

In Father Eudes' devotion to Mary's Heart, he also drew heavily on Cardinal de Berulle (1575-1629), who founded the Oratory of Jesus (1611) which Father Eudes had joined the 25th of March 1622. He quoted profusely from Berulle:

The state of the Mother of God gives Mary by nature and by grace the privilege to possess Jesus within herself and to possess the noblest part of Christ's being; to possess the spirit, the heart and the life of Christ so intimately that he is the spirit of her spirit, the heart of her heart, and life of her life....

And again:

The mystery of the Incarnation is the mystery of the two noblest and most closely united hearts that ever existed in heaven and on earth... the heart of the one did not live nor beat but by the heart of the other... O Heart of Jesus living in Mary and by Mary! O Heart of Mary living in Jesus and for Jesus! O sweet union of these two hearts! Blessed be the God of love who united them together.(13)

It is because Mary is totally transparent to the mystery of Christ that we can look at her and admire her. She is for us the symbol of humanity in its real fulfillment. We can contemplate in her the features of the grace of Christ. It is always Jesus Christ we contemplate in Mary and because the grace of Christ blossomed so perfectly in her, it is in this pattern, so perfectly fulfilled in Mary, that the grace of Christ works in our hearts. In other words, there is a kind of relationship between the grace of Christ in us and his grace in Mary. She is our model, the forerunner of the restoration of all humanity by the grace of Christ. This is expressed in a very popular

19 prayer of the time, "O Jesus living in Mary, come and live in your servants." It is always Jesus living in Mary who comes to live in us because in her his grace has completed its task.

John Eudes united devotion to Mary with the mission of his institute. He recommended his Sisters of Our Lady of Charity to "often consider the very ardent love of Mary's Heart for souls redeemed by the most precious blood of her Son. In this way your own hearts may experience the sacred fire of charity with which they ought to exert themselves in the task of saving souls entrusted to them by Divine Providence."(14)

We can trace John Eudes' love for Mary back to his early childhood. He had always cherished a tender devotion to Mary. Had he not received the gift of life through her intercession by his parents? Had they not placed him in consecration on the altar at her shrine? He always considered his birth miraculous and was conscious of having been under Mary's special protection from birth.

When he was fourteen he made a vow of virginity and chose Mary as his mystic spouse. He placed a ring on the finger of the Marian statue he always carried with him. But his written alliance with Mary is dated 1668(15), twelve years before his death. At eighteen he joined the Children of Mary at the Jesuits' boarding school at Caen, where he was a student. His devotion to Mary was deepened after he entered the Oratory at Paris. As already stated, he was greatly influenced by the spirituality of the French School, which was that of Berulle, Francis de Sales, De Condren, Olier, Vincent de Paul. This spirituality focused on the grandeur of God, the Incarnate Word, the MYSTERY OF MARY, and the role of the priest.

During John Eudes' early missionary life of preaching and his initial work of founding the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity and a congregation for priests, he began to deepen in contemplation of the HEART OF MARY. This devotion gradually took hold of him completely. He had always begun his enterprises on one of Mary's feast days, especially that of the Angel Gabriel's Annunciation to Mary. This date was particularly dear to him, probably due to the belief of his time that the male spiritual soul became united to the body on the fortieth day after conception. He considered his own soul to have been created on March 25, the day the Church celebrated the Incarnation of Christ and the divine maternity of Mary. This reenforced his devotion to her under whose protection he placed all his projects.

20 While preaching a mission in the diocese of Autun in 1647, Father Eudes composed a Mass and Office in honor of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The bishop permitted this feast to be celebrated publicly in the diocese for the first time on February 8, 1648. Around this date John Eudes also founded the Society of the Admirable Heart of Mary, whose members vowed chastity but lived in their own homes. Their aim was to focus their lives on this devotion and to pass it on to others. The Society was considered a Third Order of Our Lady of Charity. It still exists in Canada.

John Eudes propagated devotion to the Heart of Mary also among the religious communities of whom he was spiritual director; that is, the Carmelites, the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration and the Ursulines. These religious women influenced the renewal taking place in the Church after the thirty years wars of religion, and lived and spread his devotion. Mary was the mover of this renewal. These women's orders gladly aligned themselves spiritually with Father Eudes and accepted his liturgical devotions to the Heart of Mary and his litany, HAIL HEART MOST HOLY. A Benedictine nun was cured of her blindness while reciting the litany in his presence.

John Eudes had presented Mary as our model. He saw her heart as the core-center of her spiritual and human personality. His work THE ADMIRABLE HEART OF MARY, a collection of twelve books or manuscripts, treats of the theory, history and practice of devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

In support of his devotion, St. John Eudes quoted St. Thomas Aquinas(16): "The devotion we have for the saints and for Mary never ends with them. It passes to God, for it is God himself whom we honor in the saints." He added, "Jesus Christ, the Heart of the Eternal Father, is the Heart of his holy Mother. Is not the heart the principle of life? And what is the Son of God to his dear Mother? He always was and will forever be the heart of her soul…"(17)

In support of this he quoted St. Brigid when she received Mary's communication:

My son was truly my heart to me. When he left my bosom to be born, it seemed as though half of my heart were going forth from me. When he suffered, I felt his pain as though my heart endured the identical sorrows and torments that he endured. When my son was being scourged and torn with whips, my heart was scourged and whipped with him. When he looked at me from the cross and I at him, two

21 streams of tears gushed from my eyes. And when he saw me oppressed with sorrow, he experienced such violent anguish at my desolation that the pain caused by his sorrow was my sorrow as his heart was my heart. Because Adam and Eve together betrayed the world for one single forbidden fruit, so did my beloved Son wish that I should cooperate with him in redeeming it, as with ONE HEART. (18)

"You see, therefore," wrote Father Eudes, "how the Son of God is the heart and the life of his holy Mother in the most perfect union conceivable."(19)

For twenty years John Eudes had honored the Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary in a single feast with emphasis on the Heart of Mary. However, this devotion as ONE devotion did not go well with the French people in general. They had theological difficulties in the invocation WE ADORE YOU, although Father Eudes intended a moral union of the two hearts. Therefore, in 1650 he changed the words to WE PRAISE YOU. In 1663 be reverted to the words WE ADORE YOU.

In 1668, only twelve years before his death, John Eudes directed his full attention to the Heart of Jesus. His new awareness that God loves us with a divine-human heart, the heart of his Son Jesus, and we can love God with the heart of Christ Jesus, was the high point of his entire spiritual and apostolic life. From then on he synthesized and unified all his teaching in the Heart of Jesus: God is love. God has proven his love for us by giving us Jesus. He calls for our love. Through Jesus we can love God humanly and divinely. God calls us to love him as he loves us, and to love one another as he loves us.

CONCLUSION

We see from the slow development of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus that John Eudes' doctrine is less a personal discovery than a drawing our attention to an essential treasure already existing in the Church from the earliest days. His first public liturgy in honor of the Heart of Jesus was celebrated in 1672, only eight years before his death! All through the itinerary of this devotion to LOVE, we sense the Holy Spirit of God in action. The Revolution which was to destroy much of John Eudes' writings and teaching, especially on the Sacred Heart of Jesus, could not impede the action of the Spirit who would choose other channels to communicate God's love through devotion to the Heart of Jesus.

22 Through St. Margaret Mary the devotion spread around the Christian world (1673-75). Through St. Mary Euphrasia (1796-1868) it has spread to all continents, embellished with her special insights, which we shall describe later. Its seed was planted among various races of peoples and religions through her daughters. She was considered a prophet of ecumenism and of the universality of the Church.(20) Through Mother Divine Heart Droste zu Vischering, known as Blessed Maria Droste, the Holy Spirit urged the Church (1899) to enlarge the radius of influence of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus to all souls, Christian and non-Christian. As mentioned before, through her inspiration and request Pope Leo XIII consecrated all peoples of the world to the Heart of Jesus. The Heart of Jesus desires that the whole world of souls be aflame with love for God and for one another through devotion and consecration to HIS HEART.

Blessed Maria Droste had perceived flames of love from the Heart of Jesus enveloping the whole world. Twenty-four years later (1923) Father Teilhard de Chardin would express her vision, as well as his own mystical insight, in these terms:

How strange, my God, are the processes your Spirit initiates! When two centuries ago your Church began to feel the particular power of your heart, it might have seemed that what was captivating souls was the fact of their finding in you an element more determinate, more circumscribed, than your humanity as a whole. But now on the contrary a swift reversal is making us aware that your main purpose in revealing your heart to us was to enable our love to escape from the constrictions of the narrow, too precise, too limited image of you which we had fashioned for ourselves. What / discern in your breast is simply a furnace of fire. And the more I gaze on this flaming center the more it seems to me that all around it the contours of your body melt away and become enlarged beyond all measure, till the only features I can distinguish in you are those of the face of a world which has burst into flames.(21)

A fresh impetus was given this devotion by a new publication of the written works of Saint John Eudes in 1945, at least of those twenty volumes still in existence. Fourteen known volumes or manuscripts had been lost. Pope Pius XII's 1956 encyclical YOU WILL DRAW WATER (Haurietis Aquas) stimulated renewed devotion and clarified theological issues and practical points of the devotion. Even at present, fervent lovers of Jesus are engaged in study-

23 ing and deepening their experience of the love of Christ in his Sacred Heart. There are many splendid books for study and for meditation on the Heart of Jesus. This renewed and persistent interest and concern is doubtless the action of the Spirit.

We might ask ourselves: is this indicative of a new call to us to sharpen our understanding of this devotion basic to our spirituality and to revitalize it in our own hearts first of all, and in our world confused about the real meaning of LOVE, of GOD, and of LIFE itself?

Chapter II

THE MEANING, OBJECT AND END OF THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE HEARTS OF JESUS AND MARY

O most Holy Trinity infinite praise be to you forever For all the wonder of love that you work in the Heart of my Jesus

Saint John Eudes

The different spiritualities in the Church, for example, Augustinian, Benedictine, Franciscan, Dominican, Ignatian and Eudist, all emphasize a particular aspect of the infinite riches of God revealed to us by Christ Jesus. Each spirituality taps fresh sources of spiritual nourishment from the boundless treasure of grace, light and love stored up in the mystery of Christ Jesus. Each spirituality develops as it is lived more deeply and practiced more fervently by those who are drawn in its specific direction, either by the current of the times, by their vocation, or by their specific personalities. Whatever the mode, both the emphasis and drawing are the work of the Holy Spirit, who alone enkindles in our hearts various and beautiful forms of piety and devotion.

THE HEART OF JESUS

Saint John Eudes was moved by the Spirit to share with the people of his time the knowledge of the LOVE of God in Christ Jesus which burned within him. Therefore, he spoke and wrote with words which would touch others. The language of the HEART was the simplest and the most real language by which he felt he could share his experience of this inconceivable LOVE.

St John Eudes

26 His inspiration, gleaned from the depth of his contemplation, was to link the word HEART with the word LOVE in such a way that they became synonymous. The word HEART invited contemplation on what is deepest, most personal and most intimate in the person of JESUS, the very core of his divine-human PERSON, from which flow his thoughts, his dispositions and intentions--his LOVE. The word HEART therefore expressed the deepest feelings, the deepest emotions, the deepest thoughts and the immensely profound love of Jesus for the Father and for us.

The semantic richness of the word HEART in our current language makes it easy for us to grasp the full meaning of the term. Even today it evokes in us intuitions, patterns of thought, emotions, feelings. It expresses our deepest self. This is the meaning Father Eudes gave to the term. He drew from scripture and from the writings of the Fathers of the Church numerous meanings of the word HEART, which he explained at length in its various applications. Especially pertinent is the Holy Spirit as "Heart of the Father and the Son, which they wish to give us as our spirit and our heart," and "the Son of God (who) is called the Heart of the Eternal Father."(1)

Father Eudes gathered all these meanings into one theory which he called the theory of the three hearts, or the three properties of the Heart of Jesus: the corporal, the spiritual, and the divine. The sacred humanity of Jesus lives and is vivified by the Holy Spirit. Since his Divine Heart is the soul, the heart and the life of both his spiritual and corporal heart, it establishes them in so perfect a unity that these three hearts are but one absolutely single heart that is filled with infinite love for the Holy Trinity and inconceivable charity for us humans.(2)

The Divine Heart of our Savior is the uncreated love he has in common with the Father and the Holy Spirit, or the love from which proceeds the Holy Spirit, or the personal love which IS the Holy Spirit. The corporal heart is the heart of flesh, the symbol of the spiritual and divine heart of the Man-God in a two-fold respect; that is, it is the principle of life and of LOVE, and also the organ of sensible love and the other passions.(3)

The spiritual heart of the Man-God, according to John Eudes, is the superior part of his soul which includes the memory, the intellect and the will. However, what we honor principally and primarily is the faculty and capacity of loving, both natural and supernatural..."For while the HEART represents the whole interior, yet it chiefly signifies LOVE…"(4)

27 Although in a wide sense John Eudes extended devotion to the Sacred Heart to the whole interior life of our Savior, what he primarily and principally intended by the title HEART OF JESUS was his LOVE. The HEART OF JESUS is, in Eudes' teaching, the center of unity of the humanity and divinity of Christ Jesus, the inner ground of the uniqueness of his being. It is primarily and principally the LOVE, ALL THAT LOVE-- divine, spiritual and sensible --of which his human heart was the seat and the channel. It is his love for his Father, for his holy Mother, and for us. We look beyond the physical heart of Christ to the LOVE of his heart. "Since the corporal heart, the noblest part of his human nature, is united hypostatically to the Person of the Word of God, it is enkindled with flames of infinite love--infinite love for his Father, and secondly, in-finite love for US."(5)

Therefore, the OBJECT of our devotion is LOVE, the love of the Heart of God, the love of the God-Man. LOVE is the first and last word in all reality. The synthesis of all we can say of God is, according to John the Evangelist, that God is love. The synthesis of all we can say of God- become-man, the Incarnate Word, is that Christ Jesus is LOVE.

