THE FOUNDATION OF THE DAUGHTERS OF OUR LADY OF THE SACRED HEART AND THE INTENTIONS OF THE FOUNDER

J. Bertollini, MSC, 1974

Translation of a conference given at Rome to the Sisters of the Italian Province in three successive groups commencing April 23, May 10, and June 7 respectively. The occasion was a week of renewal in preparation for the Centenary of the Congregation on August 30, 1974.

I have been asked to speak to you about the foundation of your institute, and of the intentions for it of Father Founder – Jules Chevalier. In this connection, much has already been said or written. I shall restrict myself to setting out the facts as given in the documents of the epoch.

After reading certain statements which have appeared in print, even in the course of this year, 1 shall begin by asking: Does it not belong to a Founder himself to determine the date which he willed to be regarded as the foundation date of his institute? This is precisely what Father Chevalier, in accord with the Archbishop of Bourges, did with regard to the Congregation – at first diocesan – of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.

We possess, in his own handwriting, a sheet of paper which could be considered as its birth certificate. This is not, as could be thought, an extract from a homily given at the official ceremony of installation. It records merely the Sunday announcements made by the Archpriest of Issoudun, on Sunday August 30th, 1874, in the parish church of Saint Cyr or perhaps in that of the Sacred Heart.

Father Chevalier begins by recommending the Perpetual Adoration beginning on September 1st, in the Church of the Sacred Heart, as also the retreat in preparation for the feast of September 8th, Our Lady’s Birthday and the 5th anniversary of the crowning of her statue. He goes on to announce the ceremonies of the feast and invites the parishioners to decorate the streets of the town for the public procession. Then he adds:

Our Lady of the Sacred Heart has just accorded a new favour to Issoudun which is her privileged town. For a long time now many persons desirous of consecrating themselves to the service of the Queen of the Sacred Heart have been asking to come together in community. The time did not appear opportune and above all the hour of Providence had not yet arrived. Now, However, very special circumstances have allowed the Archbishop of Bourges to bring to realisation these desires so often reiterated.

On this very day, in the name of His Grace, this new community is founded and the religious of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart are going to be installed. They will occupy themselves with works of piety, with providing a lodging for women coming on pilgrimage or who wish to make a few days of retreat under the gaze of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, and also with the education of girls. Let us ask God to bless this new foundation which will be of such service to Issoudun.

Here indeed was a surprise for Issoudun. All the preparations had been made with much secrecy, circumstances which it would take too long to detail here having made this necessary, But for Father Chevalier who had just celebrated his fiftieth birthday the new foundation marked the realisation of a project which went back, as he himself will say, “to the very origin of the Association of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart”.

From the very first time that Mary was given the name Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, it was impossible to forbid oneself the thought that this divine Mother would soon form for herself a court of honour which, in union with her and under her protection, would be consecrated to the Heart of Our Lord. A year previous to the official erection of the Association of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, in a letter of 1863 to Father H. Leblanc, S.J., of Paris, Father Chevalier, after having spoken of a Third Order of the Sacred Heart for lay people, had added:

Many persons belonging to all classes of society, but principally to the well-to-do, are writing to ask me if we have not also for women a community devoted to the Sacred Heart of Jesus which is a sister-society to our own. For the last ten years, I myself have been thinking about just such a project. You are the only one to whom I have spoken of it. What do you think of such a project? And what does Father Provincial think? (Cf. Archives, S.J. Chantilly letter Chevalier, April 9, 1863).

“For the last ten years” – significant words. Father Chevalier here reveals that the idea had been in his mind from the very origin of the Society of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart.

The Annals for September, 1874, announced that the new foundation had been made on August 30th. And the October number gave the essential outlines regarding the origin, the end, the works and the resources of the new institute.

From where did its first religious come? Father Chevalier, in his brief announcement of August 30th, had spoken of “very special circumstances” which ultimately permitted the realisation of the project. These circumstances, as we already know, arose from within the Association itself at Paris during the insurrection of the Commune at the end of the Franco-Prussian War – 1870/71.

