May 25th, 2009
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Brussels, Sunday 24th May 2009!Coming from different places...To give thanks on the feast of St Madeleine Sophie.
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Extracts from the Word of welcome by the Provincial, Françoise Belpaire.
Welcome to each one.
It is the eve of the Feast of St Madeleine Sophie. It is she who gathers us together today.
We come from different places, and I would like to welcome you in the name of my sisters from Belgium and the Netherlands (...)
The feast of St Madeleine Sophie has a particular characteristic this year. We have come together to give thanks for the discreet and active presence of Madeleine-Sophie among us for 105 years.
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To give thanks in our name, and in communion also with all those who have stopped by the chasse in Jette or in this chapel, in the past or in recent days. How many generations of students, of religious, of pilgrims of all origins and cultures have come to confide to St Madeleine-Sophie their joys or sorrows, their choice of a way of life, the desire to have a child or family concerns, to ask her for strength and hope to go further, in life or on the way of the Gospel. |
Living in the Heart of God, she continues to listen to each one as she did throughout her life. Some among us can bear witness to her motherly intercession. We know how deep was her desire that persons should develop their gifts and their human and spiritual capacities, and share the best of themselves with others to create a more just and understanding world.
I am not going to recount here her educational work which has developed through varied and creative commitments, in the past and today. I would like simply to draw your attention to the two readings of today.
| St Paul (Colossians 3:12-17) and John (15:1-12) speak to us of "being clothed in the feelings of Jesus Christ", of "remaining in his agape", his freely-given love. Grafted like the branch on to the vine, it is from the Heart of Jesus that St Madeleine-Sophie drew her inspiration as well as the strength and tenderness with which she loved the young and the most vulnerable. This is the message she leaves us, a message illustrated by her life of listening to the Spirit, a life given until the end. |
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The chasse will soon be moved to Paris. As we are used to this presence and closeness, we might feel this departure rather like the absence of a member who leaves the family who has welcomed her...St Madeleine Sophie invites us to look further! By returning close to the places where she lived, she will be restored, by the parish of St Francis Xavier, to the universal church.
Let us rejoice with her in this expanding horizon!
Let our hearts rejoice in God!
Let us celebrate the Lord and the Lord's friends...
Extracts from the homily of Father J. M. Faux sj
The readings for the Mass of St Madeleine-Sophie bring us into the heart of her life, her teaching and her work, of her legacy, and this is the Heart of Jesus. "As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; remain in my love, love as I have loved you". (...)
Remain. This verb recurs twelve times in the gospel we have just heard. It tells us the secret of Christian life, of what St Madeleine-Sophie doubtless lived: intimate union with Jesus. It gives meaning and reality to this marvellous and at the same time impossible and incomprehensible command of Jesus, the commandment to love. "This is my commandment: love one another".
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This is the paradox of love: there is nothing more personal and spontaneous. Can we love to order? Jesus makes his case even more difficult, if I may say so, by adding "as I have loved you". He asks the impossible. But this "as" does not only describe the scope of love, it describes its origin, the grace given, the sap that irrigates the branch. Receiving the love with which God loves us in Jesus, we are enabled to love "as he has loved us". The letter to the Colossians gives the same message by explaining to some extent the commandment to love. (...) A life which bears fruit; it is the love thus received from God in intimate union with Jesus and in docility to the Spirit and lived out in practice in daily life. In the end, the letter invites us three times to "give thanks". |
| On this feast of St Madeleine Sophie, yes, we give thanks because she remained in the love of Jesus and she radiated this love in the whole of her life and work, we give thanks for the fruit that she bore, as well as for all the fruit borne for two hundred years by the religious family that she founded and all those linked to or inspired by it. It was a grace for us to have her body in our chapel and I liked to commemorate her in the Eucharistic prayer; I will continue to do this. |  |
After more than a century, her chasse will leave Belgium to go to Paris, a place where she lived and where her influence was felt.
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We hope that the veneration of her body will continue to inspire many people. But especially, in this celebration, we give thanks for what she has been and remains in the Church, a visible witness to the love of Jesus, and we ask for one another the grace to remain in the love of Jesus and to bear fruit for the life of the world.
It is right to celebrate our God, |