Angel García-Zamorano. msc
Guatemala, 5 November 2023

What did Fr Chevalier mean by “Heart of Jesus” and what did he want to express when he spoke of it? To understand these questions and to give them an adequate answer, it is necessary to take into account the politico-religious situation in France in the 19th and early 20th century, when Fr Chevalier lived. The way he understood the “signs of his time” leads us to understand his spirituality and the way he wanted to transmit it to the Congregations he founded.

This “status quaestionis” leads us to ask ourselves: How would Father Jules Chevalier propose the person of Jesus of Nazareth today? What would be the particular characteristics in which he would present him? The following pages can help us to answer these questions and, in this way, to better understand his charism and spirituality.

1) Socio-political situation of France in the 19th century ¹.

Fr Chevalier’s life took place during the 19th and early 20th centuries (1824-1907). What was the socio-political situation in France at that time? In a few lines it is not possible to describe a situation as complicated and difficult as that of that time. But the data that I am going to refer to can give us an idea, even if it is very vague, of what happened then and how it happened in order to better understand its consequences, not only in the socio-political order, but also in the ecclesiastical and religious order.

In the 19th century, France, like much of Europe, experienced a change of direction in the course of its history. It moved from the Ancien Régime based on the monarchy to a modern world: that of democracy, which is still the political system that characterises our societies in the 21st century.

We could call the 19th century the century of revolutions in France. Revolutions that brought, amidst pain and wars, great changes that managed to profoundly transform people’s way of thinking, an unmistakable symptom marking the birth of a new era in the Western world. The first was in 1789, that marks the beginning of our modern society. The elementary foundations of coexistence that now function in Western democracies were first laid at that time. On 14 July, in the city of Paris, the revolution against the ancien régime broke out. There and then a series of profound changes began to take place in the organisation of society, in the political systems and in the economy and industry that have led us to the model of society we have. A new revolution broke out in 1830, attempting to restore the Ancien Régime.

In 1848, revolutions again became widespread, but this time aimed at defending the right to work and the interests of the working classes. The new modern society was being created, with its interests centred on faith in man and progress. It was what some called “romantic socialism”, the infancy and youth of 20th century socialism.

A new form of monarchy was about to appear, something that seemed to contradict its recent overthrow. The new monarch, no longer king but Emperor, Napoleon I (1804-1814), was proclaimed on merit rather than lineage. His coronation was endorsed, supported, by a popular plebiscite and carried out by the Pope himself, a curious mixture of divine and popular power. It was Pope Pius VII who officiated at Napoleon’s coronation at Notre Dame de Paris on Sunday 2 December 1804. The rights won for the people in the Revolution were respected, but they were controlled by the iron hand of imperial authority.

Napoleon dreamed of a great “free” France spread throughout Europe. Instead, it was the nightmare of wars that plunged the continent into a great crisis that ended up restoring the monarchy abolished in 1789 as the only authority capable of getting along with foreign powers. From that moment until the establishment of what was called the 3rd. Republic in 1870, the history of France was truly convulsive, living in the continuous contradiction of the coming MODERNITY. The succession of kings and leaders clearly shows this convulsive and tortured character brought about by the new modern epoch.

It was in this changing and convulsive socio-political context that Jules Chevalier lived.

2) Religious-ecclesiastical situation in France in the 19th century

In France after the French Revolution, Catholicism was somehow associated with the monarchy, with absolutism, with the Ancien Régime. It was not conceivable that a Catholic could be politically “liberal” and still be truly Catholic.

As a contemporary theologian, Martin Rhonheimer, explains: “From the French Revolution onwards, in its analysis of modern political culture with a liberal-constitutionalist and democratic imprint, the Church found it difficult to distinguish – and understandably so – between what was unrenounceable from the point of view of faith and what was historically contingent”². The Church, as a temporal organisation, had lived in alliance with the European absolute monarchies.

These difficulties and misunderstandings arose not only because the Catholic Church, especially in France, was linked to a mentality akin to modern monarchical absolutism and the confessional state, but also because its opponent – nineteenth-century secularism – identified the political attitude in favour of freedom and constitutionalism with an anti-dogmatic, anti-clerical and subjectivist religious position.

The context in which Catholic liberalism faced its challenges was that of a double threat:

On the one hand, the threat of “secularist” liberalism, which was the influential group of liberals who wanted to completely eliminate the presence and influence of the Catholic Church in society through various measures such as the confiscation of church property, the expulsion of religious orders and the prohibition of religious orders, the monopoly of school and university education, as well as welfare activities.
On the other hand, the incomprehensible attitude of certain sectors of the Church towards the so-called “modern” freedoms – such as freedom of worship and conscience, academic and teaching freedom, freedom of the press, etc. – and towards “political liberalism” (citizens’ participation in government, parliamentary regime, suffrage, limitations on power). These sectors have been given different names: fundamentalists, intransigents, traditionalists or “ultramontanes” (because they looked in everything to Rome, which, in France, lies beyond the Alpine mountains).