It follows that in Christ Jesus God has a human heart. He loves us divinely and he loves us humanly with the heart of Christ Jesus. And what is more, according to John Eudes, we can love God divinely with this same heart of his beloved Son. The divine Heart of Jesus is a living flame of love, fully divine, fully human, soaring from our humanity to the Blessed Trinity, while embracing in redemption and salvation his human brothers and sisters in the same love.(6) "The Sacred Heart of Jesus is the temple, the altar, the priest, the victim of divine love, all for our sakes."(7)

In fact, the mystery of the Heart of Jesus is threefold. Firstly, it is the revelation of God's divine love for us. He loves us with the same love with which he loves his Son Jesus. Secondly, it is the revelation of the human love of Christ for us. Jesus loves us passionately. He gave his life for us. His heart melted, it broke, it was pierced, it was emptied for us (Ps 21). Thirdly, the mystery of the Heart of Jesus is the revelation of how passionately and fully our humanity can love God. For the Sacred Heart of Jesus LOVES God humanly and divinely. And this will be for all eternity. We can therefore truly say, "Father, I offer you the eternal, boundless, infinite love of your Son Jesus, which is mine. I love you even as your Son loves you. And, Jesus, I love you as your Father loves you, for his love is mine."(8)

28 For your well-beloved Son by his incomparable overflowing goodness willed to be our head and chose us to be his members. He has associated us with himself in his ineffable love for you. He has given us as a result the power to love you with the same love wherewith he loves you, with a love eternal boundless and infinite.(9)

John Eudes confirmed this point of doctrine with the following reference from Saint Bonaventure:

I shall say with David, 'I have found my heart to pray to God.' (ps 5, 8) Yes, I have found the heart of the king, my Lord, my brother and my friend, you, excellent Jesus. And then shall I not pray? Oh, yes, I shall pray! For, I say it boldly, his heart is my heart also...Since Christ is my head, must not what belongs to him belong also to me?...The heart of my spiritual leader is truly my heart. It is indeed mine. Jesus and I have but one heart. And what is surprising about this? Had not the multitude of believers but one heart?(10)

John Eudes went even deeper in his contemplation:

We need not be astonished if in speaking to his heavenly Father Jesus says to him to love us always so 'that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, 'regarding us in his Son as members of his Son, who are one with him and who love the Father with the same heart and the same love as his Son. Therefore, we need not be astonished if he, the Father, loves us himself with the same heart and the same love with which he loves his Son.(11)

Jesus also loves humanly, but in his human personal love resides all the love of God. When people encountered Jesus in his own day, they met God. At the same time, Jesus in his humanity is totally human, yet when he wept God wept, when he smiled God smiled, when he suffered God suffered. All his acts were redemptive acts, especially his death, resurrection and ascension. Jesus is God in a human way and man in a divine way. He is God in bodily form. It is thus he communicates the mystery of God to us, the mystery of God's LOVE. His acts are the active signs of the bestowal of that love. He is this precisely as our merciful Redeemer.

However, in theology the bestowal of LOVE is seen as the function of the Holy Spirit, while the primary function of the Incarnate

29 Word is to manifest the WISDOM of God. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that the Holy Spirit may truly be called the heart of Christians, since in the development of our life in Jesus, the role of the Holy Spirit is analogous to that of the heart in our organism, and the action of the Spirit like that of the heart is ever secret and hidden. This is what Father Eudes means when he says that the Holy Spirit is the divine Heart of Jesus, and Jesus is the heart of our hearts. And charity, of course, is poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who "compasses in himself all the treasures of redemption, and as such is symbolized in the blood and water streaming from Jesus' Heart."(12)

This opens us to the treasures of redemption and salvation in the Heart of Jesus, in the LOVE of Jesus through his pascal mystery. Father Eudes' meditation on the Passion of Christ is intertwined with his other reflections. He gazed through the wound in the side of Christ into the very heart of Christ. He contemplated and was transfixed with love by what he saw there, the infinite love of Jesus for his Father and for us. Especially in the pascal mystery John Eudes intuited the divine and loving Person of the Incarnate Word and consequently the merciful love of the Father and of the Spirit for the human race; that is, the love of the redemptive Trinity for sinful humanity.

In the words of Pope Pius XII, "The Heart of the Incarnate Word is rightly seen to be the sign and the principal symbol of this triple love with which the Divine Redeemer ceaselessly loves the Eternal Father and all mankind."(13)

Therefore John Eudes considered the Passion of Jesus intrinsic to devotion to his Sacred Heart because it is the ultimate sign of Christ's love. Here we recall that Father Eudes passed from the sign to the reality signified by it. He first went from the wound to the heart, then to the attitude. He pointed to the essential AT-TITUDE of the Heart of Christ in his redeeming passion, that of LOVING OBEDIENCE. His antiphon at Evening Prayer in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is indicative of this, "At the head of the book it is written of me that I should do your Will. I have willed it, O my God; your law is in the midst of my heart."

Jesus' love led him to share with his apostles the panic and fear, the sorrow and trepidation which flooded his heart and spirit as the sad hour of his passion approached. His heart was a book open before them. In communicating the deepest feelings and forebodings of his heart, Jesus surrendered himself totally to them

30 and to us, and to the saving Will of the Father. Thus the loving submission of the Heart of Jesus our Redeemer expresses the divine and human love of the Son for his Father and for us. It expresses the reciprocal love of the Divine Persons, and eternally conditions their love for us.(14)

In its twofold aspect of affiliation and of reconciliation, redemption sums up Christ Jesus' mission on earth. Since redemption sums up the mission of Christ and HEART sums up his Person, we can say that we have been redeemed by LOVE. The loving obedience of the Heart of Jesus to the will of the Father was the fundamental act in the salvation of the world. "The perfect surrender of Jesus, the whole movement of his heart towards the Father is synthesized in the piercing of his heart as he hung defenseless on the cross."(15)

Writers have considered Father Eudes' definition of the OBJECT of his devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus worthy of a great mystic and a great theologian. For he scrutinized in the light of the Holy Spirit the unfathomable mysteries of CHARITY in God, in the Trinity, and especially in the heart of the Son of God, both as man and as God.

However, Father Eudes never made any distinction between the HEART of Jesus, God and Man, and the LOVE which emanates from it.(16)

For John Eudes the Sacred Heart is the synthesis of the whole mystery of Christ, Son of God, Son of Mary, the whole mystery of LOVE; that is, the mystery of God become man for us out of love for the Father and for us. The mystery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is therefore central to the mystery of the Incarnation, the pascal mystery, the Precious Blood, the Eucharist, and even the mystery of Mary and of the Church, the Body of Christ.

THE HEART OF MARY

The mystery of the Heart of Jesus embraces the mystery of Mary. The Heart of Mary, the LOVE of Mary, prepared the way for devotion to the Heart of Jesus who is ALL LOVE. Again:

Although at times HEART stands for the whole interior life, it especially signifies love. Therefore when we honor the Heart of Mary, we have in mind not merely a given mystery, action or quality, not even the most worthy per-

31 son of the Virgin, but the source and origin of the value and holiness of these things, namely her love and charity. This love sanctified all her actions, all the faculties of her soul all her virtues and perfections, indeed her whole life, interior and exterior; it made her worthy to be the mother of Jesus and of all the members of Jesus, and finally, an abundant source of gifts for us.(17)

We recall the aspect of identification of the Heart of Mary with that of her divine Son. It is peculiar to the devotion of Saint John Eudes. He introduced a separate liturgical worship of adoration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus but previously he had always honored their hearts as one, because he delighted in contemplating the life of Jesus in Mary. Mary is a transparency of Jesus. Mary's unique union with Christ is not only through her motherhood, but especially through her perfect union of will with his. Therefore, Mary had but one heart with her Son. We have already said this, but we cannot say it too often! It is the foundation of our devotion to her.

If God said of David, "a man after my own heart," if Paul could proclaim, "I live now, not I, but Christ lives in me," if the early Christians had but one heart and one soul in their mutual charity, then surely, "Although the Heart of Jesus is distinct from that of Mary and surpasses it infinitely in excellence and holiness, yet God has so closely united these two hearts that we may truly say that they are but one heart."(18)

Jesus lives and reigns so intensely in Mary that he is truly the soul of her soul the spirit of her spirit, and the heart of her heart. This is so true that properly speaking, the Heart of Mary is Jesus himself, and consequently when we honor and glorify the Heart of Mary, we honor and glorify Jesus. (19)

Father Eudes then dialogues with us:

All you who are thirsty, come to the source! Hurry! Why do you hesitate? Are you afraid that if you go to the Heart of Mary you diminish in some way the kindness of your redeemer? Are you not aware that Mary is nothing, possesses nothing, and can do nothing except in, through and by Jesus; that is, Jesus is everything in her, that he can do everything and in fact does all things in her? Are you not aware that Jesus not only dwells unceasingly in the Heart of Mary, but is himself the very heart of her heart? Conse-

32 quently, whoever comes to the Heart of Mary comes to Jesus. Whoever honors the Heart of Mary honors Jesus. Whoever prays to the Heart of Mary prays to Jesus.

In Mary is the full realization of the mystery of Christ. She is for us the image of reconciled humanity which has found full communion with God and in consequence full communion with itself. Because Mary is totally transparent to the mystery of Christ, we can look to her, we can admire her, for she is the symbol of humanity in its real fulfillment. "We contemplate in Mary the features of the grace of Christ." It is always Jesus Christ that we contemplate in Mary. As in Mary, the grace of Christ works also in our hearts; that is, there is a relationship between the grace of Christ in Mary and the grace of Christ in us. She is our model, the prototype of the restoration of all humanity by the grace of Christ.(21) John Eudes considered that Mary has a mission towards us too:

This admirable Heart is the exemplar and model of our hearts, and perfection consists in our hearts becoming living images of the Heart of Mary. Moreover, as the Eternal Father gave Mary the power to conceive his Son, first in her heart and then in her virginal womb, he has also given her the power to form him in the hearts of the children of Adam and Eve. Hence Mary participates in the work of our salvation, using this power with an unbelievable love. And just as she has borne and will eternally bear her Son Jesus in her heart, she also bore and will always bear in her heart the members of Jesus, as her children whom she loves and continually offers to God as fruit of her maternal heart. (22)

At the same time, it is always Jesus living in Mary who comes to live in us because grace has completed its task in her. Therefore, "to love and honor Mary as God asks of us we must look on her and adore her Son in her and see and adore therein none but him. For that is how she wishes to be honored since of herself she is nothing. Her Son is everything in her; he is her being, her life, her holiness, her glory, her power, her greatness."(23)

"What union, what intimacy, what understanding, what cor- respondence between these two hearts! What fire in these two furnaces of love constantly inflamed by the breath of the Holy Spirit."(24) So clearly did Father Eudes perceive this union that he began his letters with greetings of this type, "May Jesus, the most holy Heart of Mary, be forever ours!" -- "May Jesus, the most holy Heart of Mary, be your heart, your mind and your strength."

33 Another basis of our devotion to Mary, according to Father Eudes, is that Mary is so loved by God that the first object of the love of the most holy Trinity is the Heart of Mary. The Father loves her as a unique daughter and permits her to participate in his divine paternity, making her the mother of his Son Jesus. He gave his own Son to be her son, her heart, her love, her treasure, her all. The Son loves Mary as a true mother from whom he received a new being and a new life. He gave himself to her as an only son and submitted to her maternal authority. Our devotion to Mary should be like that of Jesus. She is the first object of Jesus' love after his Eternal Father. So, next to God, she should be our principal devotion.(25) Thirdly, Mary enjoys the love of a spouse. John Eudes explained this in prayer form: "...you are love personified, (most Holy Spirit) Eternal Charity, and Mary is the mother of love, a clear mirror of divine charity. That is why you love her so much that you chose her to be your most holy and most worthy spouse."(26)

At the same time, the Blessed Trinity not only loved Mary but imprinted themselves on the Heart of Mary with all their perfections in such a way that they filled her with divine light and divine charity, which could light this divine fire in all the hearts on earth if sin did not interfere.

Then too, like her divine Son who is all attention and self-giving to the Father, the Heart of Mary from the first instant of her life has always been in continuous attention to God. What is lacking in the work and sufferings of Jesus is that their fruit be applied to our souls. It is the Holy Spirit who lights up our darkness, and the Heart of Mary, mother of our Redeemer, is a sun shedding its light and warmth in the world.(27) The Heart of Mary is for us a revelation of the very Heart of Jesus, who gave himself to the Father and to each one of us.(28)

John Eudes' liturgical offices in honor of the Heart of Mary were for him, above all, a means of deepened love. He had sensed that Christian worship is "in spirit and truth" a gift of the heart, that love alone counts. We have intimate personal bonds with Christ and Mary, bonds of the heart. It is in the heart of Christ, in the heart of the Virgin Mary where Christ is all, that the sacrifice of perfect love is offered to God.(29)

DEVOTION AND RESPONSE

What did John Eudes mean by a "devotion"? And, what is our response to so much and so great a love? In what does devotion to

34 the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary consist? Saint John Eudes looked to Saint Thomas Aquinas for a definition. Saint Thomas taught that "devotion is nothing else but the will to give oneself readily to things concerning the service of God."(30)

Our response, therefore, is contemplation on the love of the Sacred Heart of Jesus for his heavenly Father, for his blessed Mother, for all the members of his Church in heaven, on earth and in purgation. This constitutes the deepest foundation of this devotion. Upon this foundation Saint John Eudes built the whole practice of the devotion.

We first consider what the love of God has done for each of us in particular by creating us first of all, then by redeeming us, and by giving us divine grace and the promise of eternal life. It follows that, since the great love of Jesus is manifest especially in his suffering and death on the cross and in the Eucharist, there is a special energy in contemplating this love in and through devotion to the Passion and to the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, and especially through the Eucharistic Sacrifice.

Therefore, true worship of the Heart of Jesus is more than imitation of his virtues, important as that is. For its aim and purpose is, first of all, to inflame our hearts with a reciprocal love for Jesus and to stir up in our souls appropriate acts enlivened by that love.

The four appropriate acts which constitute the practice of the devotion are, firstly, to adore the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The second is to praise, bless, glorify and thank him for his love. The third is to ask pardon for our offenses against his great love and to make reparation. The fourth is to love him in return for all his love and to beg him to establish within our hearts the reign of his holy love.

Since the Sacred Heart of Jesus is the expression of God's love for us, all these acts, which strictly speaking belong to divine worship, have God himself as their object.

