Week 10 (May 24-30)

By Paul Parker
Educator at Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart in Miami, Florida 

It was a very warm, sultry evening in the middle of September 2015 in greater Miami, where I live. About 200 miles south were hundreds of pastoral ministers from across Cuba who were gathered in Havana’s Catedral de San Cristobal to be with Pope Francis and no doubt searching for renewed strength, hope and zeal. That it was a live television broadcast made the exhaustion so real of what appeared to be a bedraggled community of women and men who were carrying out Christ’s mission and the Church’s mission under the restrictions of what the Cuban Revolution wrought.

And into this dramatic context, the Pastor of the Universal Church announces the call to join another revolution, the Revolution of Tenderness. It was jolting.

Here are a few words from the Pope’s address that night:

“And what is tenderness? It is the love that comes close and becomes real. It is a movement that starts from our heart and reaches the eyes, the ears and the hands.”
 
“The future of humankind isn't exclusively in the hands of politicians, of great leaders, of big companies. Yes, they do hold an enormous responsibility. But the future is, most of all, in the hands of those people who recognize the other as a ‘you’ and themselves as part of an ‘us.’ We all need each other.”

“Good intentions and conventional formulas, so often used to appease our conscience, are not enough,” he said. “Let us help each other, all together, to remember that the other is not a statistic or a number. The other has a face. The ‘you’ is always a real presence, a person to take care of.”

This Revolution of Tenderness is based on the "real presence" of Christ in one another.

If you are interested in more on the Pope’s vision, here are three helpful resources:

We are blessed that this call and gift and challenge of joining in the Revolution of Tenderness are deeply embedded in Sacred Heart. We even sing of it:

Coeur de Jésus

Refrain:
Coeur de Jésus sauvez le monde, Que l’univers vous soit soumis
En Vous seul notre espoir se fonde
Seigneur, Seigneur, Vous nous l’avez promis.

(Heart of Jesus, save the world)
(May the world be submitted)
(In you alone our hope is founded)
(Lord, Lord, you have promised us this.)

Verse 1:
Vous l’avez dit: Votre promesse
Fait notr’espoir, notre bonheur:
Je bénirai dans ma tendresse
Les enfants de mon Sacré Coeur.

(You have told us: your promise)
(Will be our hope, our happiness:)
(In my tenderness, I will bless)
(The children of my Sacred Heart.)
 
And our founding mothers and the Society of the Sacred Heart’s Constitutions frequently reflect on how Christ’s way, the way of tenderness, the way of "real presence" is what we seek to discover and make known.

Mary Aloysia Hardey, RSCJ

~Our loving-kindness with ourselves is the source of our loving-kindness to others. When we develop this consciousness within our self and toward our self, then we can offer genuine, Christ-like love, tolerance and compassion to others. This is the true work (and reward) of our life.

Janet Erksine Stuart, RSCJ

~You must not take a failure so much to heart. You must cultivate hopeful courage in God's service, and remember all our life there must be fails and failures from time to time to keep us steeped in humility and contrition, so "off again, on again, away again."

~Beware of extremes, beware of inhuman efforts, of violent measures, of all that drives you off your balance.... Don’t attempt the impossible. Take yourself as you are, whole, and do not try to live by one part alone and starve the other.

~Supernatural simplicity belongs to those who are not only one with themselves but one with God. It is more than the 'simple life,' it is the life of union. God is simplicity itself – one act; the nearer we come to God, the less complicated we become.

Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat

~Unfailing gentleness with all, patience in bearing annoyances which arise in every direction, trust in God which does not allow us to doubt God’s protection on any occasion that we fear; these are the fruits of fidelity to the Holy Spirit.

~Give only good example to the children; never correct them when out of humor or impatient. We must win them by an appeal to their piety and to their hearts. Soften your reprimands with kind words; encourage and reward them. That is, in short, our way of educating.

~The Spirit of Jesus, who always inhabits an interior person united to the divine Heart, will enable us to know exactly what to say, to decide or to advise.