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One of the ways that we sometimes characterize the vocation of the Religious of the Sacred Heart is that we are called to be “fully contemplative and fully apostolic.” That means, in a way, living one’s life on two tracks simultaneously but in an integrated way: the life of the contemplative religious, and the life of the apostolic laborer in God’s vineyard. The letter to the Ephesians puts it this way: “May Christ dwell in your hearts through faith, and may charity be the root and foundation of your life.” (Eph 3:17). Religious life in the Society of the Sacred Heart is lived along these two tracks of inward contemplation and outward mission to show forth the love of Christ by doing what we are able to do, the best way we can. The special grace of vocation is the ability to make these two dimensions flow into one, so that contemplation feeds apostolic energy and apostolic labor feeds prayer; so that the two movements are not two, but merely different aspects of the one movement of life and praise, like breathing in and breathing out. John 19:33-37 tells of that moment in which the body of Jesus, who had given all for us, has yet more to give. His side is pierced, and from it flow blood and water. Patristic writers have seen many different levels of meaning in that moment: humanity and divinity, life and Spirit, Eucharist and Baptism. Some have seen it as John’s way of depicting the birth of the Church, born from the pierced side of Jesus, the flowing out of the Holy Spirit that would be represented later in the breath of the risen Jesus upon his disciples, and by Luke in the Pentecost event that we have just celebrated. The meaning of this scene of the piercing of Jesus’ side is multivalent, yet it cannot escape the ultimate meaning of Jesus who gives all for us, so that even his body, already given to us in the Eucharist, can hold nothing back. This is the gift of self, the giving of all, to which we are called to respond. From the homily given at Kenwood on May 17, 2005, on the occasion of the
100th birthday of Sr. Kathryn Sullivan rscj Carolyn Osiek rscj
Province of the United States
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