However, since they express devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus these acts must necessarily stem from love, its distinctive mark. The phrase "the Sacred Heart of Jesus" means LOVE and should evoke a reciprocal love from our hearts. Similarly, all other acts which form part of the practice of this devotion should flow from LOVE and be imbued with the spirit which LOVE breathes. Acts of dedication, immolation, consecration and reparation are part of the full devotion, each in its proper proportion. But all should be suffused with love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

35 Secondly, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus embraces all the mysteries and states of Christ Jesus in his divine and human life. For each proceeds from the divine Heart burning with love, a love that invites imitation. Therefore, devotion calls for imitation unto identification. "What Jesus lived during his earthly life we must continue. We must complete in ourselves the states and mysteries of Jesus and pray often that he will consummate and accomplish them in us and in the whole Church.''(31)

Our effort will be to live all our daily activities, even the most trivial aspect of our human lives, with our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, in order to commune with the inner sentiments of his heart and glorify him by living his very life. We will become aware that while we are working with and like others in the same time and space, we offer what we are doing and also what all humanity is doing and will do, to his glory, for it all belongs to him.(32)

This will require a certain renunciation and asceticism and will lead eventually to centering prayer and to contemplation. Its simplicity can be very helpful in our busy apostolic lives and draw us more to prayer. This in turn will enrich and fructify our efforts to evangelize others, to draw others to the love of his Heart.

In line with this, the most essential attitude of the Heart of Christ in all his mysteries is his loving obedience. The first act of the Heart of Jesus is his desire for the Father's Will: "To do your will, O my God, is all I desire. I carry your law in the midst of my heart." Therefore, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus calls us to be imbued with the thoughts and inclinations and attitudes of Jesus, until we live his very life. Obedience and patience overcome everything, and our most glorious victory is a victory over our own will to obey the Will of God. We give ourselves readily and generously to the love that is offered us and to do his Will. Saint John Eudes prayed, "May he give to all of you a heart to worship him and to do his Will readily and generously."(33)

Thirdly, the link of love uniting us with our Creator was broken by sin. God has established a new order in which we can be united to him through Jesus. Jesus, the son of Mary, took on all that makes up our life and destiny except sin. Therefore LOVE calls us to renounce all that opposes Jesus and to die to sin. We adhere to him. We let him be formed in us and live in us. We try to perceive him in all things, to recognize him everywhere. "So long as my heart will beat in me, I will preach and write about nothing but Jesus," cried Saint John Eudes. "I want to have neither life nor spirit but to announce the wonders and mercies of his glorious name."(34)

36 Fourthly, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus calls us to continue the mission of Jesus; we must imitate the burning love of the hearts of Jesus and Mary for souls redeemed by the Precious Blood of Jesus, and we must labor zealously for their salvation and sanctification. Saint John Eudes wrote to his sisters: "The particular grace of your vocation is zeal for souls. God has called you to form Jesus in you and through you in the hearts of the faithful. You are called to have Jesus live within you, and through you he will bring sinners back to grace."(35)

Fifthly, devotion to the Heart of Jesus will lead us to imitate Mary, the perfect model of our life in, for, and with Jesus. "The admirable Heart of Mary is the perfect image of the divine Heart of Jesus. It is an example and a model for our hearts. All the happiness, perfection and glory of our hearts consist in making them living images of the holy Heart of Mary as her holy Heart is a perfect portrait of the adorable Heart of Jesus."(36) All devotion and all spirituality achieve their end through Christ, with Christ, in Christ Jesus, who will always be the center of our lives and the focus of our thoughts, words and deeds, as he was for Mary.

Finally, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus means that we live and do all uniquely for LOVE of God in Christ Jesus through the Spirit.

CONCLUSION

John Eudes interpreted his doctrine and devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary through his liturgical worship. He composed fifteen drafts of the Mass in honor of the Heart of Jesus because in Jesus he could see so many facets of luminous beauty. In his uninhibited nature he desired to express adoration of all of them. He passed from admiration of Jesus' interior sentiments, to gratitude for the gift of the Eucharist, to gratitude for the gift of Mary, to compassion for Christ's sufferings, to awe for the priestly prayer of Jesus. All throughout is a predominant note of joyful adoration and desire for an intimate union with Jesus.(37) He had great devotion to the prayer SOUL OF CHRIST composed by Pope John XXII in 1330. He added to it, "Heart of Jesus, purify me, inflame me!"

He considered the adorable heart of our Savior a vast treasure house containing all the infinite riches, merits and fruits of the divine mysteries, graces, toils and sufferings of Jesus, his perfect virtues, and the gifts of the Holy Spirit with which he was fully en-

37 dowed. In short, everything great, rich, precious and admirable in our Creator and his creatures is stored in that incomparable treasure, the Heart of Jesus. And this marvelous treasure belongs to all of us and to each one of us in particular. It depends only on us to take possession of it. The Father of Jesus has given it to us in giving us his Son. The Son of God gives himself to us unceasingly in the Blessed Sacrament. The Holy Spirit imparts this treasure to us incessantly. The Blessed Virgin also gives it to us continually, since she has but one heart and one will with her Son. Her will is bound up in every gift of his.(38)

Each one of us can say with Saint Bernard: "The Heart of Jesus is my heart. What a joy is mine! I am certain that my heart is one with Jesus."(39) Therefore we can offer infinite love, adoration, thanksgiving, praise, reparation, petition and the gift of ourselves through him, with him, in him -- the divine Heart of Jesus, to the Father, to the Adorable Trinity, as well as our gratitude to Mary, to our Guardian Angel, and to our patron saints. We can also satisfy our obligations to our neighbor, and repair our sins and imperfections through the Sacred Heart of Jesus, WHO IS ALL LOVE and who is entirely at our disposal.

Finally, there are no bargaining factors in true devotion to the Heart of Jesus who is our heritage, no magic successes. Love re-quires the sacrifice and self-denial peculiar to LOVE which alone transforms and unifies. Wrote Saint John Eudes:

If we love them (the Hearts of Jesus and Mary) let us love what they love and hate what they hate. Let us have but one heart with them, a heart detesting what they detest, that is, sin, especially the sins against charity, humility and purity. And let us have a heart that loves what they love, particularly the poor, all Christian virtues, and trials. O Mother of goodness, obtain for us these graces from your Son!(40)

The mystical-theological elements in John Eudes' devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus have caused it to be considered a devotion for scholars, theologians, contemplatives and mystics. Therefore it has never been very popular. In reality, his devotion brings us ever deeper into the INWARDNESS of Jesus and thus makes our spiritual life increasingly interior. Eventually it leads us to the MUTUAL INTERIORlTY Jesus offers us, "Dwell in me as I dwell in you." (Jn 15,4) John Eudes expressed this in his original Mass and Office:

38 My heart is all charity,' whoever remains in charity lives in my heart and my heart lives in them.

By faithfully living this devotion we will experience a gradual transformation in our heart, our heart being our inmost self, our thoughts, our feelings, our emotions, our attitudes. And the prayer of Jesus will become a reality:

May they be one in us, Father, as you in me and I in you. May they be one in us. (Jn 17,21)

Chapter III

DEVOTION TO THE HEARTS OF JESUS AND MARY IN THE SPIRITUALITY OF SAINT MARY EUPHRASIA

"Jesus the Good Shepherd is the divine Original we must strive to reproduce"

"Devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to the Blessed Virgin, are three inseparable devotions we should lovingly cultivate"

Saint Mary Euphrasia

INTRODUCTION

We Good Shepherd Sisters have always associated devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary with our Vow of Zeal. In his founding book, the Constitutions of the Order of Our Lady of Charity, John Eudes declared, "The characteristic and special aim of the sisters is to imitate as far as possible with the help of divine grace the ardent charity with which the loving Hearts of Jesus and Mary are inflamed towards souls created to the image of God and redeemed by the Precious Blood of his Son."(1)

Saint Mary Euphrasia had maintained this fundamental constitution, and we retained it in abridged form until the 1969 edition of our Good Shepherd constitutions. At that time we followed recommendations of the Second Vatican Council. The Council had urged a radical return to the gospel and to the spirit and intention of our foundress, and that we harmonize these with our changing times. The Holy Spirit was creating something new. We were to drop customs and practices which were no longer viable, while maintaining our sound traditions. Therefore, these 1969 constitutions offered us a SPIRIT, rather than any direct teaching, of our foundress.(2)

41 This is continued in our 1985 edition:

The vow of zeal gives a special dynamism to our life of consecration for mission. This gift takes its origin from the Heart of Jesus and Mary whose love reaches out, saves, and restores to dignity... We find inspiration and guidance for our mission in sacred scripture and in the teachings of Saint John Eudes and Saint Mary Euphrasia. Like them, we draw our spirit of zeal from the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. It is an evangelical spirit of welcome, kindness, understanding and loving service which gives witness to the value of each person. (3)

The reference to the teaching of Saint John Eudes in this context may well refer to the OBJECT AND AIM of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which we have reflected upon. The constitutions spell out the evangelical spirit of zeal typical of the Good Shepherd and reflect the teaching of Saint Mary Euphrasia in these words,

Jesus the Good Shepherd has called us to live in union with him and continue his redemptive mission in the Church ...Having personally experienced mercy, we are to be a presence of Jesus the Good Shepherd. . . Our relationship with those we meet should be for them a means of encounter with the Good Shepherd. We seek to approach them as he does. Our love should awaken in them a sense of their worth and dignity as children of God. . . Like our foundress, we are to be consumed with the compassion and zeal of Jesus the Good Shepherd ... Like her, our zeal must embrace the whole world. (4,.)

We have noted that one aspect of devotion is imitation unto identification, through contemplation and asceticism. This especially en- tails imaging Jesus the Good Shepherd. Likewise, we acknowledge that we are together in community for our ecclesial mission.(5) Consequently, our prayer together becomes a third inseparable element.

The celebration of the Eucharist is our principal prayer and the center of our life. We unite ourselves daily to Christ in his redemptive sacrifice as he offers himself to the glory of the Father. Our participation in this gift of God's redeeming love enables us to extend our zeal to all the world. We express our faith in the abiding presence of Christ in the Eucharist by our adoration and contempla-

42 tion of the Blessed Sacrament, which occupies a privileged place in our house. (6)

This reflects the teaching of Saint Mary Euphrasia and her profound intuition of the meaning of the Blessed Sacrament, of the Eucharist in our lives and mission, as we shall see later.

We rightly hold that ours is a Good Shepherd spirituality, deriving from Jesus the Good Shepherd of the gospel, in whom our foundress discerned, both mystically and historically, her living charism. By striving to live her spirituality we aim to shape our minds, hearts and wills into the Good Shepherd's way of thinking, loving, acting. We want to imitate his zeal for the Father's glory by cooperating in the salvation of souls created in God's image and likeness. We try to imitate his compassion through our humble service towards all, preferentially the downgraded and burdened. Thus, we unburden the heart of the Good Shepherd and share in his own burning zeal and infinite mercy for souls. Such are our charisms--Zeal and the Mercy of Jesus the Good Shepherd.

Does this imply that there is a substantial difference between the doctrine of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus preached by John Eudes and that expressed by Saint Mary Euphrasia and left to us by her? The difference, if there is any, is in developments the Holy Spirit brings about as he produces new insights or renewed intimations into the riches of Christ Jesus, according to the needs of God's people in our changing times.

In reality all the lovers of Jesus we have mentioned--Saint Margaret Mary, the earlier Saints Gertrude, Mechtilde, Bonaventure, Bernard, Francis de Sales, and many other saints--point to the same Heart of Christ Jesus as did David and Isaiah, Saint Paul and Saint John the Evangelist. It is the same Heart of the same Christ Jesus. But each one proclaimed him in a personal way, as the Spirit gave personal insights into the unfathomable riches of his Heart. This does not divide Christ Jesus. All these apostles of the God-Man reveal him in his integrity; however, each one does so in his or her own personal way.

To understand devotion to the Sacred Heart in Mary Euphrasia's spiritual life we must try to understand the workings of the Spirit in her life. Divine Providence gave her to our world immediately after the French Revolution. In childhood she lived through the Reign of Terror and imbibed the deep Christian faith of her island home, in which figured devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. From

43 childhood she was an avid reader of scripture. At her First Communion, when eleven years old, Rose felt called to follow Jesus. She already was drawn to him in the sacrament of his love. At school, at twelve years of age, she recited by heart the passion of Jesus according to the four evangelists and received as prize a booklet on devotion to the Blessed Sacrament by Alphonsus Liguori, which she treasured even as a religious of Our Lady of Charity.

In young adulthood, Rose experienced stirrings in France, as was true all over Europe, of a powerful leaven for spiritual, apostolic and ecclesial renewal. Despite the fact that large segments of society remained hostile or indifferent to religion, by 1850 spiritual renewal was well on its way. Rose was a product of these times. Devotion to the Sacred Heart, the Eucharist, and to Mary developed in her as she grew in age and in grace. One year after her admission to Our Lady of Charity, her confessor witnessed that he found her already far advanced in the spiritual life and deep in the shadow of the cross. She was then only nineteen, but she was experiencing the first dark night of the spiritual life. The Holy Spirit was active in her soul.

Rose was molded in compassion from childhood. Suffering and misery were all around her. Her parents opened their hearts and arms and home to the poor and the suffering. Rose's own life was marked by deaths, separations and detachments from the known and loved,--for the unknown. Compassion became natural to her and prepared her for the charism of MERCY the Holy Spirit conferred on her.

At the early age of seventeen, Rose experienced ZEAL as a gift. While listening to a conference on ZEAL FOR THE SAL V A TION OF SOULS, the Spirit touched her and the flame in her heart moved her powerfully to immediate action for young people in danger of losing their souls. She declared years later that this was the origin of her special vocation. These virtues and gifts were especially related to Jesus the Good Shepherd, whose Heart vibrated with compassion and zeal.

Other factors certainly influenced the development of her spirituality. Among them were: the formation she received from her Christian parents and the heroic times in which they lived; her personality--very open to the spiritual and social needs of her con- temporaries; her keen awareness of a special vocation and mission and of the trends and values of her times. These were enhanced and enlivened by contemplation on the scriptures, an intense prayer life and mystical experiences.