In gratitude for a visible manifestation of the protection of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, an institute by the name of the Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus, erected in 1865, under the direction of Mother Marie Francoise Lefebvre-Durufle in the Rue de Vanves, had undertaken to promote the devotion to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart as also the works of Issoudun. Under the impetus of Father Jouet, a Parisian centre of the Association had been established at this convent. Little by little, as a result of personal relations with Father Jouet, the Sisters felt called to respond to the design of Father Chevalier, and this Paris community offered itself as the nucleus of a new institute under the title of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Whilst still maintaining the house at Paris where they were responsible for a group of girls, they would establish another house at Issoudun under the general direction of Mother Marie Francoise.

All the necessary arrangements were made between Issoudun, Paris and Bourges, i.e. between Father Chevalier and the respective Archbishops of the two latter places. It was decided that all the Sisters would take the new habit on the same day, August 30th, 1874.

Another favourable circumstance – the acquisition at Issoudun of No. 10, Place du Sacre-Coeur, an edifice which went by the name of the Pilgrimage House and which, until this year of 1874, had been occupied by the Third Order of the Sacred Heart directed by Louise Therese de Montaignac. The latter, after ten years of association with Issoudun, had just detached herself therefrom in order to con stitute her own independent group – the Oblates of the Sacred Heart of Montlucon.

I add in passing that the Cause of Louise Therese de Montaignac has been introduced at Rome. Recently I had to collaborate with the Historical Institute of the Sacred Congregation for Religious in regard to the critical biography of the servant of God, particularly in what concerned her ten years of association with Father Chevalier. At the same time, it was also question of the relations of Father Chevalier with another servant of God, Catherine Volpicelli of Naples. Thus the consequent advantage for me of a precious new source of documentation concerning the life of our common Founder.

But to return to Issoudun. The acquisition of the house there was facilitated by the generosity of a fervent member of the Association of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart who lived at Turin and who had devoted herself to the works of Issoudun since 1871. Extant correspondence with her goes back to that time. It is here question of the Countess Felicite Pirinoli (nee de Briancon).

Her husband having died some months earlier in this year of 1874, Countess Pirinoli had manifested the intention of herself entering the proposed congregation. She took this resolution on May 3rd, feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. On the following June 25th, she arrived at Issoudun in the company of Father Chevalier who had returned from Rome via Turin. (Cf. The Journey to Rome of Fathers Chevalier, Jouet and J.M. Vandel. They were the guests of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent (Antide Thouret) on the Aventine where was to be found the first Statue of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart – old model – venerated at Rome).

The Countess first of all stayed for several weeks in the Paris community and then came back to Issoudun on August 10th. The Paris Superior was able to write to Father Joueti “Madame Pirinoli left us yesterday as if she were already one of us. I remarked this to Father Superior. Certainly the devil will not fail to organize a thousand wiles as only he knows how, but he will not have the victory.” Was this a presentiment? We shall see.

Between August 14-17th, Mother Marie Francoise herself came with another Sister to make the final preparations for the installation at Issoudun. She returned there on the evening of August 29th with ten of her daughters – bringing with them the new habits made at the Tue de Vanves.

Then the following morning, Sunday August 30th, at the 8 a.m. Mass in the Church of the Sacred Heart, thirteen Sisters received from Father Chevalier the large oval medal of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart designed by Chertier of Paris. All went off very simply. And on the same day, those who had remained in Paris likewise took the habit of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.

The new institute was founded.

All were considered as novices. In the group, besides Mme Pirinoli, was Louise Baptiste of Issoudun. We shall speak of her again. The next day, Father Jouet who had been the most ardent collaborator in this foundation, and who would be its first chaplain, was able to write to a religious at Tarragona, Spain: “Do you know that yesterday we inaugurated the first community of Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. It is a great work which is commencing. Courage!”

Eight days later, on the feast of September 8th, signalised this year by the elevation of the Church of the Sacred Heart to the rank of a Minor Basilica, the Archbishop of Bourges gave his blessing and encouragement to the young congre gation. They were there, the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, humble and unpretentious but not unperceived, above all in the procession, the choir Sisters in a white habit with blue veil and scapular, the coadjutor Sisters all in blue, and the two tourieres in black. They were there – happy and confident in a future of which they were unaware. Of this future, I shall say a word in due course. Incidentally I would like to say that this distinction into three categories of Sisters was an importation from the Paris community. Some months later, on the request of Father Chevalier, it will be modified by the Archbishop of Bourges, to include only choir and coadjutor Sistors.