One of the big questions then was whether a Catholic should oppose political, press, religious and teaching freedoms. What was at issue was whether these modern freedoms were an evil in themselves or whether they might even be, in the end, beneficial to the Catholic Church itself.

In France, years of alliance between the throne and the altar under the Ancien Régime, coupled with the anti-Catholic excesses of the French Revolution, had led to a misunderstanding – and in many cases enmity – of many Catholics for republican ideas and modern liberties. Many Catholics longed for a nostalgic return to the days of monarchical absolutism, which they considered divine right.

R. Lamennais (1782-1854), a priest, along with others who held the same ideas (Lacordaire, Montalambert), was one of the main exponents of liberal Catholicism. He cultivated enthusiasm for liberal ideas which he tried to combine with Roman Catholicism. He joined the editorial staff of the newspaper L’Avenir (The Future) whose motto was “God and liberty”. It defended democratic principles and the separation of Church and State. From 1830 onwards, this publication was to become one of the instruments for the dissemination of Catholic liberal thought. It was condemned by the Vatican in 1832 for its ideas.

The newspaper called for the defence of religious freedom and the separation of church and state, freedom of education, freedom of the press and of opinion, as well as the elective principle for the selection of rulers. It combined liberal aspirations with a Romantic-era Catholicism.

The main cause of L’Avenir was the defence of the freedom of the Catholic Church in France and its total independence from the government. The Concordat signed by Napoleon (who had an anti-religious policy) and Pius VII, had left the Church in France too much subject to the government in the appointment of bishops and the payment of their salaries, with the result that the Church was too often subject to political ups and downs. The paper argued vehemently for the separation of the Church from the French State, while at the same time advocating direct submission of the Church to the Pope.

The paper also defended freedom of worship, freedom of the press, freedom of association and freedom of education.

At the end of August 1832, the encyclical Mirari Vos, without naming L’Avenir or its editors specifically, condemned several of the ideas advocated by the publication. In this encyclical, Pope Gregory XVI refers to freedom of conscience as a “delirium” and a “pestilent error”, and condemns the freedom of the press and those who “with clumsy machinations of rebellion depart from the faith they owe to princes, wishing to wrest from them the authority they possess” and who “attempt to separate Church and State and to break the mutual concord of the priesthood with the empire”.

Years after these episodes, Father Lacordaire began to develop an intense activity as a preacher and lecturer, and then went on a study trip to Rome. There he had the idea of restoring the Dominican order in France, which had been suppressed by the Revolution. The preaching and teaching vocation of the order, together with its flexibility and its participative and elective form of government, attracted him. In 1839 he took the Dominican habit and returned to France, where it was still illegal to wear the habit, preaching with great success in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. He founded several convents and almost ten years later he was elected provincial of the new French Dominican province.

The Count de Montalembert was born into a noble family, while his father – married to a Scottish woman – was in exile in England at the time of the Terror. Through his family, he had an important network of contacts in aristocratic circles and Parisian salons. Like all “romantics” of his generation, he dreamed of high ideals: to serve God and liberty.

He also promoted the creation of a “Catholic party” that would unite French Catholics in support of the freedom of the Church and free education. This action achieved certain legislative victories for the candidates most favourable to freedom of education and opposed to the official educational monopoly. He eventually contributed to the passage of the so-called Falloux law in 1850, in which Montalembert played an active role, which recognised the freedom of teaching and eliminated the prohibition on teaching for religious congregations.

Together with other opponents, he relaunched a review, le Correspondant, which took up the liberal-Catholic banners with the slogan “Civil and religious liberty for the whole universe”, while another group of more fundamentalist Catholics, led by Veuillot, attacked them from the pages of l’Univers.

It was also in these years that Montalembert wrote a famous pamphlet entitled On Catholic Interests in the 19th century. In it, he states that absolutism is “of all governments the one that has always exposed the Church to the greatest dangers”. He argues that without freedom of action there will be no safeguarding of Catholic interests, but that the Church cannot enjoy this freedom unless it is granted to all. Let us quote a memorable paragraph from this work:

“Under a liberal government, the Church does not dominate in the political order and this domination is not within its wishes or its interests, although it has something that is worth a thousand times more than power: rights. Catholics are not the masters: they are forced to count on many people, but they are counted on and, what is a thousand times better, they learn to count on themselves a little. In the long run, since what they demand is legitimate and at the same time sensible, they end up winning. But you have to know how to argue, to reason, to fight, to wait, to use courage and patience at the same time, to face fearsome adversaries”.

We cannot follow the whole course of the relations between French liberalism and Catholicism. We only wish to highlight a few milestones along the way to the present day.

