Feast of the Sacred Heart, MSC Melbourne celebration.
We gathered at Blackburn, celebrated a Eucharist in the crying room at St Thomas’s Church, social distancing, with Khoi as a Eucharistic celebrant, with Robyn Reynolds OLSH continuing our tradition of having a social justice reflection in our celebration. We were joined by our friends, Susan Richardson, PBVM, Margaret O’Loughlin, Madeleine Barlow RNDM. And we adjourned to Cuskelly house for hospitality.
Here are some of the reflections in Robyn’s presentation.
In front of the altar, the faceless warrior, the faceless Jesus, for all the faceless people and peoples.
Perhaps we can consider reclaiming, re-naming, and re-imagining the call to ‘reparation’ which is still very much integral to a spirituality of the Heart of Jesus. Father Chevalier himself uses the term “restoration”. The spirituality of the heart is, according to Chevalier, “essentially social, restoring all things”.
In this year 2020, a spirituality of reparation or restoring can be re-enlivened for our suffering, vulnerable world and for our whole human family. Australian needs healing. As does our world. As does our earth. Covid-19 has invaded our bodies, but our planet, and our human spirits are also being invaded. Chevalier named the diseases of his time in such terms as he irreligiosity, and indifference. Exactly like some of the dark holes we can find ourselves in today.
Sherry Balcombe, leader of the Aboriginal Catholic Ministry in Melbourne, recognises the same failures, longs for the same healing. The sense of the sacred is so remote, and the irreligiosity of which Chevalier spoke. She too struggles to find in mainstream Australia much awareness of the sacredness of life, of the dignity of persons. Along with the indifference, “who cares?”.
Ken Haring
She notes: “I long to see a new Australia that prides itself on the treatment of First Nations Peoples, that reveres the cultural heritage of this land, where every child who goes to school learns about the First Nations people as the guardians and protectors of Mother Earth.”
Over 2000 years ago, Jesus saw his sacred place, the Temple in Jerusalem, his heart place, being abused and desecrated, not being recognised for what it was, being made invisible… His anger boiled over. He became violent. He cried out, naming and shaming the wrongdoers. Sacred places matter. Human dignity matters, and, yes, like all lives, black lives matter…
Pope Francis has said: “seek a solution with love”. For us, the shape of that restoring, healing love will include a certain amount of pulling down, stripping away of an unjust, selfish and indifferent culture that has become systemic and acceptable in our country and in our lives.
Father Chevalier, with his universal and inclusive charism, was ahead of his times, his spirituality related to the whole Earth, the universe, everywhere in fact. Is there a more beautiful quote we can find from him when he says: “the love of God descending to the whole of creation, and the love of the whole creation rising to God, meet in the Heart of Jesus.”
And we see the human heart of Christ, bleeding, pierced, rejected, scorned, even perhaps pleading, “I can’t breathe”.
We trust in the compassionate heart of our loving God and, simply, we respect and are kind to each other.
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