30th March, 2022
A letter of hope to all members of the Chevalier Family from the International Council.
We live in times when hope is hard to find and where war and climate emergencies and political instability abounds.
But, we members of the Chevalier Family are sure of who we are. We are a movement of people who believe in the love of God for each one of us, a love that is individual, concrete and eternal. We believe that this love is extended to all of creation. We go out to all people to tell them this good news and we work together with people of a similar mind because we know that Jesus’ Heart, which reveals the love of God, is offered through our own hearts and hands reaching out to our world. And this makes us people of hope, people who love and live hopefully in this beautiful but struggling world of ours.
As we all live in a world that is grappling with how to live together in these ‘new times’, times with huge challenges, we can learn much about love and hope from our foundation stories.
We remember a young Jules Chevalier being brought up in Richelieu as his mother struggled to feed the family and his father lived with insecure employment. The family lived close to the parkland that had once contained the palace of Cardinal Richelieu. A young Chevalier heard the accounts of the palace being dismantled by the townsfolk to use the brinks in their own homes. Knowing this story did not turn Chevalier into a revolutionary or into a reactionary, but rather, it provided the fertile soil for a God of love to plant seeds of kindness, compassion, closeness to the simple people and an orientation to the Heart of Jesus as the way to be church. Chevalier showed us how to respond with hope and to be a church of hope in times of trouble, a church that reaches out with love in all the challenges we face as societies and as individuals.
Later on, when an older Jules Chevalier was taking his final retreat before ordination, the rigidity and focus that was required for this ‘ordinary man’ to complete his studies was replaced by a gentleness and affability. Perhaps Chevalier realised that if he was to be a priest of the people, he needed these qualities himself to attract them to the Heart of Jesus. The journals and letters Chevalier wrote during his 53 years in Issoudun reveal a man who was never afraid to challenge authorities when their way made it difficult for ordinary people or to challenge his men if they took their eyes off Jesus. Our task as members of this Family is to grow to be like Jesus who loved with a human heart and to lead with kindness and gentleness and to free people from fear. By following this way, we can be people of hope with something real to offer to people in fear.
Then later, less that 30 years after the foundation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, despite the hesitation of many in the small band of MSC men – he sent five intrepid men and soon after many brave sisters thousands of miles away to the people of Micronesia and Melanesia to bring them the good news. What could have been such a futile dream was richly blessed bringing hope to these people. Our God works with a wisdom that is not ours to know and our task is to trust in God’s presence in even the most -evil of situations.
As a theological virtue, hope is not naïve or sentimental, it is not a vague feeling that things will work out, it is a conviction, against the odds, that our God is tenacious and persistent in drawing humanity to his Heart. In this time of Lent, we live powerfully this hope. Our Lenten journey is a journey with Jesus through the fear and loneliness of his last hopeless days of his mission, when he must have been so overtaken with a sense of failure, to the crucifixion where all hope was lost to the extraordinary possibilities of the resurrection of life and love and hope.
And so, in these days, as we reflect on the war in Ukraine that has killed so many, that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people, that has taken the lives of young soldiers on both sides from the love and security of their families, we know that as people of hope we must read the signs of our times and work conscientiously for peace and justice for all people.
Prams at a railway station in Poland for Ukrainian babies fleeing the fighting.
God of hope, hear our prayer.
As our church in many parts of the world has been brought to its knees by its own failures and sinfulness, we proudly recognise that we, the Laity of the Chevalier Family have been given a way of being church that is synodal and challenges us to be inclusive and compassionate to all.
We are called to participate fully in this way of being church for the people.
God of hope, hear our prayer.
We are not pessimists or naïve optimists as we face the changing climatic conditions of our planet and the inequity of our lifestyles. We must realize that a true ecological commitment always includes a social approach; it must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both ‘the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.’
In this way, we can bridge the differences amongst us about how best to care for our common home be the bearers of hope and justice.
God of hope, hear our prayer.
Remember our Chevalier Family Declaration, have you committed yourself?
May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be everywhere loved.
As an International Family we realize that:
- world solidarity is the radical alternative to the globalisation of self-interest and indifference.
- our choices show where our heart lies and that we, who live the Spirituality of the Heart, are called to adopt an attitude of love and care for Creation.
- the abstract lames people, while the concrete opens new possibilities.
Therefore, as members of the Chevalier Family,
I/we,……………………………………………..(name of individual or group)
Place…………………… Country………………………………………………
make the following concrete promises: