My shared name

Twenty years ago today, and three days before our perpetual vows, my probation-sisters and I gathered for a ritual almost as old as our Society: our programme's closing conference, delivered by our Superior General. And in a tradition started by our founding mother, we received our group name and devise (motto). This name especially, and devise both reflect and set a seal on our experience and character as a group, and call us into our new identity as professed RSCJ, individually and as a whole.

In her conference our Superior General said:

As I was pondering in my own heart all that you shared with me during the visits, our prayer together, our informal conversations, your name and devise came quietly and steadily, until finally I said "Yes! This describes them and gives them a corporate identity that is congruent with the journey and convictions of each one."

And then she named us the probation of The Open and Welcoming Heart of Jesus, with the devise "Through his wounds we are healed." (Is 53.5), and I can still recall the intakes of breath, the soft smiles and the emotion which filled the room. Like groups before and since, we had speculated and joked, wondered and hoped... But whatever we had fondly imagined or declared to be our favoured hope, what we received was so much better. 

The name was perfect for me, and for everything I had lived until then... but I also knew it was perfect for each one, and for all of us as a whole. And that is a lovely mystery: how twelve women from eleven countries, with different personalities, ministries, backgrounds, cultures and experiences, different ways of praying and relating to God, can be brought together for five intense months, and everything in their lives somehow merges and flows together, changing and being changed, and yet capable of being distilled into a few, oh-so perfect words. 

I know there will be RSCJ reading this who will nod in recognition and remembrance of the same mystery permeating their own probation, and determining the name conferred by the Superior General - but also, in a sense, given by each one to each other. But fundamentally, what we really remember is not a moment of naming, but the women with whom we forged this identity. Women with whom we prayed, laughed, cried... with whom we squabbled, and also shared from our depths; women from whom we learned, and by whom we grew and were stretched; women with whom we share a longstanding bond, across the oceans and continents that separate us. 

And today especially I recall them all with love and gratitude, praying that wherever in the world we might be, we can live our name and our mission with greater strength and depth. May we all be, and make known The Open and Welcoming Heart of Jesus, through whose wounds we are all healed, for a world so in need of that tender, healing, all-embracing love...