Leo XIII, who succeeded Pius IX, adopted more nuanced positions on political liberalism. Although he did not fail to attack the naturalist and rationalist philosophical roots of certain types of liberalism in his encyclical Libertas praestantissimum (1888), Leo XIII became definitively convinced that French Catholics, largely monarchists and hostile to the republic, should adhere to the republican regime – the French Third Republic – in order to fight anti-clericalism from within.

To them, a year after Rerum Novarum, in 1892, he addressed the encyclical Au milieu des solicitudes, in which he proposed the famous “ralliement”, i.e. the “adherence” of Catholics to the republican regime of the Third Republic established in 1868. From then on, French Catholics found many channels to participate in the democratic life of France through various political parties and movements. Thus, many years later, “Christian democracy” emerged, not only in France but also in other European countries.

The men whose story we are following lived through a difficult time for their faith and political convictions. They defended ideals which, in the eyes of some of their contemporaries, seemed contradictory or even heretical.

The defence of religious freedom, freedom of the press and freedom of opinion seem today to be indisputable constitutional achievements. The ideal of a “free Church in a free State” is still alive and well. Let us thank these precursors, Lacordaire, Montalembert, Dupanloup and also Lamennais, for having opened the way – within Catholicism – to these themes.

These facts that we have recalled help us to understand that the 19th century was a time of upheaval and drastic change in France, both politically and religiously. It meant the passage to a new way of understanding the Church and Catholicism, which clashed with the old ideas of absolutism and the unity of the Church with the State.

Chevalier, like all Catholics at the time, found it difficult to understand how to be a Christian in a new political situation and longed for the old regime, considering that the new situation led to secularisation and a move away from Christian values.

3) Jansenism

Another aspect to be taken into account in order to understand correctly the life and spirit of Fr Chevalier is Jansenism.

During the 19th century, Jansenist theology was widespread within the Church. Jansenism was a religious movement initiated by the theologian and bishop Cornelius Jansenius (1585-1638), which enjoyed a certain popularity in Europe during the 17th century and later. It was condemned as heretical by the Catholic Church because of its theses on salvation, which ultimately denied the contest of human freedom.

Jansenism was a Puritan movement, emphasising original sin, human depravity, the necessity of divine grace that will save only those to whom it was granted from birth, and the belief in predestination without free will. Jansenism is generally regarded as synonymous with intransigence. They placed such conditions on confession and communion that they practically alienated the faithful from these sacraments and even from religious communities.

P. Quesnel (1634-1719) was a French Jansenist priest and theologian, excommunicated and condemned by Clement XI. With the publication of his Réflexions morales, he won the sympathy and support of the high clergy. Theological disputes multiplied and the atmosphere became so heated that the French bishops called for a new papal intervention.

On this occasion, Pope Clement XI, with the Constitution Unigenitus Dei Filius (1713), formally condemned 101 propositions contained in Quesnel’s writings. The Jansenist movement (no longer able to evade condemnation as its followers had previously done by means of multiple interpretations of papal texts) then appealed to a council and, for this, its supporters were called “appellants”. Clement XI excommunicated them by means of the bull Pastoralis officii (1718).

After these condemnations, the movement gradually died out, either through the separation of its members (who created new sects such as the Convulsionists or the Figuralists), or through the influence of the Enlightenment.

4) Devotion to the Sacred Heart

In this political-ecclesial and religious context, the devotion to the Sacred Heart, as it is understood today, was born. It is a way of representing, invoking and adoring the Love with which Christ loves His Father and all of us.

Devotion to the Heart of Jesus has existed since the earliest times of the Church, with meditation on the side and the open Heart of Jesus, from which came blood and water. From that Heart the Church was born. In the 11th century, it had a new revival, when pious Christians meditated on his five wounds.

As it is known today, it began in the 17th century when Jesus appeared several times to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, who began to report that she had visions of Jesus.

At that time, prayers to the Sacred Heart, to the wound in Jesus’ side, among other private devotions, grew among the faithful. All helped Christians to focus on His Passion and Death, so that they could grow in love for Him.

The following year, in June or July 1674, Margaret Mary reported that Jesus wanted to be honoured under the figure of his heart of flesh. She asked the faithful to receive him frequently in the Eucharist, especially on the first Friday of each month, and to practise a holy devotional hour.

In 1675, during the octave of Corpus Christi, Margaret Mary had a vision that later became known as the “great apparition”.

In it, Jesus asked that the feast of the Sacred Heart be celebrated each year on the Friday following Corpus Christi, in reparation for the ingratitude of men to His redemptive sacrifice on the cross.

On June 16, 1675, Our Lord appeared to her and showed her his heart of which she heard Our Lord say: “Behold the Heart which has loved men so much, and yet from most men it receives nothing but ingratitude, irreverence and contempt, in this sacrament of love”. With these words, Our Lord Himself tells us in what devotion to His Sacred Heart consists.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is a symbol of the love of Jesus Christ for humanity. Devotion to the Sacred Heart can be defined as devotion to the adorable Heart of Jesus insofar as it represents and remembers his love. Or what amounts to the same thing, it is devotion to the love of Jesus Christ insofar as that love is remembered and symbolically represented by his heart of flesh. The devotion itself is directed to the person of Our Lord Jesus Christ and to his unrequited love, represented by his Heart.

