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CRA, Catholic Religious Australia, Religious Congregations Book published: Our Stories, Our Lives, Our Mission, a celebration of the gift we offer Church & society - copies available from CRA Office.
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CRA President, Fr Peter Jones OSA.
The forthcoming launch of Our Stories , Our Lives, Our Mission at the 2023 National Assembly is a significant exercise in sharing something of who we are as religious in Australia and that we are doing so together, writes CRA President Fr Peter Jones OSA.
The resource, attentively prepared under the oversight of the team at the CRA Office, represents a humble yet confident celebration of the gift we seek to offer the broader Church and Australian society. Its use among young people will hopefully deepen appreciation of the particular shapes and colours we offer in the larger mosaic which is the community of Christ’s disciples in our place and our time.
Each part of the title has meaning.
Our… it is wonderful that we have worked on this together. One of the joys for myself in the present responsibilities I have with CRA is the appreciation of how we work together. Differences of charism, experience, perspective … yet we need each other in our common witness to the religious vocation. Anyone reading this resource will sense a unity of purpose in the midst of a diversity of gifts.
Stories…. none of us live in the abstract but through what happens in encounters, events and experiences. We share stories of our strength and weakness, sin and grace, our fears and hopes. All of that is part of who we are. Our stories are grounded in place and time.
Lives… the stories have meaning because of the lives behind them and our way of life as religious. Relationship is key to our influence and the stories are grounded in people’s connection with religious over time. The resource will help us as we share what is important to us both personally and communally.
Mission… this resource is anything but an inward looking exercise. Mission links us with the whole. Our vocation humbly and courageously offers a gift to others. We in turn are constantly nourished, enriched and transformed through the grace of all with whom we share mission.
This resource is as much an account of what we have received as well as given. Our stories are not just about us but about many who are part of our common journey.
I commend this wonderfully prepared resource to you and those whom you serve.
Here is the entry for the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart
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Name of congregation |
Missionaries of the Sacred Heart [MSC] |
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Post-nominal initials |
MSC (in the early 20th century in Australia, MSH) |
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Charism |
“To be on earth the Heart of God” |
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Founded by |
Jules Chevalier, 1854, France. |
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Major events or historic turning points |
Missions of Papua New Guinea entrusted to the congregation, 1881. Establishment of the Australian Province 1905. |
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Notable writings, documents |
Founder Jules Chevalier wrote extensively, books and articles on Devotion to the Sacred Heart. Many MSC have published many books. After Vatican II, Superior General, E.J.Cuskelly of Australia, also wrote extensively in a perspective transition from Devotion to the Sacred Heart to Spirituality of the Heart. The congregation has many websites containing this documentation. |
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Beginnings in Australia |
Cardinal Moran offered the first missionaries en route to PNG the parish of Randwick/Botany as a mission base. |
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Some places of ministry |
54 countries throughout the world, all continents. |
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Ministries |
Foreign missions and establishment of local Churches, Education, Pastoral and Spiritual Formation, Justice and Peace, Media and Communications. |
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Vision
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Mission establishment and working with local churches, 1881, Papua New Guinea, New Britain. Australian work in the Northern Territory from 1906. Post-Vatican II renewal with Superior General, E.J. Cuskelly. Australian outreach to Asia, Japan 1949, India 1984, Vietnam 2003.
THE MISSIONARIES OF THE SACRED HEART STORY Saddened by the religious indifference in France after the Revolution, but excited by the increasing foreign missionary spirit, Jules Chevalier, aged 30, founded the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart in Issoudun, central France, 8th December 1854. He was inspired by the spirituality of the interior sentiments of Christ promoted by the Sulpician lecturers in his seminary as well as by Devotion to the Sacred Heart. He was happy that his name meant: Knight. His motto was: May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be everywhere loved. Forever. Devotion to Mary led to his naming Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Initially a small group, the MSC established Apostolic Schools for aspirants. But, anticlerical legislation in France, and expulsions, led to the congregation spreading within 30 years, while Jules Chevalier remained parish priest of Issoudun all his life, making it a significant centre of Marian pilgrimage. MSC moved to Belgium, Holland, Germany, England, the US, Italy. Eager for his men, priests and brothers (and his founding the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart) to reach out to missions, he was happy when Leo XIII entrusted Papua New Guinea and New Britain to the MSC in 1881. All the countries of Europe with an MSC presence went out to missions on all the continents, eventually developing provinces in Indonesia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Korea, the Pacific Islands as well as in Africa and South America. Jules Chevalier established the Annals of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in 1865. Each province had its own Annals (Australia in 1889). He was also a prolific writer and spiritual and theological writing has been a constant feature of MSC outreach (especially in Australia with Compass Theology Review, 1967-2016). Which has led to develops in media and communication and social media. MSC work in schools, teaching and chaplaincy, in parishes and have had a long tradition in retreats and home missions. Social justice, especially with the Heart Spirituality motivation, is key to ministry and there are beatified martyrs from the Spanish Civil War and from uprisings in Central America in the 1970s and 1980s. A number of missionaries established local congregations of sisters. In recent years, there have been worldwide developments for Lay MSC who, along with the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart [MSC], Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart [OLSH sisters], Missionaries Sisters of the Sacred Heart [MSC Sisters], are part of the Chevalier Family. Symbolically, some months before his death in 1907, Jules Chevalier was the victim of new anticlerical legislation, evicted from his presbytery out into the Place du Sacre Coeur. But he had seen over half a century of mission that he had inspired – and more than a century was to follow. History: Monastery on the Hill, A History of the Sacred Heart Monastery, 1897-1997, Nelen Yubu, 2000 Website: www.misacor.org.au (with 6 postings each week since 2010) |
