Feast of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart 2021.
This post is coming to you from Melbourne, our second day of seven in strict lockdown for all Victoria, again.
Our celebration of the Feast will be online or in small community groups.
We are 15 MSC in Victoria, OLSH Sisters in Bentleigh (where we usually meet, but not since 2019) and smaller communities, and all Australian MSC Sisters (except for one in the Philippines) are in Victoria, also several groups of Lay MSC in Melbourne and in country Victoria.
Now you have an extra intention for today. But we are conscious of how fortunate we are in comparison with PNG, Fiji, India, Philippines, Europe, the Americas and Africa.
Following the recent posting of the Aboriginal Madonna, today we celebrate some indigenous images of Mary and interpretations of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.
When in 1854 Father Jules Chevalier was thinking of founding a society of men whose mission it would be to cure the evils of that time by leading people to the Heart of Christ as the healing source of life, he asked Our Lady for help. Having experienced her powerful intercession several times he felt that, out of gratitude, his society should honour her in a special way.
Eventually he invoked her with the title "Our Lady of the Sacred Heart" and the devotion to Mary with that title spread rapidly in all continents. A confraternity with that name was founded and reached 18 million members in 1891. The Congregation of Sisters founded by Father Chevalier are called "the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart". The feast of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart is celebrated nowadays on the last Saturday of May.
The purpose of this devotion, according to Father Chevalier, is to honour Mary "in her relationship of ineffable love which exists between her and the Sacred Heart of Jesus."
