Centred in the essential

Yesterday, as social media began to fill with articles and images of St Madeleine Sophie Barat, whose feast is today, RSCJ in Mexico posted a link to a video about her. The text accompanying the link said:

En este tiempo con tantos retos, le pedimos su espíritu, su visión de futuro, su esperanza en el potencial de la educación, su capacidad de centrarse en lo esencial: el Corazón de Jesús.

At this time filled with so many challenges, we pray for her spirit, her vision, her hope in the potential of education, her capacity to centre herself in the essential: the Heart of Jesus.

To centre herself in the essential... to centre herself in the Heart of Jesus... these words leapt out at me from the screen. In a few syllables they summed up Sophie, her whole life and mission. From her earliest days Sophie was centred in God; a God who revealed himself to her as Love, as Heart. As she grew, learning and maturing through life and circumstances, she increasingly plumbed the depths of this Heart, learning, discovering, drawing strength and grace, and developing the spirituality of the Heart which is one of her enduring legacies to us, and the source and centre of our lives and mission.

This Heart was the essential, the 'one thing necessary', and in this Sophie was completely and utterly centred, single-mindedly and wholeheartedly, throughout her life. May her prayers and example help us too, to be wholly centred in the essential, in the Heart of Jesus, that he may truly be the source and centre of everything we are and do.