France experienced a turbulent history after the Revolution of 1789. It increased when the Republicans came to power in 1879, who caused great difficulties for the Church. Among them were people who tried to annihilate religion and their aim was to organise humanity without God.

Taking this into account and the consequences it had on the Church at that time, it is understandable that devotion to the Sacred Heart was presented as a great means of restoring stability in the Church and that this devotion spread rapidly through some of the most prominent people of that time.

Pope Pius XII wrote an Encyclical on the Sacred Heart, Haurietes aquas (1956). Throughout history there have been various inculturations of this devotion, in different forms and languages, but always so that the Father might reveal to us in all its depths the mystery of his Love through a privileged symbol: the living heart of his risen Son. For “the Heart of Christ is the centre of mercy”, said Francis³.

The Jesuits had a great influence on devotion to the Sacred Heart. Father Claude de la Colombière, will give the message that the Risen Lord revealed to him about the depth of his mercy. St Margaret had a vision in which the Lord entrusted to the Sisters of the Visitation and to the Fathers of the Society of Jesus the task of transmitting to all the experience and understanding of the mystery of the Sacred Heart.

Pedro Arrupe saw the essence of devotion to the Heart of Christ in the unity of love of God and neighbour, and this is what he wished to live: “Lord, in meditating I have discovered that the ideal of “our way of proceeding” is your way of proceeding. That is why I fix my eyes on You, the eyes of faith, to contemplate Your figure as it appears in the Gospel”.⁴ It is worth noting that what Father Arrupe wants to show is the Jesus of the Gospel.

5) Christ-centred spirituality of Fr. Chevalier

Fr Chevalier was more than a man of action. Fr. Cuskelly identifies him as a man of “spiritual hardiness” ⁵ What does he mean by these words? First, that he was a person of great depth of faith, which gave him the conviction that, whatever happened, God would be with him. And secondly, the quiet confidence that he was destined for a special mission within the Church.

Fr Chevalier’s life took place at a time when the liberalism of the French revolutions and the epochal change they brought about had a profound effect on the Church and Christian life at that time. Faced with this reality, which was seen as a loss of Christian values because of the oblivion it implied for Jesus Christ and his message, devotion to the Sacred Heart was seen as the great means to return to the lost fervour and to promote evangelisation. This is the great constant that appears in the works of Fr Chevalier and which invites us not to return to devotion and practices related to the Heart of Jesus, but to the person of Jesus Christ, whom the de-Christianisation of the modern world seemed to forget.

It is worth remembering that Christian life and its spirituality cannot be based on formulas and devotions, on ‘enuntiabilia’ (in this case, the Devotion to the Sacred Heart), which have an instrumental function, but must aspire to the ‘res’, which is what gives rise to and finally resolves these expressions, according to the clear affirmation of St. Thomas Aquinas: “actus autem credentis non terminatur ad enuntiabile, sed ad rem; non enim formamus enuntiabilia nisi ut ut per ea de rebus congnitionem habeamus, sicut in scientia, ita in fide” ⁶(Summa Theologiae, II-II, q. 1, a. 2 ad 2m.).

Applying this principle to our case, we can say that when we speak of the Heart of Jesus we are not referring to a devotion, but where this statement leads us, to Jesus of Nazareth. We formulate statements so that, by means of them, we have knowledge of the whole reality. Therefore, we cannot remain with the formulation of “devotion to the Heart of Jesus” or “spirituality of the Heart”, but in the person of Jesus, who “loved with the heart of man”, as the Council says (GS 22b), and who urges us to live with his way of life, to imbibe his feelings, to live them and to communicate his person to others.

Fr Chevalier was very clear about this. In the book School of the Sacred Heart, he writes: “Jesus Christ is the beginning and the end of all things (Rev 1,8), the way, the truth and the life (Jn 14,6): the way we must follow, the truth we must believe, the life that animates us now and here, in which we hope for eternity. That is why he has the right to make his voice heard and to teach us his doctrine. But where does his teaching come from? From his heart. For he himself assured us that “whatever good a man brings forth, he draws out of the treasure of his heart” (Lk 6:45). And what is true of every human person is also true of Our Lord, the God-Man. Therefore, the teachings of Jesus Christ, are the teachings of His Heart, He will be our Teacher, our Formator. We will become his disciples. He invites us to do so by saying to us: “Learn from me” (Mt 11:19). Let us respond to his call, his school is open to all men of good will”. ⁷.

Therefore, the Spirituality of the Heart has to start from the knowledge and following of Jesus of Nazareth and to make it possible for his way of life to be reflected in our own.