So much for the foundation. Now let us see –

WHAT WERE THE INTENTIONS FOR IT OF THE FOUNDER?

In the first place let us not forget to situate Father Chevalier in the 19th century when religious foundations were multiplying – each the response to an urgent need. “The charity of Christ urges us.” (2 Cor, 5/14) Whether it is question of the evangelisation of youth or of pagan peoples, of the solacing of the misery of the sick and the aged, or of the re-Christianisation of society and the formation of elite Christians, this upsurge responds to the fundamental command of the Lord:

“Love one another … It is to Me that you do it.” It aims at giving to the God who is Love the response of love which He awaits from men.

Furthermore, all these new foundations of the 19th century, undertaken in response to some urgent need of charity, experienced the necessity of balancing their active apostolate by contemplation, the principal form of which was Eucharistic adoration.

Let us note, too, that often the same founder, on the basis of the same fundamental spirit, instituted distinctive foundations and at different times. Such was the case with Father Chevalier: Twenty years after the foundation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, he established your institute – himself giving to it its first rules. “The Constitutions of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart,” he stated, “are those of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart adapted to their needs.”

As I said previously, the Annals of Issoudun for October, ] 874, gave a resume of the origin, end, and works of the new Institute.

1. THE ORIGIN.

This we already know. It goes back to the very beginning of the Association and even further back in the apostolic thought of the Founder. From the very first time that Mary was given the name of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, it was impossible to forbid oneself the thought that the Queen of the Sacred Heart would soon form for herself a court of honour which, in union with her and under her protection, would be consecrated entirely to the service of the Adorable Heart of Our Lord, ‘After her shall virgins be brought to the King.’ Ps. 44,

Their motto will be that of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart: ‘May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be everywhere loved!’

This fundamental intention will be found in tact at the time of the reorganization of the institute under the direction of Mother Marie Louise Hartzer. (cf. Father Chevalier, 1895. p. 485)

2. THE END OF THE CONGREGATION.

Right from 1874, the end was formulated as follows:

To devote themselves to the Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ through the intermediary of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart for the sanctification of priests. a. To devote themselves to the Heart of Jesus. That says everything. It signifies the perpetual worship of honour and reparation which the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart wish to give Him, and the measure of the love which they want to have for Him. The Heart of Jesus is to be their all, in everything, everywhere and always to an increasing degree. Such is the fundamental end in view of which their holy rules have been written.

That presupposes an intimate and deep knowledge of the love of Christ, a knowledge which is drawn from His Heart – “centre of all” according to an expression which Father Chevalier is very fond of using in his works. That presupposes imitation of Christ – the Love of God incarnate, an imitation which has no other end than to reproduce His life, to adhere to His sentiments and to love as He has loved His Father and men, Here we have the profound orientation which will determine the various exercises of the spiritual life, notably the daily adoration – in a word, the contemplative aspect of the society.

b. Further – TO DEVOTE THEMSELVES THROUGH the intermediary of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.

This is an important specification, one which characterises your spirituality, giving it its particular seal. According to the thought of the Founder, ‘This is the best means’. And the Archbishop of Bourges who had approved the first rules and kept a copy of them, addressing the first Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart on September 8th, 1874, said to them:

“Our Lady of the Sacred Heart – see in her your Superior, your protector, your model. Look at her and reproduce her faithfully in your whole way of life. She is Virgin, she is Mother, she is Queen. Be virgins by your virtues, mothers by your works, queens by your efficacious intercession with the Heart of Jesus.”

Note the reference to intercession with the Heart of Jesus – another theme dear to Father Chevalier.

c. Father Chevalier adds still further:

FOR THE SANCTIFICATION OF PRIESTS: This intention was inspired by Margaret Mary Alacoque. The Visitation nun of Paray-le-Monial had consented to make a donation of all that she was able to do in favour of priests and religious in order to lead them to an exemplary and efficacious priestly and religious life. It was likewise inspired by the concern which Father Chevalier always manifested for the sanctification of priests. Think of his institution of the Secular Priests of the Sacred Heart, etc. He intended, then, that his daughters should be encouraged to offer the Heart of Jesus through Our Lady of the Sacred Heart their daily actions, their prayers, penances and merits so that those who have the responsibility of guiding the faithful may reproduce in their own life and apostolate the virtues of the Heart of Christ.

