Laity of the Chevalier Family
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:
Report from the International Council to all members of the Chevalier Family
It is with pleasure that the International Council offers this Report of our work for the first three months of 2022. We have been very busy as you can see by the inclusions in this mailout.
Meetings of the International Council
We welcome Peter Cheong to our meetings this year and also, Hannie Jansen returning as our Minutes Secretary.
The international Council has held several meetings this year:
On the 5th February we held a Combined Meeting of the Philippines Organising Committee, the Trigeneralate members and the International Council. We were able to finalise the theme and the cost of attending the Assembly at that meeting and you can see our decisions in the Invitation that is included in this mailout.
On the 13th March we held our first Business Meeting. We had a very full Agenda that included: the Philippines Assembly, the launch of the Website, progress on the Survey and the Formators Book and the finalisation of the Document on Role of and Process for Replacing the Spiritual Companion of the International Council. In addition, we discussed the importance of the role of Spiritual Companion at the national level and you will hear from us soon on our work towards developing this role as a key ministry of Provinces. We also discussed possible ways of collecting together all of Fr Hans writing for the On-Line Course into a digital book translated into as many languages as possible. Our next Business meeting will be held on the 22nd October.
We met the Indian Laity by Zoom on the 19th March. It was a wonderful time together hearing about their group and its activities.
Commitment to Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation
Declaration
We remind the international family of our commitment to the integrity of creation and to supporting the initiatives of the Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation committee of the Trigeneralate. If you have not yet completed your Declaration form and given it to your National Council Chair we encourage you to do so. National Council Chairs please forward the completed Declarations to an International Council member.
First Friday Prayer Intentions
Please continue to distribute the First Friday intentions and top use them as formation opportunities for your people.
Launch of Website
It is with great pleasure that we launch our official Laity of the Chevalier Family website at chevalierfamilylaity.org. This project has taken some time to complete, and we thank Doris and Ranulfo Santos for beginning the project. The International Council has worked very hard to finalise the project and we could not have completed the task without the extraordinary skill and commitment of Brett Adamson and the creation of the Template by Matt Price. This website has been contributed to by many people collaborating together. The website is available in 12 languages which can be selected at the bottom of the page, and we encourage you to read it carefully and use it for formation. We make special note of the two articles; Spirituality of the Heart and the Interpretation of the logo which have been written by writing teams from many countries within the Family. Thank you to those who responded and assisted with that writing. We hope that these articles, which reflect the distinctiveness of the lay charism and will be useful for formation in your groups. The Resource List is also a very important part of the Website listing available resources in English, Spanish and Dutch with publishing details for purchase. There are also English resources which are out of copyright and have been scanned so they can be downloaded. We commend this resource list to you for use in your groups.
International Assembly in the Philippines.
The invitation to the Philippines Assembly is included in this mailout.
National Councils are invited to send an expression of interest to attend to Debbie Mellijor with an estimation of approximate numbers. This information is preliminary and simply to help with ongoing planning, but we hope to hear from all 36 member countries soon and anticipate that every country will be able to send at least one representative. A reminder also to countries of financial means to encourage you to begin to plan how you will assist in subsidising participation from countries with more limited financial means.
Survey details
Thank you to those countries who have completed the Survey which was sent to you with the December mailout. If you have not completed the Survey you will find it in the last mailout in English, French and Spanish and we would greatly appreciate your doing so as soon as you can. We will send you an analysis of the data in our June mailout.
News from the Family
Welcome to a new group in Vietnam associated with the FDNSC sisters.
Welcome to new National Councils in Papua New Guinea and Democratic Republic Congo and in Congo Brazzaville.
Our Easter prayer
Loving God,
Help us each day to stand for love, for compassion, for the good of all.
May we, the Chevalier Family, each in our own way and our own places
participate in bringing to life the Heart of God.
So that, this Easter season we can pray: not my will but Yours be done.
May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be loved everywhere.
With love and blessings to you and those you love from:
International Council of the Laity of the Chevalier Family.
The Chevalier Year
|
April 2023 |
May 2023
|
|
The current International Council of the Laity of the Chevalier Family was elected in 2024 at the 4th International Assembly of Laity held in Cebu City, Philippines.
