Live+Jesus
Pope Francis has written an inspiring letter for Lent 2015, which begins on Ash Wed Feb 18th.
You may read the entire letter here: http://www.zenit.org/en/articles/pope-francis-lenten-message-2015
In particular the Holy Father encourages us to pay attention this Lent to the formation of our hearts. He wrote:
“As a way of overcoming indifference and our pretensions to self-sufficiency, I would invite everyone to live this Lent as an opportunity for engaging in what Benedict XVI called a formation of the heart (cf. Deus Caritas Est, 31). A merciful heart does not mean a weak heart. Anyone who wishes to be merciful must have a strong and steadfast heart, closed to the tempter but open to God. A heart which lets itself be pierced by the Spirit so as to bring love along the roads that lead to our brothers and sisters. And, ultimately, a poor heart, one which realizes its own poverty and gives itself freely for others.
During this Lent, then, brothers and sisters, let us all ask the Lord: “Fac cor nostrum secundum cor tuum”: Make our hearts like yours (Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus). In this way we will receive a heart which is firm and merciful, attentive and generous, a heart which is not closed, indifferent or prey to the globalization of indifference.”
As Visitandines following the spiritual insights of our Founder St Francis de Sales, we are privileged to be, from our very Foundation, daughters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Ours is a heart-to-heart charism and so the Holy Father’s prompting touches the very core of our religious life. It as if he reminds us, in the sentences above, of St Francis’s statement “Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.”
St Francis de Sales centered the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary on the Hearts of Jesus and Mary. Symbolically, he arranged that the coat of arms of the Order is a single heart pierced by 2 arrows and encircled in a crown of thorns ; the heart holds and supports a cross which surmounts it and the holy names of Jesus and Mary are engraved on the heart for “our little congregation is really the work of the hearts of Jesus and Mary. Our dying Savior gave birth to us from the wound of His Sacred Heart. (SFDS, Constitutions)
Our foundational Scripture passage is from Matt 11: 28-30: “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”
The Litany of the Sacred Heart to which the Holy Father refers was composed in part from the writings of Visitandine mystic St Margaret Mary who received the revelations of the Sacred Heart in the Visitation Monastery of Paray le Monial in the late 1600’s and from which sprang the modern devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
St Francis de Sales said one of the chief matters and consequences of importance in the religious life and the most important of all in the monastic life is union with God as well as with our neighbor.
“In the Salesian world, one does not have two hearts, one that loves God and one that loves others, but one heart created by and for God and the full realisation of God’s designs throughout creation. All loves, if rightly ordered, are seen as capable of leading a person deeper into the mystery of divine love. For love and its motions are both means and end. In the cultivation of affectionate God-conscious relationships — marriage and family, community life, friendships — the living presence of Love is enfleshed in the world. Vive Jesus! Live Jesus!” (Wendy Wright in Heart Speaks to Heart)
During Lent we will share the heart-spirituality of the Visitation Order as we follow our Holy Father’s suggestions for Lent.
Come join us for a pre-Lenten chat on Sunday Feb 15 as we discuss Pope Francis’s Lenten letter and a Salesian perspective in living it out.
Sources for further reading and listening: http://embracedbygod.org/product/a-world-of-hearts-the-salesian-spiritual-tradition-cd-set/