Pope Francis reminds us in his address to the participants in the last General Chapter⁸: “To know the Heart of Jesus through the Gospel, that is to say, by meditating on his life. It is there, in fact, that He continues to become our travelling companion. Fr Chevalier liked to define the Gospel as the book “of the Sacred Heart”, inviting everyone to contemplate in it the charity with which the Saviour allowed himself to be touched by all forms of poverty, happy to pour out the tenderness and compassion of his Heart on the little ones and the poor, the suffering, the sinners and all the miseries of humanity”.

Fr Hans Kwakman, msc, member of the International Team “Cor Novum” in Issoudun (France), picking up Fr Chevalier’s thought, says: “He used as a guiding principle that knowledge of Jesus would lead to love of Jesus, and that love of Jesus would lead to a change of heart, and that a change of heart would lead to a change of society. Knowledge of Jesus begins by looking at Jesus in the Gospels”… Presenting the facts of the Gospel, (Fr Chevalier) showed how Jesus cares for the sick and the poor. He spoke with enthusiasm of Jesus’ concern for the sinful woman and for the woman caught in adultery, his concern for Jairus, an official of the synagogue, whose daughter had died, and for the widow of Naim on her way to bury her only son”. ⁹

As Fr Chevalier’s friends affirm, wishing to bear witness to his life, “he was a normal man with normal talents. Yet, caught up in his enthusiasm and passion for Jesus, he became a spiritual giant. This passion he nourished throughout his life.”¹⁰

Spirituality of the Heart, therefore, is not a matter of pious formulas and religious practices that nourish not true spirituality but a certain misleading religious sensibility because they reassure the person, but do not change him. God’s love for humanity, symbolised in his heart, must lead us to be enthusiastic about the person of Jesus Christ, to live as he lived and to do what he did.

In the atmosphere of de-Christianisation in France in the 19th century, it is not surprising that a return to Jesus of Nazareth was seen as the remedy for the evils of the time, leading us to a “determined way of following him, of serving him, in the person of others: as missionaries of his love, in charity and kindness”.¹¹.

The evils of the time in which Father Chevalier lived, as he himself says, were “indifference and selfishness”. To these evils of society, he added Catholic liberalism, Jansenism and rationalism. In the love of Jesus, symbolised in his heart, who gives himself for us, he saw “the greatest sign, the greatest revelation of a great heart in his total self-giving, self-forgetfulness, suffering and dying for those he loves”.

Selfishness and indifference towards God and human rights have different manifestations today. We all know where to look for them: secularisation, materialism, migrants, social inequality, etc.. We live in different times and these “isms” have changed. Fr Chevalier saw them “as affecting concrete people, giving false values that led to a forgetfulness of Christ and his love, leading to rigorism and unhappiness. Behind these systems he saw ‘souls dearly loved by Christ’.”¹².

The great challenge before us now is how the Spirituality of the Heart of Jesus leads us not to multiply pious acts, but to alleviate human suffering out of love for Jesus Christ. Chevalier, “liberal Catholics are reproached for being arrogant, slaves of the State, and for being moved by a spirit of division. In opposition to these vices of the heart, he contrasts the virtues of the Sacred Heart: humility, obedience, firmness and commitment to unity”. “Catholic liberals, he says, have moved away from their centre, which is God. And Jesus, the Sacred Heart, through the Incarnation, ‘brings them back to their centre’ “.¹³

In the Pope’s Audience to the Capitulants on 2 October, he says: “Let him love through you and show his mercy through your goodness… God’s style can be summed up in three words: closeness, compassion and tenderness. God is like that: compassionate, close, tender. Be like that with others.

What is most characteristic of Jesus is not the way we worship him or certain aspects of his life, such as his death, resurrection or kerygma, which can lead to a partial and individualistic understanding of Jesus, but the way we follow him.

To avoid abstraction and the possibility of manipulation of the Christ-event, to avoid an image of Jesus that is lived outside of praxis and to connect with Jesus outside of history, an understanding of the historical Jesus is necessary. Focusing on partial aspects of Jesus, such as his heart, while forgetting what his concrete life was like, can lead to being very orthodox, forgetting orthopraxis, the cult as opposed to life. We can only reach Jesus by following his life and his cause: transforming reality and making the Kingdom possible.

Pope Francis, during his visit to Marseille (France)¹⁴, asked the diocesan clergy in his first address to learn to have the gaze of Jesus, full of tenderness to feel compassion as he felt and to show “the face of Our Lord through our gentleness, kindness and hospitality… May the wounded of life find a safe harbour in your gaze, a breath in your embrace, a caress in your hands, capable of wiping away tears”.

6. Fr. Chevalier, a person with a passion for Jesus of Nazareth

Chevalier’s passion for Jesus of Nazareth, is expressed in the mentality and language of his time, characterised by devotion to the Sacred Heart. Today we have to update this language so that Fr Chevalier can be understood and appreciated.