44 DEVELOPMENT OF DEVOTION TO THE HEART OF JESUS IN OUR FOUNDRESS' RELIGIOUS LIFE

One of Saint Mary Euphrasia's biographers, Father Georges CJM, declared that the heritage of devotion to the Heart of Jesus which she left us must be broadly understood. She did not limit herself to one title in expressing her love and devotion.(7) As a candidate and young sister at Our Lady of Charity in Tours, she imbibed the doctrine of John Eudes. This she passed on to her daughters of the Good Shepherd, together with her own insights. Although as foundress of the Good Shepherd Congregation Mary Euphrasia had been cut off from the Eudists and Our Lady of Charity, she nevertheless remained true to her heritage from them, bringing to it her own inspiration--the Heart of the Good Shepherd as our model.(8)

There is only one Heart of Jesus. The Heart of Jesus is LOVE. All of the threefold, flaming, divine-human love John Eudes had discovered in the Heart of Jesus, Mary Euphrasia discovered incarnated, embodied, personified in Jesus the Good Shepherd of the gospel. Jesus had experienced ABBA as the shepherd compassionating his people in their distress. He had understood that he was sent to reveal this merciful Heart of God by being this Good Shepherd. The people of Mary Euphrasia's time needed the compassionate Heart of God. They were being fed on his wrath.(9) Saint Mary Euphrasia became the apostle of the merciful love of God, incarnate in the Good Shepherd, for them.

At the same time, several historical developments confirmed her insight and her direction of devotion. First of all, she was called to re- create a Good Shepherd home destroyed by the revolution. Secondly, during the spiritual and social revival, in which Mary Euphrasia was deeply involved, the liturgical renewal had levelled all devotions to those approved for the universal Church and discarded those particular to special groups such as religious. Mary Euphrasia had been obliged to submit her congregation's devotions to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Mary to scrutinators at Rome, who did not judge them favorably. The consultors charged to examine them declared, "The two Offices of the Heart of Jesus and Mary differ completely from those approved by the Holy See. They also contain equivocal expressions which cannot be considered in accord with a healthy philosophy of devotion. The texts of scripture, arbitrarily interpreted, must be omitted. In a word, these documents require too many corrections."(10)

Thirdly, being deprived of the devotional compositions of Saint John Eudes, Mary Euphrasia entered into the movement of

45 liturgical unity and followed the form of devotion recommended by the Church. However she did not abandon the original SPIRIT, the AIM AND OBJECT of the devotion defined by John Eudes. She had already discovered the Heart of Jesus in the Good Shepherd; she solemnized the Sunday feast of the Good Shepherd and that of Our Lady, Mother of the Good Shepherd, a symbol of which already appeared in her 1836 constitutions.(11) Her great love for souls and zeal for their salvation found expression and stimulus in her devotion to the Heart of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. She taught that Jesus is LOVE. Whether we consider him in his birth, on the cross, or in the Eucharist, the gift of himself to us can only be explained by his LOVE. Only love can make any sense of his total self-giving, and this calls for a response of LOVE on our part. Devotion to Jesus is marked by LOVE.

This same love is the source of our foundress' life and activity. The many foundations across the world, the struggles and trials she had to face, the generalate which was for her a means of reaching many more souls and of realizing her apostolic dreams, were all the outcome of her great love for God and for souls, and her insatiable desire that they be saved. Her love led her to sacrifice everything and anything that came between her and their well-being.(12) She reflected the love of Jesus the Good Shepherd to everyone. She declared that our congregation was born of this love only, for she herself possessed no special talents or gifts; only love brought it into being.(13)

Fourthly, the revival also led to an increased devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and more frequent communion, which was already special to Mary Euphrasia and her congregation. At the same time, the powerful doctrinal movement which urged devotion to Mary led to the proclamation in 1854 of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. At three different times the Virgin Mary openly addressed herself to different people during Mary Euphrasia's lifetime: July 18, 1830, to Catherine Laboure; September 19, 1849, to the two children of LaSalette; February 11, 1858, to Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes. In addition, the Ratisbonne brothers(14) received the grace of conversion through Mary in 1842. This event greatly impressed Mary Euphrasia, involving as it did both Mary and the Eucharist.

A fifth effect of this spiritual revival was a change in attitudes and orientations, such as the growing importance of the role taken by the laity in the Church on both a practical and a spiritual level. The Church became more communitarian, in reaction to an ex-

46 cessive individual piety of the past. In addition, contacts with other religions and faiths brought about many conversions to the Catholic Church. Especially after 1848, centers of ecumenism sprang up in Germany, England and France.(15) Mary Euphrasia herself was considered a prophet of the universality of the Church and of ecumenism, because she reached out to peoples of all races, religions and countries.(16) "The Good Shepherd does not want even one of God's children to be lost in the chaos of the times" was one of her favorite quotes.

All of this favored Mary Euphrasia's personal insights, fostered her devotions, and broadened her possibilities of spreading the zeal and compassion of the Good Shepherd for souls. At the same time, through the approval of the generalate and our congregation, it extended her horizons to world-wide dimensions in keeping with her broadness of vision and open personality.

Incidentally, in spite of many missionaries from Europe, the United States was less impacted by these orientations and devotions. Its history was briefer, its people at a different phase of development, its boundaries more isolated. The courageous sisters who were sent to its shores in 1842 by Saint Mary Euphrasia were from five European countries, still very Christian in outlook. These sisters had experienced a renewal of faith in their own countries. They brought with them Saint Mary Euphrasia's spirituality and passed it on to the sisters who joined and followed them. This spirit has kept us alive, vigorous and creative, more ready to meet new situations.

WHAT SAINT MARY EUPHRASIA MEANT BY DEVOTION

Mary Euphrasia taught her daughters that devotion is a relationship of love which requires an appropriate and adequate expression by those enjoying this relationship. She said, "The feast of the Sacred Heart is uniquely the feast of love, for love flows from the heart. And love calls for a response of love."(17) Besides the Eucharistic Sacrifice which she considered the one adequate response, Mary Euphrasia reminded us that our Savior was pleased to make known his desires for a personal response from us. That is, he requested that on the day dedicated to his Sacred Heart we offer him amends and reparation for sin. Mary Euphrasia added, "Let us not fail to do this, my dear daughters. Let us gather a treasure of loving sacrifices and lay it in the sanctuary of his blessed Heart."(18) Of course, the Mass is the act of reparation par excellence, but

47 reparation emphasizes our participation in the redemptive love of the Sacred Heart.

Reparation is also prayer, whose words pledge a change of heart and a willingness to work at that change. It is denial of self and its pleasures in order to help ourselves and others grow. It is acting justly and righting injustices. Reparation leads to true reconciliation with God and with our brothers and sisters.

Our foundress does not confine our devotion to acts of love and reparation. We draw light and power for our mission from the Hearts of Jesus and Mary:

It is from the Heart of Jesus that you will draw esteem and love of the virtues you should practice, and especially those related to your vow of zeal. ., You will read in our books that you must often seek from the Divine Heart of Jesus, source of all holiness, the prudence and the gentleness necessary in your mission, remembering always the words of Saint Peter that souls were not redeemed with gold and silver, but with the Precious Blood of Christ Jesus. (19)

As soon as her daughters were given a position of service to others, she suggested that they place their mission in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary and resolve to have recourse very often to these blessed Hearts.(20)

At the same time, Mary Euphrasia considered the Heart of Jesus to be a refuge for us, a dwelling place where we can withdraw in our difficult moments. We will find there a glowing furnace whose flames will warm and inflame our own heart. "Dwell in this divine Heart where you will find an ineffable peace and more than you can ever hope for."(21) And:

Let us do like the dove who, cooing softly, withdraws into the cleft of the rock from all trouble. Our cleft is the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Our troubles are the pain, anguish and temptations which assail our minds and hearts. Let us be inflamed with love for the adorable Heart of our Savior. Let us not fear to ask Him all we desire, for he is an inextinguishable furnace of grace. If we were granted to experience one only ray of this divine fire, the sun would seem dark to us, and the most lively flames would seem like icicles. Let us do a holy violence to the Heart, so good and so

48 generous, of our Savior. We will infallibly be granted what we desire. (22)

MARY EUPHRASIA'S PRACTICAL EXPRESSION OF THESE DEVOTIONS

Characteristic of Saint Mary Euphrasia was her freedom in the titles she used. She did not restrict herself to only one name for her devotions. At times she mentioned the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Heart of Mary together, at times singly, and again she simply referred to Jesus and to Mary, or again, to the Good Shepherd. Her biographers write that her horizons were unlimited, as also were her devotions. In fact, in the Process of her canonization, the Heart of Jesus is not mentioned among her primary devotions. Mentioned are the Divine Persons of the Blessed Trinity, the Incarnation--the whole life and pascal mystery of Jesus--the Eucharist, the Holy Family and Our Lady. All feasts and mysteries of Jesus commemorated throughout the liturgical year filled her great soul with new vigor and love, and she celebrated them with joy and en- thusiasm.

With regard to devotion to the Heart of Mary, Mary Euphrasia invoked and celebrated Mary under all the titles used in the Church, as well as many others of her own creation.(23) For example, in 1847, with her sisters she declared Mary our foundress and superior general and celebrated this as a feast on January first each year thereafter. She honored Mary's Immaculate Conception many years before the definition of the dogma in 1854. Her first biographer wrote, "Her life of devotion to the Queen of Heaven finds a parallel only in the devotion and writings of the greatest servants of Mary-¬Saint Bernard, Bossuet and Saint Alphonsus Liguori...and few women have propagated practical devotion to our Blessed Lady with so much ardor and confidence as Mother Pelletier."(24)

"When she prayed to Mary her fervor was contagious. She said the AVE MARIA as no one else could. She had great devotion to the rosary of Mary." And "She loved to celebrate the month of Mary…"She herself declared that when she heard the sisters and children singing and praying to Mary she would feel an ecstasy of joy. "I am convinced that by your prayers and your fervor...you have merited great graces for our beloved institute. I will even say you have taken the Hearts of Jesus and Mary by storm and obtained for us the grace we desire."(25)

49 The sisters had the practice of laying their document of assignment to a new foundation before Mary's statue in the community room, to symbolize their obedience and the readiness of their zeal, and also to ask Mary's assistance and guidance. In times of dire necessity they would organize a perpetual living rosary in the various departments of the house; Mary always provided for their needs. Mary Euphrasia herself often felt directed by Our Lady so clearly and authoritatively that she could not doubt Mary's desires in regard to certain foundations.(26)

50 A TRILOGY: MARY, THE HEART OF JESUS, THE BLESSED SACRAMENT

THE SACRED HEART IN THE EUCHARIST, THE CHURCH, OUR MISSION

This brings us to another important aspect of our foundress' devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary and to her very personal expression of it. Father Georges writes that Mary drew her to the Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. "We can see that Mary Euphrasia's devotion to the Eucharist is the fruit of her Marian devotion."(27) From her childhood Mary Euphrasia had a tender devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. In her conference on "THREE INSEPARABLE DEVOTIONS" she linked devotion to Mary and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. "Devotion to our Lord Jesus Christ and devotion to Mary are intimately united. The more one loves Christ Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament the more one also loves Mary. The more one loves Mary, the more one loves Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament." Mary's heart is united with her Son. "As long as we continue his mission, Mary will share the zeal and compassion of her heart with us. Her desire is greater than ours to be with us in giving Jesus to souls, and in forming Jesus in our own hearts. Mary always leads us to Jesus." She counseled us to base our devotion to Mary on devotion to the Blessed Sacrament. "At the feet of Jesus Christ, whom you should strive to imitate, you will learn the true way of honoring the Blessed Virgin...to whom, as you know, he paid so much honor himself."(28)

Indicative of how humanly and closely Saint Mary Euphrasia united the Heart of Mary with Jesus in the Eucharist was her creation of the TREASURY OF MARY'S HEART in 1851. The scope of the Treasury was to honor Mary by providing for divine worship in the more needy chapels of our congregation. To be enrolled in it one paid ten francs annually. Lay persons, priests, religious, even children were invited to enroIl. Our own sisters would do extra hand-work and offer the proceeds to the Treasury. Saint Mary Euphrasia was very careful never to touch this fund for other needs, although the sisters would often tease her to do so.(28) Devotion to Mary is a preparation for devotion to the Heart of Jesus.

The month of Mary should be a preparation for the month of June, the month dedicated to the Sacred Heart. Many feasts fall during these two months...among them the feasts of Corpus Christi and of the Sacred Heart. Feasts succeed each other, each one bringing joy to our souls, re-

51 animating us and filling us with devout aspirations. The feast of the Sacred Heart is in very truth the feast of love, because love springs from the heart... We must celebrate this month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus with unequalled fervor. (29)

In line with her teaching, Mary Euphrasia would invite the girls to prayer services held in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and she would give them short retreats on this devotion. She declared that she herself "often knelt before the Blessed Sacrament and prayed earnestly to the Heart of Jesus for them."(30)

Indeed Mary Euphrasia was very free in the expression of her devotions. She spoke of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, of Jesus the Good Shepherd. Each title seemed to signify a deep mystery of the one Person, the God-Man, but at the same time to signify the whole mystery of Christ Jesus, Son of God, son of Mary. In reality, Mary Euphrasia's devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus was not devotion to one of his mysteries, but to the totality of his love, in that LOVE wherein all his mysteries find their deepest meaning. Therefore, Mary Euphrasia envisioned her devotion to the Heart of Jesus in the Good Shepherd of the gospel and expressed this through her adoration, praise and thanksgiving in his Eucharistic presence. "Our love for the Blessed Sacrament should be carried to the highest degree. The highest degree of love is adoration which in silence prays and admires the greatness of our hidden God. Oh! how beautiful the prayer of the soul who silently listens to Jesus!" And, "Here is no longer a figure, but the reality!"(31)

Father Georges clarifies this somewhat. "Through her ardent and enlightened piety Mary Euphrasia found the Sacred Heart of Jesus, her light and her life, in his divine and ineffable reality in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. In speaking of the reality of the presence of our Lord, her heart would become inflamed, her words warm and tender, penetrating and irresistible."(32) And in her Conferences we read,

The Blessed Sacrament is our life, our love, the first object of our adoration... Yes, my dear daughters, this blessed abode where you possess the God of your hearts should be very dear to you. You live under his eyes, you enjoy his presence. You rest secure under his protection. You dwell under the same roof with him. This is nearly heaven on earth! ...I assure you, my dear daughters, that with the

52 Blessed Sacrament and souls to save I have a foretaste of eternal happiness. (33)

How very real the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament was to Mary Euphrasia! It was her expectation that this presence inspire our lives and activities. She stated earlier, "A community that cultivates this consoling devotion (to the Blessed Sacrament) and lives in mutual charity is a paradise on earth."(34)

