The King of love

On this day in 1800, during a clandestine Mass in a Parisian attic, a small group of women vowed their lives to God, and to an uncertain future. And thus was born the Society of the Sacred Heart, although it would be a while before the community could bear that name. Today, therefore, is our 222nd birthday! - though the international community we have become is probably far beyond anything that tiny group in their cheap lodgings might have even begun to imagine. 

This year's liturgical tides mean that yesterday the Church celebrated the feast of Christ the King, a feast instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925 - the year of St Madeleine Sophie's canonisation - in response to growing nationalism and populism. But the kingship of Christ is nothing like that of human rulers: as the preface for yesterday's feast reminds us, his is a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace. The feast's Gospels reinforce this, presenting a king hidden in the poorest and most vulnerable (Matthew 25), or at his passion and death.

A king, and a kingdom our broken world needs now, as much as in 1925...

And so I wondered what Sophie - who lived through revolutions and regicide, saw monarchies rise and fall, and thrones tumble - would make of this feast, which she never celebrated on earth. What sort of king, I asked her, was Christ for her? 

The reply came softly, in the opening verse of a setting of Psalm 23...

The King of love my Shepherd is,
Whose goodness faileth never;
I nothing lack if I am his
And he is mine for ever.

The king of love... That, I'm sure, is how Sophie would have described the kingship of the Sacred Heart, her understanding of it deepening over the years. Glorifying this Heart became the vocation of each RSCJ; union and conformity with it, through the intimacy of deep, prolonged prayer, the means. A Heart to be glorified, yes; but not above us, and never removed from the pain and wounds of our world. Instead, it is a Heart-among-us, filled with the true power and amazing truth of the Incarnation: that Jesus delights in being with us, drawing us ever closer to him and to God, as much now as when he shared our humanity 2,000 years ago. And it is a Heart overflowing with unconditional and uncontainable love, freely offered to all. 

And two hundred and twenty-two years after Sophie's consecration and self-gift, we are still called to discover and make known this treasury of Love, this King of Love. Please pray for us, as we continue to discern and find new spaces and ways in which to carry out this grace of our vocation.