6.1. The person of Jesus, the centre of Fr Chevalier’s life

Devotion to the Sacred Heart in Fr. Jules Chevalier’s devotion was not simply a religious practice which was then fashionable, but the effort to reproduce in himself the attitudes of Jesus. In other words, the desire for a faithful following of the person of Jesus as he appears in the Gospel. This is how he expresses it in his work The Sacred Heart of Jesus: “To say the Heart of Jesus is to say the total Jesus”, as I have already indicated.¹⁵.

And in the introduction to his work “School of the Sacred Heart”, we read: “Jesus Christ is the beginning and the end of all things (Apoc. 1,8), the way, the truth and the life (Jn.13,6), the way we must follow, the truth we must believe, the life that animates us now and here”. ¹⁶

It is therefore no exaggeration to say that Father Chevalier went ahead to make us discover the importance that the historical Jesus or Jesus of Nazareth would later have in theology and in Christian life. He knew how to distinguish the essentials of the person of Jesus from cultural conditioning.

6.2. Father Chevalier, a person of great humanism

The Second Vatican Council was characterised by its great humanism. Paul VI said in the Closing Address of the Council: “Never let a religion such as the Catholic religion be called useless, which, in its most conscious and most effective form, as is the Council, declares itself to be all for and in the service of man… Our humanism becomes Christianity, our Christianity becomes theocentrism; so much so that we can also affirm: to know God it is necessary to know man”.

This humanism that Pope Francis is also highlighting with his characteristic gestures and words towards the most unfortunate and excluded, we see it in the concern that Fr Chevalier had for humanity, which he marked in his concern for “the evils of our time”. He had a great concern for the social evils of the time. He had a special concern for the poor, because they are “the privileged friends of the Heart of Christ”. He was ahead of his time in discovering a “compassionate Christ” concerned for humanity. Jesus was for him a person full of “love and mercy”, of “immense compassion”.¹⁷

6.3. The mission in Fr Chevalier, a consequence of his passion for Jesus

Mission, or making the Kingdom possible, was the spark that ignited the spirit and the life of Fr Chevalier. This characteristic, although he mentioned it in third place, is the first one which animated him and which he desired for the Congregation he founded. He did not understand the word “mission” in the restrictive sense of those who had not yet received the Gospel, or for the Churches of other countries, but in the sense of apostolate or missionary spirit to bring “the treasures of love and mercy of the Heart of Jesus”. Their concern for humanity was transformed into mission. The human concern for others, the desire to do something for their welfare, was not reduced to an all too human concern but to continue the mission of Christ, the Kingdom, in which he was called to participate.

The mission or apostolic work was to be carried out in intimate union with Jesus. Just as the saving work of Jesus without union with the Father would have been useless, so the life of the apostolate needs a great deal of prayer and contemplation to keep it in constant living contact with Him who is the source of the mission. He knew that, if his Missionaries wanted Christ to work through their hands, they had to keep Him before their eyes and in their hearts through prayer. “What might have been an exclusively human concern, he turned into mission, because he saw it as a vocation, to let Christ love through his human heart and to work and live and pray, so that all might see how God loved the world.”¹⁸ It was his conviction that all love for Christ must lead to an interest in humanity, and all Christian interest in men will bring us nearer to Christ.

Chevalier had a tendency and a preference for what was then called “missions”, which was the field of apostolate in distant countries where evangelisation was scarcely known.

Therefore, 1 September 1881 was a historic and significant day in the life of the Congregation. It was the day of the first departure of a group of missionaries to the “land of the infidels”. In the afternoon they left for the South Seas, for the mission of Melanesia and Micronesia, especially New Guinea, at the request of Pope Leo XIII.¹⁹ “This was the beginning of many pages of history,” he says.

“This was the beginning of many glorious pages of our missionary history, of difficult journeys, of suffering and sacrifice, of men who died very prematurely from fever and the effects of poverty. The self-sacrificing efforts of the long line of men who sailed the seas to Australia from Europe, had the effect of building up the Church in many countries: Papa New Guinea, the Gilbert Islands, Indonesia and the Philippines.”²⁰

7. “Spirituality of the Heart” or “Evangelical Spirituality?”

It is a question we have to ask ourselves in order to respond to the challenges facing the Church, the world and, consequently, ourselves. Language is important in order to be able to understand each other, to communicate the message we want and for it to be received correctly. Language that is far removed from reality makes it incomprehensible.

First of all, let us ask ourselves what Christian spirituality is. We could define it as life according to the spirit of Jesus Christ. That is to say, a way of life that allows itself to be guided by the Spirit who lived and moved Jesus Christ²¹ Now, the great richness of Jesus Christ cannot be manifested in a single expression or attitude, that is why we see different spiritualities that characterise the different Congregations or Apostolic Groups, such as the care of the sick, teaching, the different works of charity, parish ministry, etc.

In other words, as H.U. von Balthasar said, “it implies a basic, practical and existential attitude, proper to man, a consequence of his religious vision” ²² That is to say, a form of life and behaviour, an expression of his religious vision. And this form of life and behaviour can be none other than the Gospel. Therefore, all spirituality must revolve around the protagonist of the Gospel, Jesus Christ.