The Son of God... the very source of all sanctity, has deigned to remain with us always present in the Blessed Sacrament…To speak to you of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is to speak of all that is most sacred, all that is most to be revered. All that is most holy and most solemn in whatever feast we celebrate is contained in the Holy Eucharist, in the Divine Sacrifice.(35)

A characteristic of the devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, its interiority, also marks Saint Mary Euphrasia's devotion to the Blessed Sacrament:

Since we cannot always be present before the Blessed Sacrament, owing to our busy life for souls, let us remember that the worship of the Blessed Sacrament is chiefly interior. That is, let us keep in the depths of our hearts a constant and uninterrupted profound adoration of this precious pledge of divine love.(36)

A recent author has declared, "In the nineteenth century it was very rare to find writings or pious books or teaching on the Blessed Sacrament like that of Saint Mary Euphrasia!"(37)

All Mary Euphrasia's sublime meditations meld with her mission. She states:

The little lamp is also a source of comfort to me… It leads me to many reflective moments. It sheds its light while its flame rises heavenward. This represents the zeal we should have to enlighten souls needing our care and guidance, and the zeal with which we should burn to bring all to love God... When the flame is flickering and uncertain, I think of our fears, doubts, weaknesses and troubles, which would depress us were it not for his help. The oil which is consumed in keeping the lamp alight makes me think of the charity and spirit of sacrifice which should animate us

53 even to giving our life if need be for the salvation of souls.... (38)

In the one chapter of her CONFERENCES where Mary Euphrasia unites these three devotions she exhorts us to enkindle in our hearts "a love for the adorable Heart of our Lord. Ask him for all you desire. Remember that his Heart is an inextinguishable furnace of grace...Let us plunge our souls into the Sacred Heart of Jesus as into a spiritual fountain, and they will come forth purified and without spot."(39)

Mary Euphrasia warned us that in times of unrest and heresy, worship of the Blessed Sacrament and devotion to Mary are the first to be attacked:

And what efforts have been made by the powers of dark-ness to prevent the private and public worship devout souls desire to render to the Sacred Heart of Jesus...Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is as it were the completion, the perfection of devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, or rather the two devotions are so linked together that they cannot be separated. For whoever loves and honors Jesus Christ in the sacrament of his love cannot fail also to love and honor his Heart, the seat of the great love he shows us in the Blessed Sacrament I will sum up as follows what I have been saying: devotion to the Blessed Sacrament, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, devotion to the Blessed Virgin are three inseparable devotions we should lovingly cultivate, and which will insure the perfection of the good works we have undertaken, as well as our eternal happiness.(40)

Father Georges gives yet another insight into her depth of faith in devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. He writes, "The Jesus she found through his adorable Heart in the cenacle of the tabernacle is, in her own terms, the same Jesus she found in another cenacle, that of the Church. The Sacred Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist is the Heart of the Church. Therefore she loved the Church with all the love she bore for Christ Jesus himself."(41)

She told us the Church has perpetuated the Eucharist for us. The Church has kept the Blessed Sacrament for our strength and joy and comfort. Jesus himself is the head of the Church. As usual, Mary Euphrasia's thoughts connect Church and mission; God's second gift to the Church is the sublime mission of shepherding souls. The

54 Church has accepted us as cooperators in her mission. We are sent by the Church as apostles to save souls and thus participate in the mission of Jesus, the Shepherd-God whose Heart still beats and burns with infinite love in the Eucharist.

DEVOTION BECOMES IMITATION OF JESUS GOOD SHEPHERD

Our foundress readily spoke to her daughters of these two devotions, the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, in connection with imitation of Jesus Good Shepherd. She considered the feast of the Good Shepherd our feast par excellence, our primary feast, our principal feast.(42) She had discerned her personal charism in Jesus the Good Shepherd of the gospel. By her whole life she witnessed to the zeal and compassion of his heart to such a degree that she was known in her time as "the image of a merciful God who loves and saves."(43) The God who loves and saves is the God of the prophets of the Old Testament personified in Jesus the Good Shepherd of the new covenant, our Eucharistic Lord. The dominant themes of Jesus are: "I am the Bread of Life"; "I am the Good Shepherd." In the Eucharist he continues to feed and to give his life for his sheep. The Good Shepherd of the gospel is our model of BECOMING and of our relationships with those to whom we are sent.

Jesus the Good Shepherd is the divine original we must strive to reproduce in our conduct. We must endeavor to form ourselves in the spirit of this adorable Master and live his very life... We must strive to have the thoughts, the sentiments and the affections of Jesus the Good Shepherd, and become his living reflection... We must imitate the sacrifice, the charity and the zeal of Jesus himself... He has chosen us, he has associated us with his mission to the nations that we may bear fruit. But what fruit? Fruits of conversion and of salvation...As long as you remain in this holy employment you will be the true daughters of the holy Heart of the Mother of God…(44)

Therefore, the Heart of Jesus the Good Shepherd in the Eucharist is a personal insight of Saint Mary Euphrasia into the unfathomable riches of the Heart of God.

This personal aspect of Mary Euphrasia's devotion to the Heart of Christ, expressed through devotion to the Eucharist and imitation of the Good Shepherd, was particularly shared by one of her

55 daughters, Blessed Maria Droste zu Vischering, a noblewoman from Westphalia who went as missionary to our province of Portugal and died there in 1899.

Blessed Maria never separated the Sacred Heart of Jesus from the Eucharist. After she wrote to Pope Leo XIII that the Sacred Heart desired "all the people of the whole world, not only Catholics, be consecrated to his Sacred Heart," there was a stir among theologians to discover if the Pope had the right to consecrate all peoples to the Heart of Christ. Pope Leo XIII had received her request in January, 1899, and the consecration of the human race to the Sacred Heart of Jesus took place solemnly around the world after a triduum of preparation on June 11,1899. Just enough time to get the news around! Maria had died three days previously, knowing that her MISSION was accomplished.

A prayer composed by Blessed Maria gives insight into the meaning of her devotion:

My most loving Jesus, I consecrate myself anew today and without reserve to your Divine Heart. To you I consecrate my body with all its senses, my soul with all its faculties, and my whole being. To you I consecrate all my thoughts, words and works, all my sufferings and labors, all my hopes, consolations and joys. And chiefly I consecrate to you my poor heart that I may love you and be consumed as a victim in the flames of your love....

Dispose of me, O Divine Heart of Jesus, according to your good pleasure. I desire no other recompense than your greater glory and your holy love. Grant me the grace to find in your most Sacred Heart my dwelling place. There I desire to pass each day of my life. There I wish to breathe forth my last sigh. Make my heart your abode, the place of your repose, that so we may remain intimately united until one day I may praise, love and possess you for all eternity, and sing forever the infinite mercies of your most Sacred Heart.

In the meantime, grant me to welcome with compassion the poor, the oppressed, the rejected, those in danger, and grant me to lead them all to you, the Good Shepherd. Amen.

Through her devotion to the Sacred Heart in the Eucharist and

56 her life of dedication to souls, Maria Droste witnessed to the extent to which the love of God can make us capable of sacrifice and labor for the salvation of others. Persons of all ranks and conditions of life found their way to her for help and counsel.

Maria found that her devotion to the Sacred Heart in the Blessed Sacrament aided her in living the spirit of our institute, that is, in living our apostolic commitment in a contemplative stance. She taught the sisters that the inner life of union with our Divine Spouse should be the moving principle of our active life:

Believe me, my dear sisters, it is quite possible to lead a life of labor and exterior occupation and at the same time live a wholly spiritual one, united to God. He is always with us, and to find him we have only to retire into our own hearts. Accustom yourself to make of your heart a mystic temple where you will always find the Beloved of your soul. Fix your eyes on Jesus, never lose sight of him. He will say to us as he said to St. Catherine of Siena, 'Think of me and I will think of you. '

To be united to God it is not necessary to say long prayers or to put aside our occupations. A thought, a simple look at the God of goodness is sufficient to maintain union...Love will draw us to desire always to pour out our sentiments of adoration and praise... but we cannot always be before the Blessed Sacrament. However, in the midst of the most distracting occupations and communication with others, we can always keep the solitude of our heart. (45)

Her sisters declared that Maria's characteristic virtue was great zeal for the salvation of souls, which made her a true daughter of our foundress. She had special predilection for the most unfortunate and forsaken. She declared that nothing would shorten her life more effectively than to be restricted in what concerns the salvation of souls.(46)

Maria explained to her sisters that the object of our devotion IS the Sacred Heart of Jesus filled with love for us. The theological aspects of the devotion, according to Maria, are that our sweet Savior took a human heart, uniting himself to our humanity. His human nature united to the divine is the object of our adoration, as is his adorable body. His Sacred Heart then is adored and venerated by us, that human heart which throbbed for us during thirty-three years. We venerate the infinite charity with which he burned for us,

57 for the heart is the special seat of LOVE. "His Heart is a furnace of ardent love, an ocean of mercy...And how can we speak of the Blessed Sacrament? No human language can express the depth of this ineffable mystery of love."

Let us keep ourselves united to the Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament all through the day, by prayer and re-collection, by silence, by patience, in the midst of difficulties and sufferings and perplexities, and by devotedness to those we serve...Devotion to the Sacred Heart is a return of love for the great love of God in the Heart of our Eucharistic Lord. He asks us for a generous unselfish love ...Let us give him al~ for he has given himself totally to us. (47)

In her suffering she exclaimed, "Should not the bride follow her divine Bridegroom, and where will he be more surely found than in the way of the cross and in the labors of the Good Shepherd life?" (48)

58 CONCLUSION

In the expression of her devotion, that is, of her love relationship with her divine Spouse, Saint Mary Euphrasia was not concerned about theological speculation. Her teaching, however, clearly indicates that she was aware of theological distinctions in devotions to the ineffable mysteries of Christ Jesus, particularly devotion to the Heart of Jesus and to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. Therefore, although our foundress linked these devotions, she did not synthesize them, nor did she consider or teach that one excludes the other. She felt free enough to follow the lead of the Spirit and to let others do likewise.

Her approach and her exposure are simple and clear: the Sacred Heart of Jesus is LOVE, that everlasting flame of love, human and divine, for the Father and for us. The intensity and urgency of this love is beyond our comprehension. The Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist is the privileged forum where we NOW find the Heart of Jesus LIVING AND LOVING, the same forever I Mary Euphrasia's joy was to be able to pour out her whole soul in silent adoration and thanksgiving, sorrow and love before him. In Holy Communion Jesus is the BREAD OF LIFE; in Holy Communion her heart became one with his and they shared their secrets: his, the Good Shepherd anguishing for the lost sheep; hers, poor and humble but aflame with zeal to bring the whole world to his Heart. "For love is of the heart!"

The Heart of Jesus, that is, the human and divine LOVE of Jesus, is among us as the Good Shepherd of the gospel. The Heart of the Good Shepherd was Mary Euphrasia's model. Through zeal and courageous effort she thought with the mind of Christ; his attitudes and his compassionate heart for his sheep became her very own. Through the transforming and identifying action of the Spirit and her own fidelity in love, she became with Mary his living image to others.

Our foundress taught us to model our lives on Jesus the Good Shepherd of the gospel. He is our meditation, he is our pattern of becoming and of doing for others. In a word, he is our way of asceticism. In the Eucharist the Good Shepherd is our food and our strength and our light. In Holy Communion Jesus teaches us and transforms us. There we are strengthened in our efforts to shape ourselves in the zeal and compassion of the Good Shepherd, to take on his way of thinking, of loving, of relating and of acting, and to learn how to draw forth the innate splendor of each of his children. In the Eucharist Jesus continues to give his life and to teach us how

59 to give our lives for his lambs and his sheep. There we come to love what he loves and to hate what he hates -- sin.

Saint Mary Euphrasia's life and that of Blessed Maria were both characterized by spiritual devotion and devotion to mission. It was a dual love for both of them--a personal effective love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus and his gift of himself in the Blessed Sacrament, and a loving, effective modeling Jesus the Good Shepherd of the gospel in his BEING and in HIS ACTIVE MISSION of giving his life for his sheep. In both our foundress and Blessed Maria the tradition is constant; that is, there is a link between devotion to the Heart of the Good Shepherd in the Eucharist and our mission of ZEAL FOR SOULS.

Both our foundress and Blessed Maria had a child-like devotion to Mary. Mary always leads us to Jesus! Just as Mary remained at the foot of the cross of Jesus, there is a sense in which Mary remains always in the Eucharist where Jesus gives us his life. It is there her heart shares with us her love for Jesus, her zeal and compassion for his brothers and sisters and for us. We are her children being formed into Jesus Good Shepherd, for the glory of the Blessed Trinity and our own happiness.

This, in brief, makes up the broad and realistic vision of the DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS AND THE IM¬MACULATE HEART OF MARY in our Good Shepherd spirituality. The broadening gospel orientation, which identifies devotion in the Good Shepherd Congregation, is the way in which the Holy Spirit personalizes and diversifies his gifts in order to create or re-create a new awareness of God's love for us. In Mary Euphrasia's time, emphasis was on God's justice and wrath. Justice without mercy usually becomes anger and wrath. Saint Mary Euphrasia lived and left us the image of God's merciful love, Jesus the Good Shepherd, and so bequeathed us our Good Shepherd spirituality and our practical philosophy of service to others.

This is a spirituality which can permeate all of life--the homey, the happy, the burdensome details as well as our noble intentions, our prayer, and our full apostolic dedication. A spirituality for all of us. Saint Mary Euphrasia lived it for seventy-two years and Maria Droste zu Vischering a brief thirty-six summers. Both excelled in it. And thousands of Good Shepherd Sisters, both active and contemplative, have been living this precious heritage over one hundred and fifty years.

Rose Virginie Pelletier

Chapter IV

DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS TODAY

"I want devotion to his Heart, concealed within the sacrament of love, to be the measure of all my spiritual progress" Pope John XXIII

SAINT JOHN EUDES AND SAINT MARY EUPHRASIA

All the various approaches to devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary are as movements of the Holy Spirit, deepening and broadening our insights into the boundless mystery which is Christ Jesus. Saint John Eudes, as initiator of public worship of the Heart of Jesus, must rejoice in heaven that this Heart is loved, adored, praised and thanked, even though not always according to his vision. His desire was that the infinite divine-human love of Christ Jesus be recognized and honored in its three-fold fulness, and that we live in this love and be transformed by it. Saint Mary Euphrasia grasped his vision. She constantly cultivated devotion to the Sacred Heart. She was led by the Spirit to objectify it in the Good Shepherd of the gospel and in his Eucharistic reality . Was it her feminine sensitivity that opened her to this tangible and loving vision of the heart of the Shepherd-God in his permanence with us? She perceived the fine theological difference between devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to the Eucharistic gift of himself, yet experienced these two devotions as integral to one another, and devotion to Mary as inseparable from these.

