Our Spiritual Library

In prayer we come to Him with everything that touches our life,
with the sufferings and hopes of humanity.
(Constitutions, 20)

As apostolic contemplatives, Religious of the Sacred Heart root our lives in prayer. With a mission to discover and reveal the love of God, our spirituality and our mission are based in love. Our contemplative outlook is part of who we are, whether in prayer, in ministry or in our daily lives.

"The contemplative outlook on the world has been a call to be authentic apostles of Christ's love, to help bring to birth a more welcoming world, to make known a God who is great, bountiful and tender. It is a call to educate in such a way that God's plan, God's glory, may become a reality, so that all may grow as brothers and sisters in the inward freedom of the children of God, and have fullness of life." (Superior General Concepcion Camacho, RSCJ)

The pierced Heart of Jesus opens our being to the depths of God and to the anguish of humankind.
(Constitutions, 8)

On these pages, we will share prayers, poems, reflections and artwork that reflect the spirituality of the Society of the Sacred Heart. We hope you will return here periodically for resources appropriate to the liturgical season and our Sacred Heart traditions.

First Friday Reflection for August 2015

For four years I lived in a small town in Haiti and, although there is not proof that the creator of this image is Haitian, I see it through that lens.

The bright white of his robe reminds me of the dresses of the little girls of the village, washed in the muddy water of drainage ditches yet emerging spotless! Starched and pressed with irons filled with hot charcoal, made from trees stripped and burned in the decimated hills, yet still providing fuel for food and a bit of dignity.

First Friday Reflection for July 2015

This image of the Sacred Heart, as traditional as any image could be, held a place of honor in my husband’s family home on the living room fireplace mantel. It was there before he was born and it remains there today. Each evening, his parents would gather the family around it for the family rosary. When I first saw it, in the ‘70s, I was fascinated by the warmth and peace that seemed to radiate from the image – a human with a heart, yet divine.

For the Feast of the Sacred Heart: June 12

Litany of the Heart

By Wendy Wright, Ph.D.

Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer!

So loving
So humble
So gentle
So compassionate
So faithful
So wise
So patient
So steadfast
So tender
So spacious

Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer!

God’s joy
God’s shalom
Harp of the Trinity
Wingbeat of the Spirit
Breath of God
Five-petaled rose

Heart of Jesus, hear our prayer!

Feast of the Sacred Heart, Flashback to 2013

Through the centuries, the Christian community has consistently tried to capture its developing understanding of Jesus Christ in word and image, a never ending challenge to portray the Mystery of the love of God made visible in the man, Jesus of Nazareth, who went about doing good and eventually laid down his life for us.

First Friday Reflection for June, 2015

In the long text version of Revelations of Divine Love, Julian of Norwich devotes a chapter to the Sacred Heart. The words Jesus had spoken to her twenty years before as he directed her gaze to the wound in his side — “Look how much I loved you” — she explains as follows:

Feast of Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat, May 25, 2015

“Do not let me hearOf the wisdom of old men, but rather of their folly,Their fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession,Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.”– T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Prayer for graduates

Good and gracious God,

This is the day that you have made! Let us rejoice and be glad in it!

This day is the culmination of years of work: hours and hours of reading and writing, calculating and investigating, sharing and caring. Years filled with challenges and triumphs, losses and laughter, friendships and growth and prayer.

And now, these years are coming to a beautiful, joyful end.

Dear God of every good gift, bless these graduates, every one, and fill them with the Spirit of your love.

Hyacinth Day - May 6

On May 6th, we celebrate Janet Erskine Stuart’s call in Hyde Park over 130 years ago. Blue Hyacinth Day is an opportunity to reflect upon Mother Stuart’s vocation and to consider our own, as well

First Friday Reflection for May 2015

My experience has taught me that God takes great delight in showing us ways to receive his love, ways to live in it and ways to give it away. There seem to be no end to these pathways God puts in front of us to lead us to his heart.

When I was an adolescent at (the Academy of the Sacred Heart) Lake Forest, I began to discover this love. I so looked forward to First Fridays. They were days set apart from ordinary days by what we wore, what we did and what we ate. What I looked forward to with great eagerness was Mass and the proclamation of Ephesians 3:

This is the Day

A poem for Easter

This is the day,Greater than the day theRed Sea waters divided cunningly.

This is the day, More beautiful thanNoah’s rampant rainbow.

This is the day,A homecoming dearerThan that blest Prodigal’s.

This is the day,More awful thanThree youths laughing in the blazing furnace.

This is the dayHe spoke about in parable andPatient waiting.The day they never understoodUntil he passed through deathAnd a closed door.

Our Spiritual Library

Litany of the Heart

By Wendy Wright, Ph.D.

A poem for Easter

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