Therefore, the Spirituality of the Heart does not consist of devotional practices, rites, and a fancy language that is not evangelical, but of manifesting with life the love, mercy and compassion that Jesus had, especially with the most needy and marginalised people.

This is indicated by the words of Pope Francis to the Capitulants in 1917:

“Listening to what the Spirit is saying to his Church today and open to the questions of humanity, you will know how to draw from the genuine and inextinguishable source of the charism new impulses, courageous choices, creative expressions of the mission entrusted to you. Precisely the changing conditions of today’s world compared to the past, and the new instances of the Church’s commitment to evangelisation, are the conditions that require and make possible new ways of offering the “good wine” of the Gospel in order to give joy and hope to many”.

“If the original inspiration of the Founder was to spread devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, today you understand it and bring it up to date by expressing it in a variety of works and actions which bear witness to the tender and merciful love of Jesus for all, especially for those portions of humanity most in need. To be able to do this, I invite you – as I have often reminded consecrated persons – to “return to the first and only love”, to keep your eyes fixed on the Lord Jesus Christ in order to learn from him and to love with a human heart, to seek and care for lost and wounded sheep, to work for justice and solidarity with the weak and the poor, to give hope and dignity to the disinherited, to go wherever there is a human being waiting to be welcomed and helped. Show in your person and in your works the passionate and tender love of God for the little ones, the least, the defenceless, the discarded of the earth”.

These words of the Pope put in place and actualise what must characterise the Spirituality of the Heart, and a wake-up call to actualise it. Language is fundamental to communicate and we have to use words and concepts that do not need to be explained in order to be understood and that at first sight tell us what we have to do and how.

Conclusion

We are facing two important events:

1.) The Synod on Synodality, which already held the first part last October, and which has as its theme: “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation and Mission”. It has ended with practically no relevant conclusions and everything is being referred to the second part in October 2024. But the challenge has been launched and we are all asked to be “synodal”, that is to say, to learn to walk together, renouncing personal tastes and seeking unity in diversity.

Of course, the Synod on Synodality has many facets and a rich content, which has perhaps gone unnoticed in the first part. But there is one aspect that should not be forgotten when it comes to religious communities or groups: clericalism, to which Pope Francis so often alludes and condemns. At the beginning of this 18th General Congregation of the Synod (25.10.23), he made an intervention in which he indicated that “clericalism is a whip, it is a scourge, it is a form of worldliness that defiles and damages the face of the bride of the Lord; it enslaves God’s holy and faithful people”. The Pope also relates spiritual worldliness to clericalism, wanting to show oneself as “superior, privileged, placed ‘on high’ and therefore separated from the rest of God’s holy people”. In the face of this he shows the need to “look to Jesus, to the compassion with which he sees our wounded humanity, to the gratuitousness with which he offered his life for us on the cross”. He calls to remain vigilant towards clericalism and to pray for one another, so that God “may help us not to fall, in our personal life as in our pastoral action, into that religious appearance full of so many things, but empty of God, so as not to be officials of the sacred, but passionate proclaimers of the Gospel”. ²³

Commenting on these words of the Pope, A. Aradillas says, “Clericalism is anti-Church. It is its absolute, complete and total disfigurement. It is a counterposition and denigrating exposition and interpretation of the content of the true Church devised and witnessed by Jesus in the Gospel. And clericalism, moreover, has made itself and continues to make its presence felt in all the strata, and it tries to turn them into saints, pious and canonisable, without skimping on divine and human procedures, all of which are soaked in lacerating and filthy hypocrisy”.²⁴

The only way out of this “sin”, of which there is hardly any awareness, is dialogue, sharing, knowing how to listen humanely and sincerely, not to listen; to listen, to communicate; as Jesus said, not to consider oneself first.

2.) In the year 2025, a Jubilee is scheduled to be celebrated with the motto “Pilgrims of Hope”. In the letter written by Pope Francis to Bishop Rino Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelisation, after recalling the pandemic that has affected and bewildered the whole world and changed lifestyles, he says:

“The next Jubilee can do much to restore a climate of hope and trust, as a sign of a new renaissance that we all perceive as urgent. This is why I chose the theme “Pilgrims of Hope”. All this will be possible if we are able to recover the sense of universal brotherhood, if we do not close our eyes to the tragedy of rampant poverty which prevents millions of men, women, young people and children from living in a humanly dignified manner…

Feeling that we are all pilgrims on the earth on which the Lord has placed us to cultivate and care for it (cf. Gen 2:15), let us not neglect along the way the contemplation of the beauty of creation and the care of our common home”. (11 February 2022).