Other lovers of the Heart of Jesus have presented the devotion according to their graced insights, for the Heart of Christ is an infinitely splendored mystery. All seventeen popes since Clement XIII (1758- 1769) have approved and encouraged devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Closer to us, Leo XIII declared the devotion

62 "a most excellent form of religion," and wrote in his encyclical, "There is in the Sacred Heart a symbol, nay an express image, of the infinite charity of Jesus Christ, which moves us to love him in return."(1) Pope Pius XI described the devotion as "the synthesis of all religion, the norm of the more perfect life"(2) Pius XII, "a most perfect way of professing the Christian religion"(3) Paul VI, "an excellent and acceptable form of true piety"(4) and "in this devotion we have the most efficacious instrument to contribute to the spiritual and moral renewal of the world."(5) John XXIII in his memoirs mentioned the Sacred Heart of Jesus eighty times; for example, "The devotion to the Sacred Heart has grown with me all my life...! remember the first prayer I learned and which I love to repeat today: Sweet Heart of Jesus, make me love you more and more." Elsewhere in his spiritual journal we read,

Today everything which concerns the Sacred Heart of Jesus has become familiar and doubly dear to me. My life seems destined to be spent in the light radiating from the tabernacle, and it is to the Heart of Jesus that I must look for a solution to all my troubles. I feel as if I would be ready to shed my blood for the cause of the Sacred Heart.

As seminarian, priest, bishop, cardinal and pope he linked the Sacred Heart with the Eucharist. "I want devotion to his Heart, concealed within the sacrament of love, to be the measure of all my spiritual progress."(6) His intimate expressions resemble those of our foundress.

POPE PlUS XII, "HAURIETIS AQUAS" -1956

Our most significant church document on the Heart of Christ is the 1956 encyclical of Pope Pius XII entitled Haurietis Aquas-"you will draw water with joy from the fountains of the Savior." (Is 12:3). Saint Mary Euphrasia used this same quote from Isaiah in her conference on this devotion). The whole encyclical is a deep meditation on the divine- human harmony in the Person of Jesus Christ the Word become flesh, whose "love is represented and, so to speak, placed before our very eyes."(7) The encyclical is an enrichment of the themes of the heart to which Saint John Eudes introduced us.(8)

The pope opened his letter by refuting some negative opinions which tend to side-track this important devotion, charges of naturalism and sentimentalism which would make it less suited and even detrimental to our times. It can be presented as some kind of additive devotion, which one may take or leave, burdensome, of little

63 or no value to the active apostle in the Church today or, as a form of piety springing from emotions rather than reasoned conviction; or, it is said to be a passive devotion because it calls for penance and expiation and other virtues unsuitable for nurturing the spiritual fervor needed in our times of strenuous activity in defense of Catholic faith and Christian morals. Again, there is a false mysticism which holds that contemplation of the physical heart of Jesus is a hindrance to attaining intimate union with God and impedes the soul in its progress to the higher virtues.(9)

Like John Eudes, the pope based devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus on scripture, on the writings of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, the saints and mystics, and also on the teachings of his predecessors in the papacy. Although all these persons bear witness to the divine and human nature in Christ Jesus, with movements of the senses and affections, they do not refer these affections to his physical heart in such a manner as to indicate it clearly as the SYMBOL of his infinite LOVE. The evangelists and other sacred writers:

do, however, record clearly the divine love of Jesus and those movements of the emotions connected with it, namely, desire, joy, sadness, fear and anger as they are reflected in his countenance, words and manner of acting...His adorable face was an indication and perfect mirror of those affections which moved his soul in various ways and by a sort of sympathetic vibration, touched his Sacred Heart and set it beating…(10)

Pius XII then presents the Heart of Jesus as the SIGN or SYMBOL of the three-fold love with which our divine Redeemer ceaselessly loves his Eternal Father and the whole human race. His Heart is a symbol of that divine love which he shares with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but which in him only, in the Word made flesh, is manifested to us in a frail human body. His Heart is the SYMBOL of the burning charity which, infused into Christ's human soul, enriches his human will. And, finally, his Heart is a SYMBOL of his sensible love, since the body of Jesus Christ, formed through the operation of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, has a perfect capacity for feeling and perception, much more than the bodies of all other human beings.(11)

This teaching agrees in general with that of John Eudes, who gave us the doctrine of the three hearts or the three aspects of the Heart of Jesus. However, he never used the term SIGN or SYMBOL. For him the Heart of Jesus is the LIVING FLAME OF

64 DIVINE-HUMAN LOVE. The Heart of Jesus is LOVE. This may have bearing on interiority in contrast to exteriority in expressions of devotion to the Heart of Jesus.

According to some writers, a SYMBOL is an attempt to express the inexpressible. Others teach that symbols are one way God speaks to us, for example, the parables of Jesus. Or, SYMBOLS are the touchstone which we use to reach a greater understanding of spiritual realities, or through which we speak to God.

Encyclicals are usually very formal documents. Hence we are pleasantly surprised Pope Pius emphasizes the divine-human harmony in Jesus in a very touching way. Since Jesus clearly directed his three- fold love to accomplish our redemption we venerate his divine Heart as the significant image of his love. His words, actions, teachings, miracles, and in particular his deeds which more clearly testify his love for us are proofs of his three-fold love.(12)

The pope calls us to lovingly meditate on the pulsations of the Sacred Heart by which Jesus himself seemed to measure his time on earth. At his death on the cross his heart ceased beating and his sensible love was interrupted until his resurrection. But after his glorified body was again united to his soul, his Heart never ceased and never will cease to beat with imperturbable and calm pulsation. It will likewise never cease to signify the three-fold love by which the Son of God is bound to his heavenly Father and the whole human race.(13)

Pius XII then invites us to enrich our souls by contemplating the manifold affections, human and divine, of our Savior which his Heart manifested all through his mortal life, manifests now, and will continue to manifest forever. Through the gospel we can enter into the tabernacle of his divine Heart and wonder at the infinite kindness of God to us through Christ Jesus. All through his life he was moved by his three-fold love: in Nazareth, in his apostolic labors, in nocturnal vigils, in hunger and thirst, in sweat and fatigue, in his teaching and miracles. He was especially filled with pity for the poor and the suffering. Because of his love for the Father his Heart beat violently when he saw the profanation of the temple. His Heart was moved by a special love and fear when he saw his hour of cruel suffering and humiliation drawing near. He felt a natural repugnance towards suffering and death. His merciful heart was grieved but unconquered by the traitor's kiss, "Friend, do you betray me with a kiss?"(14)

On the cross he felt his heart on fire with varied and strong affect-

65 tions of the most ardent love, of dismay, of mercy, of intense longing, of serene calm. These are expressed in the words he uttered there, even as he prayed for the salvation of all peoples.

Before his death, even before the last supper, he felt his heart stirred by strong emotions. These were even stronger as he took bread, blessed, broke, and gave himself to us in the bread and cup of the New Covenant of his blood. Who can describe the beatings of his divine Heart, indicative of his infinite love, as he gave us this his greatest gift? And then too, the gift of his mother from the cross?(15)

The divine Eucharist, both as sacrament and as sacrifice, is the gift par excellence of the Sacred Heart of Jesus through his Church. It is a gift from his heart, his wounded heart from which flowed blood and water, the water of baptism and the blood of the Eucharist which sustains all Christians. As though this were not enough, with his Father he gives the Spirit, divine charity. This Spirit of Love fortified the apostles and martyrs to preach the gospel even to the shedding of their blood. It is this love which nourishes the courage of confessors of the faith and leads virgins to abstain willingly and joyfully from the pleasures of the senses and to consecrate themselves entirely to a spousal love for Jesus.(16)

All this invites us to adore and love the Heart of Jesus, the most natural and most expressive symbol of the inexhaustible love with which our divine Redeemer still loves mankind. His Heart, no longer liable to disturbances of this mortal life, still lives and beats, joined inseparably with the Person of the Divine Word. It is truly the unfailing fountain of love which the Spirit pours forth into all the members of the Mystical Body.(17)

Therefore, when we adore the Sacred Heart of Jesus we adore in and through it both the uncreated love of the Divine Word and his human love. He ever shows his living Heart to the Father still burning with love for us and for the Father, who gave him to us out of love. His heart is not only the symbol but the sum of the whole mystery of our redemption, of which the Blessed Trinity is the first cause.(1S) The Heart of Christ is truly the clearest image of the fullness of mercy, which is his special characteristic.

Through the physical heart of Christ we rise to contemplate his love which is perceived through our senses, but we go even higher to consider and adore the sublime infused love and, higher still, the divine love of the Incarnate Word, which are all one love. We cannot adequately express the essence of this love by any created image

66 whatsoever. But in honoring the Sacred Heart of Jesus we adore the sign and manifestation of divine love who loved us, even in our sinfulness, through the Heart of the Incarnate Word. The Heart of Jesus is the heart of a divine Person, of the Incarnate Word, and by this Heart is represented all the love with which he loved and even now continues to love us.

Therefore, devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is so important that it may be considered in its practice a perfect profession of the Christian religion. This devotion is directed to God's love for us, enabling us to adore him, thank him, and spend our lives imitating him. We go to God through the Shepherd-God with the human heart. No one goes to the Father but through him. Devotion to the Heart of Jesus is primarily a recognition of the goodness of God whom we strive to serve by loving him in return, by adoring him and thanking him and by loving one another. External acts do not play the first and foremost role in this devotion. Nor do we primarily seek the blessings Christ Jesus promised in private revelations. These were given to help us fulfill our obligations of love and expiation, and to be mindful of our spiritual development.(19)

At the same time, an ardent devotion to the Heart of Jesus will deepen and promote devotion to the cross and love for the Holy Eucharist. Love for our crucified Lord is more ardent when we experience the secrets of his Sacred Heart. The Eucharist is the supreme gift of his love.(20)

This, in brief, is the teaching of Pope Pius XII in his encyclical on devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the most comprehensive ecclesial document we have concerning this devotion.

SIMILAR DEVOTIONS

It may be helpful to distinguish among several forms of devotion: to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus, to the Sacred Heart in the Eucharist, and to the Eucharist itself. These are not simple expressions of the same devotion.

There is a movement today to propagate devotion to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. Pope Pius XII addressed this issue in his encyclical. "It will not be easy," he said, "to grasp the force of the love by which Christ was led to give himself as our spiritual food except by fostering in a special way devotion to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus...The purpose of this devotion," he wrote, quoting Pope Leo XIII, "is to recall to our minds that supreme act of love by which our

67 Redeemer, pouring forth the riches of his Heart, instituted the adorable sacrament of the Eucharist to remain in our midst to the end of time."(21)

Pius XII stated that these two salvific devotions "cannot be confused as to their object, their motive, their end or their origin...one honors the LOVE of the Lord under the natural symbol of his heart; the other adores his flesh and his blood in which this love is entirely given to us."(22)

These devotions are not, therefore, purely and simply identical with one another. Although the worship given them does not differ essentially, devotion to the Eucharistic Heart and devotion to the Sacred Heart and devotion to the Eucharist are not precisely the same theologically. In the Eucharist we single out one of the gifts of the Sacred Heart to us.

We see, therefore, that there are theological subtleties distinguishing these devotions, differences which the Church itself has taken a long time to perceive clearly. However, today some theologians are seeking a synthesis of the two great devotions--devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and devotion to the Blessed Sacrament--in devotion to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus. But not all agree on this synthesis. Devotion to the Eucharistic Heart is not new. In the nineteenth century it blossomed but met with some resistance. By 1890 however there were fourteen pontifical documents favorable to it.(23) Through Pope Benedict XV the individual and specific nature of devotion to the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus came to be recognized. He promoted this devotion and declared: "I shall myself propagate this devotion...It is the jewel of devotion to the Sacred Heart...It will be a source of grace for souls. It will spread more and more in the Church."(24) Nor is the devotion to the Eucharistic Heart and to the Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist purely and simply identical, according to Pope Leo XIII and Pius XII(25)

VATICAN COUNCIL II

Pius XI and Pius XII both regarded devotion to the Heart of Jesus as the "summary of the whole Christian religion," and therefore as the "rule of Christian perfection" of love.(26)

Vatican II presents the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice as the "root, center and summit of the whole life of the Christian community."(27) Paul VI in his discourse of August, 1968, declared, "The

68 Eucharist has the power of doctrinal synthesis...the whole of revelation is concentrated at this point, the most mysterious and most luminous of our faith...An existential synthesis: in this sacrament every virtue finds its nourishment." The Eucharist, in the words of the Council, "contains the Church's entire spiritual wealth." It is the source and the apex of the whole work of preaching the gospel.(28)

Paul VI when celebrating the second centennial of public worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus challenged the people of God to a more intense participation in the august sacrament of the altar, that a greater devotion be thus given to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whose outstanding gift is the Eucharist...Let devotion to the Sacred Heart be esteemed by all...Let us adore and make amends especially to Christ Jesus in the most sacred mystery of the Eucharist.

It would seem, therefore, Church leadership implies that, although distinct, the Eucharistic Sacrifice and devotion to the Heart of Jesus are both at the center of our life and the life of the Church. That is, the Heart of Jesus and the Lord present in a glorious though hidden and supremely loving manner in the Eucharist are the supreme meaning of the Church's activity.(29)

MARY

Concerning devotion to the Heart of Mary, Pope Pius XII was a precursor for Vatican Council II in his encyclical HAURIETIS AQUAS. He urged us to join devotion to the Heart of Jesus closely to that to the Heart of the Mother of God. For, by the will of God, Mary was inseparably joined with Christ in accomplishing the work of our redemption, so that our salvation flows from the love of Christ Jesus and his sufferings, intimately united with the love and sorrows of his mother. In living these devotions, we will obtain an abundant flow of grace for the whole human family. We love Mary, are grateful to her and repent of our failings toward her Heart. The act of consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is in perfect accord with devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.(30) Vatican II has the entire chapter VIII in the CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH on devotion to Mary.

69 OUR RESPONSE

Whether we consider the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Eucharist, the Eucharistic Heart, or the Sacred Heart in the Eucharist, our devotion is a response to the salvific plan of God, who gives himself to us in the Incarnation and as a human-divine person saves us. These devotions intend to express the whole mystery of Christ among us; the infinite God in his infinite love for us has allowed his Word to be expressed in human terms, and in Christ Jesus God has a human heart.

In our own times the Holy Spirit seems to urge us to enlarge the radius of influence of devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, since people have a greater longing than ever today to communicate, to be understood from heart to heart. This is precisely how God has offered himself to us through Jesus, for understanding and intimacy in love. But the gift is so great we are slow of heart to believe it is ours.

Therefore the heart as envisaged by John Eudes remains vital to our human and spiritual existence. Pius XII defined it as the deepest level of our person, "the center in which alone our whole being is established in unity."(31) In fact, our very nature as creatures of body and soul gives our bodies a symbolic character. And for the center of this composite creature, the most obvious symbol is the heart,(32) that part of us which collects the fragmented, scattered elements that compose our personality, unifies them and constitutes us the person we are. It is the core of the self, the source and origin of everything else in our human person. "With all my heart" means my whole self is absorbed and involved in the action.

In this sense the heart KNOWS more surely and deeply than can mere intellectual knowledge. The HEART is intensely personal, and when we are touched in our heart by joy or pain our whole person is affected. Our heart is a mystery because it is the "inner ground of our character where we are really ourself, unique and alone."(33) We, too, reveal some of the mystery of our heart by our actions, words and gestures, but we ourselves cannot fathom the depths of our own heart.

Only Jesus could read his own heart totally because he was one with the Father. He could see his very being was the being of the Father. Only Jesus could reveal his heart totally. His heart is the source of all his attitudes and all his behavior toward us, of all that we have experienced of him in the history of our salvation. Our ultimate discovery is that this heart, this center, is possessed by a

70 free, unfathomable love. It is this love that characterizes and unifies all his attitudes.(34)

We return to St. John Eudes and to St. Mary Euphrasia. The Heart of Jesus is God's love for us, the effective channel of God's love for us and of our love for God. The very center of his being is LOVE. The physical heart of Christ immolated on the cross for our salvation, together with the whole mystery of Christ in his life, death, resurrection and ascension and residing with us in the Eucharist, is the expression of his love. He loved us humanly but in his human personal love all the love of God resided. Christ Jesus was sent by the Father in the power of the Spirit to redeem us by an act of merciful saving love (1Jn 4, 9-16).

Therefore, Redemption sums up the mystery of Christ, and HEART sums up his person. We are redeemed by the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Redemption was wrought by the actions of Christ. Fundamentally it was the loving obedience of the Heart of Christ to the will of the Father that led to death on the cross, to our salvation. Obedience is an attitude of the heart. The perfect surrender of Jesus, the movement of his Heart towards the Father culminated in the piercing of his Heart as he hung defenseless on the cross. This is the most effective symbol of the totality of God's love for us. This is the most arresting image of helpless love. God gives his pierced Heart to those who have pierced it.(35) The total gift of self of God!

In the mystery of the Sacred Heart is the whole mystery of Christ. Redemption flowed from the pierced Heart of Christ and continues to flow from it through the sanctification of the Spirit in the Eucharistic sacrifice. The plan of redemption is to make of us all one single heart, the Heart of the Son in the presence of the Father. With Christ, through Christ, one with the Heart of Christ, we can unite ourselves with his perfect surrender to the Father.(36) Therefore, devotion to the Heart of Christ is not a devotion to one of his mysteries but to the totality of his LOVE, in that LOVE wherein all his mysteries find their deepest meaning.

OUR RESPONSE leads us to emphasize our interior life, our faith in the love of God, our union with Christ Jesus in his total obedience to the Father, to the Church, to our commitments for love of God and our neighbor. Our worship of the Heart of Christ Jesus is bigger than imitation of his virtues, but that too is important. And it is not mere sentimentality. The Heart of our Savior beats with powerful intensity in a whole-hearted response. Its joy is intoxicating, its love ineffably tender, its sorrow indescribably poignant. The life-giving

71 Spirit is communicated to us only through the pierced Heart of the Messiah.

We are challenged to respond in a total love for the Sacred Heart of Christ, the Heart of the Good Shepherd, to the point of dedication, consecration, imitation unto identification. We are called to cultivate a deep personal union with Christ, a heart-to-heart communion. Our communion with him necessarily involves the innermost core of our heart and can lead to transformation into his attitudes, his mind, his heart, which is that of the Good Shepherd who gives his life...transformation that creates an integrity, an inner freedom in our heart, a freedom maintained through utter dependence on Christ who is our wisdom, our justification, our salvation. It means leaving ourselves open to the impact of his personality.

Our response must be in a loving contemplation of his mysteries to delight in studying his expressions and gestures, his suffering, the inner annihilation of his passion and death, a loving immolation of ourselves in union with Jesus with all the love of his Heart. Devotion to his Heart imposes a co-responsibility for the salvation of humanity; an active zeal for the salvation of souls is the corollary of love for the Heart of Jesus. Our zeal for souls flows from our commitment to God.

May our response be to thirst for the spirit of Jesus, who bears us into the currents of the Trinitarian life so we can cry out from the depths of our being, ABBA. Our devotion can be a response to the love of God in adoring worship, praise and thanksgiving to the wonderful wisdom of God who gives himself to us through the Incarnation of the Word. Saint John Eudes exclaimed, "Oh, the depths of the riches of the love of Jesus! How incomprehensible are his works, how lovable are his ways!"(37)

Today the ultimate tangible reality of Christ's love is his Eucharistic presence among us. We are free to respond by fervent participation in the Eucharistic liturgy and Communion. For all, love achieves a mutual presence. In our human state this mutual presence, mutual interiority is limited by our humanness. A degree of solitude will always be our lot. In God's life, on the other hand, mutual interiority is complete. The transparency of each Person in the Triune Love is absolute, unlimited; each one is entirely in each of the others. God IS communion. It is his nature. Devotion to the Heart of Jesus is devotion to LOVE, devotion to the Trinity. The Trinity is communion.

72 God communicates his life, which is communion, to all of humanity. This life works in our depths and gradually re-creates of US one body, the Body of Christ, the Risen Body of Christ. Therefore the heart of Christ belongs to each one of us, to each member of the Body of Christ. This is what we mean by having one heart between us and Christ, loving with the Heart of Christ, possessing with him all the splendors of the world; in Christ all is ours! But we need to be very alive to this, our relationship with God in love. We can cultivate a consciousness of it. Love is an interior force. Love is communion. A relationship of love is a person-to-person spontaneous exchange of love. It is a sharing of all we have and are.

This relationship, this communion, is mystically signified in the immediate preparation for the Eucharistic Celebration: that is, some drops of water are poured into the chalice of wine and become one with it. We believe that the operative words of Christ Jesus--"This is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant"--through the Holy Spirit--effect an ineffable transubstantiation into the Blood of Christ Jesus. Are we-the water--not also transformed and unified in his Blood at each Eucharistic sacrifice? And by partaking of his precious Body in Holy Communion are we not, though many, becoming one in him? It is as Saint John writes in his first letter (1Jn, 3): "Our fellowship is with God the Father and Jesus Christ his Son. Indeed, our purpose in writing this to you is that our joy and yours may be complete"--complete in that relationship, in that LOVE and in that unity.

On our part, in order to facilitate communion, we work toward a continuous conversion which calls for the victory of the cross over selfishness; that is, the cross of the renunciation of il1stinctive attitudes and responses which emerge from self-concern, self-centeredness, and not from true love, which always reaches out. This victory is the putting on of Jesus by renunciation of self and leads to our human maturity, the maturity of the living Body of the Risen Christ. Today we often quote St. Irenaeus, "The glory of God is the living person fully alive." But we omit the sequence, "The life of a person is the vision of God." The renunciation Saint John Eudes and Saint Mary Euphrasia intend is the focusing on Christ instead of self that Christ may be all in all! What I am doing is not for myself. It is for Christ. Whatever satisfaction I experience in it I offer to him. That is, I renounce whatever is not his will and accept beforehand what is his will.

Even in prayer we sacrifice all possessive delight in the joys of prayer and desire to love God for himself, not for any joy we find in loving him. In like manner we renounce the ideas and opinions which our hearts like to hold on to. We share them and remain free of their possession. We renounce the self-affirmation these might give.(38)

Devotion to the Heart of Jesus the Good Shepherd really consists in allowing the Holy Spirit to form Jesus in us, as he formed Jesus in Mary. Our effort is to live all our activities in communion with Jesus. In all we do, we try to do as Jesus would do. We let him live the activity in us. The effort is not, 'I wish to acquire virtue', but, 'I study Jesus living this virtue.' We keep the life of Jesus before us throughout the liturgical year. It opens our vision onto the world of souls and God's constant work of sanctification in the world. It turns us from selfishness and self- centeredness, the plague of our age. We follow the mysteries of Jesus, we allow ourselves to be inflamed, we cling to his mysteries in faith, and we allow ourselves to be transformed by them as they mold us and fulfill us.

Devotion to the Heart of Jesus is total dedication, commitment, and handing over of self to Christ Jesus and what he has at heart. Christ Jesus is truly all ours. With Christ, the Father has given us everything- the universe, our brothers and sisters, Mary, the angels, the saints. We can make use of all reality to love him.

74 CONCLUSION

We have seen that whole nations and countries value devotion to the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary under one of several spiritualities. In the Americas, Canada, Australia and Africa, basilicas and churches have been consecrated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and a few to the holy Heart of Mary. However in some of these countries there is no strong national tradition of special devotions. People came to these countries often seeking religious freedom, among other benefits, but each group came imbued with the values of its own spirituality.

However, as Catholics, we have Church traditions to guide us. At the same time, Good Shepherd Sisters enjoy corporate cultural, spiritual values and devotions, one of which is devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary according to the vision of John Eudes and the spirituality of Mary Euphrasia.

Some may have difficulty in cultivating this Good Shepherd spirituality. Our cultures are influenced by a strong individualism which looks uniquely to personal values and by a legalistic tendency which is not the spirit of this devotion.

Saint Mary Euphrasia would want us to be in harmony with the universal Church. She would want us to be free of local or personal limitations, and at the same time on the wave-length of the Spirit leading each one of us. She recommended that we look to the leader-ship of the universal Church; this is why we reflected ever so briefly on the teaching of our Church leaders. We can grow through the liturgical year and through meditation on scripture, both of which open us to world-wide dimensions and to our world-wide Good Shepherd traditions and values.

In keeping with this spirit and with Vatican II, as a congregation we have transferred our public liturgy in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to the date of the universal calendar, that is, the Friday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost. We may use the official liturgy or that of the Eudists, of which very little is from the original of Saint John Eudes.

We note that through its biblical readings and responses, the third cycle of official liturgy offers us the Heart of the Good Shepherd for our meditation. (See HE 4, 12; EZ 34, 11- 16; ROM 5, 5-11; LK 15, 3-7) At the same time, this feast follows closely on that of Corpus Christi and is delightfully linked to it through its entrance antiphon: "The thoughts of his Heart last through every generation,

75 that he will rescue them from death and feed them in time of famine." (Heb 4, 12) Saint Mary Euphrasia's heart would greatly rejoice, for this feast now speaks to us in a special way. It now fully embodies our Good Shepherd spirituality and enriches the graces we receive through living this spirituality. Thus the ambiguities we sometimes experienced are swept away by the action of the Spirit in the liturgical renewal of our times! We have, however, maintained the liturgical feast of the Holy Heart of Mary on February 8, the original date since 1648, because the former optional feast in the universal calendar, August 22, is now the Queenship of Mary.

What has become of the original liturgical texts composed by Saint John Eudes? The Eudists, the Religious of Our Lady of Charity and various dioceses in France adopted them certainly up to the Revolution, as did many congregations of religious--the Benedictines, the Visitation Order, the Congregation of Notre Dame, and, from 1700 onwards, the Ursulines of Quebec. His texts greatly influenced those of later years. Traces of his Mass GAUDEAMUS are to be found in practically all fifteen editions of Masses in honor of the Sacred Heart approved by the Church, including the votive Mass in the Missal of Pope Paul VI, which appeared in 1970.(39)

The original texts of John Eudes were approved in 1861 for the Eudist family. The Good Shepherd received approval of these texts only in 1911. These have now been revised in line with recent liturgical reform. The original texts can be found in volumes XI and XII of the French edition, Oeuvres Completes, of 1905. An English edition of the liturgical texts was printed by the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Toronto, Canada, in 1917.

The substance of our Good Shepherd devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is that God loves us with the human heart of Jesus and we can love him divinely with the Heart of Christ. We believe in this love with which we are loved and allow ourselves to be seized and transformed by it. For this love is given to us, it takes hold of us, and it transforms us gradually. LOVE is the first and last word in all reality, for love is of God and God is love. The fact that Christ fully wishes the center of his person, his Heart, to consist of LOVE for the Father and for us is just the incomprehensible thing in our experience of him!(40)

The practice of devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary is mostly interior and effects an interior transformation in our hearts. For, through our personal cooperation it touches our attitudes and inclinations and emotions. And, in keeping with our uniqueness, it can

76 mold us into the ardent love of the Heart of Jesus the Good Shepherd and of Mary his mother, fully in harmony with the saving will of the Father. At the same time, its deepest expression is through the Eucharistic liturgy of thanksgiving, praise, love, reparation and petition to the Father through the Heart of the Son and the sanctifying action of the Spirit. Each day we participate in this mystically re-enacted love-offering of Jesus for us and in our name, and we partake of his glorious Body and Blood.(41)

Through Communion in the Eucharist the Heart of Jesus purifies us, strengthens us, and inflames us anew in his mission of zeal for souls, and renews the whole world through his Spirit.(42) The Spirit and the daily Eucharist are the supreme gifts of the Heart of Jesus to us personally and to the whole Church, the Body of Christ.