The events we are experiencing these days with the war in Palestine, which has become a real genocide, do not oblige us to live in such a way that in our way of being and acting we show that there is hope to make possible the peace and brotherhood that Jesus left us, and which the prophet Malachi already reminded the people of God: “Have we not all one Father? Why then do we not betray one another, and so profane the covenant of our fathers?“

Faced with these two ecclesial events, we can ask ourselves: How can our charism and the updated memory of our Founder, Fr Jules Chevalier, help to:

1.) To make possible a Church of Communion, Participation and Mission, in dialogue and participation?

2.) To make hope present in a world and a society which has lost hope and in which signs of despair, discouragement and frustration are everywhere to be seen?

In its time, devotion to the Sacred Heart was able to guide and help the Church to overcome the difficulties in the face of the revolutions for the new order that was trying to make itself present, and in this way, it gave hope to the Church.

How can we present Fr Jules Chevalier today and speak of the Heart of Jesus, in the midst of the problems we are experiencing, to make the objective of the Synod a reality and to be animators of hope in the Church and among our people?

Taking into account what has been said in the previous pages, we can conclude by saying that devotion to the Sacred Heart was for Fr Chevalier something secondary, a means. The centre, the fundamental thing, was Jesus of Nazareth as presented to him in the Gospels.

The centre, the fundamental thing, was Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the Gospels and with whom we have to identify ourselves in order to make his attitudes of love and devotion to the most disadvantaged and marginalised of society a reality.

We could ask ourselves then, what is the characteristic that we have as MSC? In my opinion, there is only one answer: Jesus of Nazareth as the compassionate person for all those whom society marginalises and rejects, and for his care and love for the common home. Religious Congregations usually have a particular way of approaching Jesus: care for the sick, teaching, pastoral care, migrants, etc. What characterises us is the person of Jesus as a person committed to alleviating the ills and pains that afflict society at this particular moment in time.

The following words can help us to better understand and realise what I have just said: “It is now necessary to specify the way in which the person of Jesus is presented today. To do this, bearing in mind what has already been mentioned in the sacred text, it should be noted that the only way to present a person who is not physically present – We cannot say to someone: “Look! That’s Jesus!” as we can do with a friend in common terms – is by witnessing, by showing our own relationship with the Lord and the transformation that this has brought about in ourselves” (Andrés Julián Herrera, 02.11.23).

The only way to present Jesus as a person today is from our own incarnation of his message (Gal 2,20), to incarnate the message of mercy, to be merciful like the Father (Lk 6,36), to bring Jesus who is the good news. That is the call, that is the way to make the proposal of the Gospel, the proposal that becomes alive in those who choose Him”. ²⁵

Questions

How did Fr Chevalier understand and express his passion for Jesus Christ?
What animated Fr Chevalier’s life and apostolic spirit?
What inspired and maintained the ideal of “mission” that he gave to the Congregations he founded?
What are the “evils of our time” that we must address in the spirit of Fr Chevalier? How?
How can we respond to the major events that the Church is facing at this particular moment?
How to present the person of Jesus as MSC today?

Footnotes

1
The data on the history of France are taken from various articles on the internet
2
Cf. Diego Serrano Redonnet, El liberalismo católico en Francia en el S. XIX y sus desafíos, internet 14.11.12.
3
Angelus, 9 June 2013
4
Prayer of Father Pedro Arrupe SJ, Rome, January 18, 1979
5
Jules Chevalier. A man with a mission. Ed. Acervo, Barcelona 1975, p.113.
6
“and the act of the believer is not limited to what can be expressed, but to reality; for we do not form things that can be expressed except that through them we may have knowledge of things, as in knowledge, so in faith.”
7
Quoted in Florilegium Chevalier. Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. Heart. Spain, 1994, p. 88
8
October 2023
9
The Charism of Jules Chevalier and the Identity of the Chevalier Family, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, 2012, p. 43.
10
Fr. Hans Kwakman, op. cit. p. 39.
11
ibd. p. 147.
12
Cuskelly, op.cit., 126.
13
H. Kwakman, op. cit., 75.
14
20-23 September 2023.
15
Florilegium Chevalier, op.cit., p. 214.
16
Florilegium, op.cit., p. 88.
17
Cf. J. Cuskelly, op. cit., pp. 125-127; Florilegium, p. 292.
18
J. Cuskelly, op. cit., p 138.
19
Cf. J. Cuskelly, op.cit., p. 101.
20
J. Cuskelly, op.cit., p. 101.
21
Cr. José Ma. Castillo, Espiritualidad para insatisfechos, Ed. Trotta, Madrid 2007, pp. 19-20.
22
Cf. J.M. Castillo, op. cit, p. 20.
23
To the priests of Rome, 05.08.23.
24
A. Aradillas, El grave pecado del clericalismo se acuna y mace en los seminarios, 02.11.23. Internet.
25
Fray Andrés Julián Herrera, La Buena Nueva como propuesta viva, Internet 02.11.23.

1) Socio-political situation of France in the 19th century 1The data on the history of France are taken from various articles on the internet.