Finally, the Heart of Jesus sums up in an astonishingly simple yet profound synthesis all the riches of the Christian mystery. And we can say that in spite of its ups and downs, the theme of the HEART is not outdated because, first of all, it is profoundly biblical.(43) Secondly, it responds to the aspirations of our contemporary world in its ceaseless quest for intimate mutual sharing. Is this not a secret quest for the Infinite, the Absolute? As Augustine says, "You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."(44) At the same time, our contemporary world aspires to a global society in which all are considered brothers and sisters of one another.

Jesus has lived these two aspirations in all their fullness, totally turned to God and totally given to us. The Heart of the Good Shepherd is the place of absolute intimacy with the Father and with us, and the place of our intimacy with God and with one another.

However, while we ourselves should be convinced of the relativity and the richness of devotion to the Heart of Jesus in the broad vision of Saint Mary Euphrasia, in speaking to others of this devotion it is well to do so in a way which respects their in sights and which can be helpful to their faith and love. For it is true that the Holy Spirit can and does give different insights into the mystery of the love of God in Christ Jesus, without reference to the Heart of Christ. What Saint John Eudes and Saint Mary Euphrasia desired was to draw all into the orbit of God's love through Jesus, the Way, the Truth, the Life.

Saint John Eudes' liturgical offices in honor of the Heart of Mary were for him, above all, means of apostolic action. He had sensed that Christian worship is "in spirit and truth" a gift of the heart,

77 that love alone counts. We have intimate and personal bonds with Christ and Mary, bonds of the heart. It is the Heart of Christ, in the Heart of the Virgin Mary, where Christ is all, that the sacrifice of perfect love is offered to God.(45) In Mary, both Saint John Eudes and Saint Mary Euphrasia saw the ideal of the perfect life. The Heart of Mary uncovers to us what our life should be. Mary is what our nature reaches out to be, fulfilled and fulfilling for others.

This, in synthesis, is what we mean by devotion to the Hearts of Jesus and Mary in Good Shepherd spirituality. Derived from Saint John Eudes, our foundress, Saint Mary Euphrasia, was led by the Holy Spirit to harmonize the devotion with the Good Shepherd of the gospel in his Eucharistic reality. This shift in spirituality characterizes the Good Shepherd Congregation. It represents a broadening by emphasizing biblical realities, among which are: bread of life, giving one's life, healing, seeking the lost, mercy and reconciliation. Mary Euphrasia's great desire was that we share in the Good Shepherd's redemptive mission. Our constitutions tell us that she accomplished this herself through "her love for the cross and zeal for the salvation of souls. She cherished the image of God in each person, giving us an example of Christ-like understanding of human weakness." Through our Good Shepherd spirituality we share in the Church's mission of salvation and reconciliation and make it effective around the world. "It calls for a total gift of self, leading through the cross and death to resurrection." The Eucharist is our source of interior life and strength. We also find the spirit of our mission in the Heart of Mary, Mother of our Institute.(46)

78 NOTES

CHAPTER I 1 - See letter, July 29, 1672 11 - AHM pp. 34, 351 2 - OLC, p. 22 12 - Ibid p. 202 3 - Ibid pp. 38, 41 13 - Ibid p. 203 4 - Milcent, p. 17 14 - Ibid p. 209 5 - Guillon, quoted from LE 15 - OC Vol XII COEUR (Les Etudes Carmelitaines, 16 - Summa Theol. 2a, Q 82, 1950) art2&3 6 - Guillon, quoted from no. 60 17 - AHM p. 24 Doc. Cath. 1956, Vol 734 18 - Revelations, Lib I, Cap. 35 7 - Guillon, Manuscript 19 - AHM p. 25 8 - Conf p. 11 20 - RP, Manuscript 9 - Lib. de Virgin it ate Mariae, 21 - HYMN, pp 34-35 C.3: AHM p. 34 10 - Serm. de Nativ. Domini: AHM p. 35 CHAPTER II 1 - OC VI, pp. 3 ff 21 - Milcent, p. 5 2 - LeBrun, p. 63 22 - OC VIII, p. 431 3 - AHM Chapters 11 and IV 23 - OC I n. 11 4 - LeBrun, p. 64 24 - AHM p. 15 5 - SH p. 128 25 - Ibid p. 3 6 - OC XI, p. 507 26 - OC VII, p. 601 7 - SH p. 119 27 - OC VIII, p. 94 8 - Ibid pp 3-4 28 - Ibid p. 102 9 - Ibid p. 3 29 - Milcent, p. 16 10 - Vita Mistica, Chapter Ill: 30 - Summa Theol. 11, 11, Q. 82 OC vol VIII, p. 212 31 - OC I, p. 310 11 - Ibid 32 - Ibid p. 455 12 - Thesis, Manuscript p. 35 33 - OC VII, p. 533 13 - HA, 48 34 - OC XII, p. 190 14 - HS & DE p. 29 35 - ORIGIN p. 165; Cf Conf. 2, 4, 5 15 - See p. 22 36 - OC VIII, p. 421 16 - LeBrun p. 63 37 - Cf LeBrun p. 67-68 17 - ~C, VI, p. 148 38 - SH p. 46-50 18 - ~C, VIII, p. 129 39 - Ibid p. 47 19 - Ibid p. 424 40 - Ibid p. 9 20 - Ibid p. 182 CHAPTER III 1 - Con I edition 1925 p. 15 10 - Georges p. 294 2-PC; ES; G & S 11 - See Copy of Engraving, frontis 3-Con 27,18 piece in "ALSO I VOW ZEAL" 4 - Con 2, 5, 28, 30 Warnig, 1986 5 - Ibid 2 12 - Georges p. 296 6 - Ibid 42 13 - Conf p. 29-30, 32 7 - Georges Chapter 9-11 8 - Ibid 9 - RP Manuscript

79 CHAPTER III CONTINUED 14 - Two Jewish brothers, one con- 32 - Georges p. 306; Conf XII verted in Strasbourg and one 33 - Conf pp. 93-94 in Rome 34 - Conf p. 82 15 - Georges p. 32 35 - Conf pp. 86, 292 16 - RP Manuscript 36 - Ibid p. 88 17 - Conf p. 97 37 - Bernini, p. 47 18 - Ibid Chapter XIII 38 - Conf p. 94 19 - Conf LIX 39 - Ibid p. 97 20 - Ibid Chapter LX 40 - Ibid p. 99 21 - Ibid Chapter XII 41 - Georges p. 308 22 - Ibid 42 - Conf p. 127; Diary of Sr. M. des 23 - Pasquier, Vol II, p. 284, Anges, 1868 quoting Fr. M. LeRoux. 43 - Sp & Ch p. 18 spiritual director 44 - Conf pp. 44-49 24 - Pas qui er II, p. 284 45 - Chasle p. 181-182 25 - Ibid pp 279-280 46 - Ibid Chapter VI 26 - Ibid pp 281-282 47 - Ibid p. 181-182 27 - Conf pp. 78, 79, 92 48 - Ibid p. 217 28 - Pasquier, II, p. 278 29 - Conf p. 97 30 - Conf p. 379, 380 31 - Ibid pp. 83, 86

CHAPTER IV

1 - Annum Sacrum CD 30; PO 6 2 - MR par 4 28 - PO Abbott p. 541-542 3 - HA par 143 4-AP 29 - HS & DE p. 3 5-IC 30 - HA 42 6 - Journal p. 148 ff 31 - Ibid 7 - HA p. 35 32 - Thesis, Manuscript 8 - Milcent, p. 50 33 - Ibid 9 - HA p. 33 34 - Ibid 10 - Ibid p. 19 11 - Ibid 19-20 35 - HA 228 12 - Ibid 20 36 - Thesis Manuscript 13 - Ibid 21 37 - Lauds. Feast of the Sacred 14 - Ibid 21-22 Heart, October 20 15 - Ibid 23 38 - AET Manuscript 16 - Ibid 23-27 39 - Guillon Manuscript 17 - Ibid 27 18 - Ibid 28-29 40 - Thesis Manuscript 19 - Ibid 34-37 41 - Con 42 20 - Ibid 41 42 - Conf Chapters 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 21- Ha 41; AS Feb. 17, 1903 43 - See Manuscript of Rev. Fr. 22 - Quoted in HS & DE p. 49 Henchey note 29 44 - Confessions of Saint Augustine 23 - Ibid p. 71 24 - Ibid p. 49 note 30 Vol I 25 - HA p. 41 45 - Milcent p. 16 26 - HA 69-73; AAS 48, 1956, 313 27 - 46 - Con 8, 9 ABBREVIATIONS AND SOURCES

Abbott : THE DOCUMENTS OF VATICAN II 1963-1965, by Waiter' M. Abbott, (Geoffrey Chapman, London 19702, 1966)

AET : ASPECTS OF EUDIST THOUGHT, by Paul Milcent, Manuscript

AHM : THE ADMIRABLE HEART OF MARY, by Saint John Eudes, translated from the French (P.J. Kennedy & Sons,New York 1948)

AS : ANNUM SACRUM, Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XIII, 1900 (American Press, New York, 1953)

BERNINI : HO SOLO AMATO, by G. Bernini, (GS Convent, Rome Italy 1968)

CHASLE : SISTER MARY OF THE DIVINE HEART, by Abbe Louis Chasle (Burns & Oates, Limited, London 1906)

CON : CONSTITUTIONS OF OUR LADY OF CHARITY OF THE GOOD SHEPHERD (Manuscript 1985)

CONF :CONFERENCES AND INSTRUCTIONS OF SAINT MARY EUPHRASIA (The Newman Bookshop, Westminster, MD,1943)

ES : : ECCLESIAE SANCTAE, Documents of Vatican II, August 1966

GALOT : LE COEUR DU CHRIST, by Jean Galot SJ (Desclee de Brouwer, 1953)

GS : GAUDIUM ET SPES, Documents of Vatican II, December 1965

GEORGES : SAINTE MARIE EUPHRASIE PELLETIER, by R.P. Emile Georges CJM, (P. Lethielleux, Libraire-Editeur, Paris, 1942)

GUILLON :DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS, by P. Clement Guillon CJM, Manuscript

HA : HAURIETIS AQUAS, Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius XII,1956

HS & DE : THE HOLY SPIRIT AND THE DAILY EUCHARIST SUPREME GIFTS OF THE HEART OF JESUS, by Bertrand de Margerie SJ, (International Institute of the Heart of Jesus, 7700 Blue Mound Road, Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53213, 1976)

HYMN : HYMN OF THE UNIVERSE (Mass on the World) by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, (Harper & Roe, New York 1965)

IC : INVESTIGABILES DIVITIAS CHRISTI, Apostolic Letter of Pope Paul VI, Saint Paul Editions, 1965

JOURNAL :JOURNAL OF A SOUL, by Pope John XXIII (Geoffrey Chapman Publishers, London 1965) IC : INVESTIGABILES DIVITIAS CHRISTI, Apostolic Letter of Pope Paul VI, Saint Paul Editions, 1965

JOURNAL :JOURNAL OF A SOUL, by Pope John XXIII (Geoffrey Chapman Publishers, London 1965)

LEBRUN : THE SPIRITUAL TEACHING OF SAINT JOHN EUDES, by P. LeBrun CJM, 1932

MDH : THE LIFE OF BLESSED MARIA DROSTE, by Ricciardi A., translated from the Italian, Good Shepherd Sisters, New York, 1976

MF : MYSTERIUM FIDEI, Encyclical Letter of Pope Paul VI, September 1965 (Saint Paul Editions, 1965)

MILCENT : SAINT JOHN EUDES, selected texts, by Paul Milcent CJM, (John S. Burns & Sons, Great Britain 1964)

MR : MISERENTISSIMUS REDEMPTOR, Encyclical Letter of Pope Pius XI, 1936, Vatican Press, 1950

OC : OEUVRES COMPLETES VEN. JEAN EUDES Selected Works of Saint John Eudes (P.J. Kennedy & Sons, New York, 1948)

OLC : MASSES AND OFFICES PROPER TO THE ORDER OF OUR LADY OF CHARITY, (Toronto Canada, 1917)

ORIGIN : ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE ORDER OF OUR LADY OF CHARITY, (Le Couteulx Leader Press, Buffalo, New York 1918)

PC : PERFECTAE CARITATIS, Documents of Vatican n, October 1965

RP : REPORT ON THE ORDINARY PROCESS OF BEATIFI CATION OF MARY EUPHRASIA PELLETIER (Manuscript, 1888)

SME : SAINT MARY EUPHRASIA, HISTORICAL BACK GROUND, translated from the French (Good Shepherd Sisters, Peeks kill, New York 1979)

SP and CH : SAINT MARY EUPHRASIA, SPIRIT AND CHARISM, English Translation by Sr. M. Rita Morrison, RGS (Good Shepherd Sisters, Peekskill, N.Y., 1979)

THESIS : THEOLOGY OF THE SACRED HEART, Manuscript Thesis by Jean Berkley Jeffers MA, (Sisters of the Good Shepherd, New York)

UPDATED : UPDATED DEVOTION TO THE SACRED HEART, by Rev. WaIter Kern, (Alba Books, Div. Soc. St. Paul, Canfield, Ohio 44406, 1975)

82 ILLUSTRATIONS

Page

1 From Book of Hours, Use of Serum, (Salisbury) England. Medieval parchment, private collection. Permission from Rev. WaIter Kern, Diocesan Director of Apostleship of Prayer, Buffalo, N.Y. Translation of text by Rev. Richard Judd in Fr. Kern's Updated Devotion to the Sacred Heart, Alba House Communications, 1975.

6 Drawing by William Cladek. Permission of Apostleship of Prayer, Buffalo, N.Y.

8 Sacred Heart by artist Longaretti. Cover photo on April, 1986 Canadian Messenger of the Sacred Heart. Permission of editor, Rev. F.J. Power, S.J., Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

26 St. John Eudes, noted for devotion to the Holy Heart of Mary and Sacred Heart of Jesus.

40 Woodcarving at Good Shepherd Sisters' motherhouse, Angers, France.

50 Mother of the Divine Shepherd.

58 Among other devotions, St. Mary Euphrasia treasured the Eucharist. Calligraphy by Sr. Alena Bernert, R.G.s.

61 Rose Virginie Pelletier (later, St. Mary Euphrasia) at age 18. Devotion to the Sacred Heart, to the Eucharist and to Mary were natural to her from childhood and deepened in her as she grew in age and grace (see p. 36). As foundress of the Good Shepherd Congregation, she discerned her charism in the biblical image of the Good Shepherd.

74 A shepherdess in the field.