Later on, however, whilst continually urging his daughters to maintain this intention of his, he will not express it so explicitly in the rules. If we wish to sum up the presentation of the end after 1882, it would be as follows:

1. To devote themselves to the Heart of Jesus through Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.
2. To render to this Divine Heart a worship of adoration and reparation.
3. To glorify Him by making Him known and by propagating devotion to the Holy Virgin under the name Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.
4. To promote the sanctification of the members of the society by-imitation of the virtues of this Divine Heart and of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart.

3. THE WORKS.

The first one singled out is spiritual: it flows from the funda mental orientation,

a. Daily perpetual adoration of the Heart of Jesus in the Eucharist (the Sisters alternating in the name of the community). This will be their work of predilection .. . Always this adoration will be made in union with Our Lady of the Sacred Heart who is the first and most perfect adorer of the Heart of Jesus.

(A point to be noted: In this same year of 1874 there had been officially instituted and presented to the faithful the Perpetual Worship of the Sacred Heart. In its presentation and in that of the first rules of your institute we find a striking similarity of expression).

b. To this work of a more specifically-contemplative nature is added one of an apostolic aspect:

The education of girls: The Founder knew only too well that in education lies the germ of the spiritual and social regeneration of the world. Thus he states:

The Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart will interest themselves very particularly in the education of youth, and will spare nothing in order to put their boarding schools on a par with the best educational establishments. Thus they will provide girls with a solid Christian education and form their heart to a sense of duty and the practice of virtue. We shall return to this topic, c. In the third place, he lays down the Works of Zeal and Piety which providence will present and which will be in keeping with their rule.

Here Father Chevalier makes provision for a great openness in regard to the development of the institute and to the needs of the Church. For the time being, however, i.e. back in 1874, it is just question of putting apart of the residence at Issoudun at the disposal of women coming on pilgrimage or desiring to spend a few days in retreat close to the sanctuary of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. We have sufficient evidence of this form of apostolate from the very first year of the Congregation’s existence. Later, the Founder will add – The care of the sick and The Foreign Missions even among the infidels.

To return to the subject of education. It is certain that this form of apostolate was envisaged as being undertaken at the very commencement of the institute, Together with the devotion to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, it was precisely this type of apostolic work which had decided the Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus of Rue de Vanves, Paris, to put themselves under a new title at the disposition of Father Chevalier. In Issoudun itself, one of his parishioners, Mile Louise Baptiste, directress of a small boarding school, had decided – as we have seen – to enter the new community. Through a circular letter she had announced to the families of her pupils her intention to enter religious life under the name of Sister Marie Therese, as also the closure of her own establishment and the forthcoming opening of a boarding school under the direction of the Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. This decision, kept secret right up till the foundation of your institute, was a great surprise for Issoudun. In actual fact, it provoked such a strong opposition on the part of certain members of the Baptiste family that Mile Louise was constrained to quit the community and re-open her school!

For Father Chevalier, this was a serious reverse.

It was also a great disappointment for the religious come from Paris. They saw their hope of opening the boarding school which had been announced for Easter, 1875, vanish. Furthermore, on her return to Paris, Mother Marie Francoisfc, whilst still remaining the Superior, had left the direction of the Issoudun community to Sister Felicite Pirinoli, still a novice.

Soon another unfavourable circumstance came to cause a serious rift in the understanding between Paris and Issoudun. The unfortunate controversy stirred up towards the end of 1874 concerning devotion to Our Lady of the Sacred Heart following upon certain Polish interpretations and also the misunderstandings con cerning an intervention from Rome, caused Mother Marie Francoise to believe that she had been deceived in joining up with Issoudun. Little by little, under various internal and external pressures, she detached herself from Issoudun, followed by some of her Sisters – disappointed maybe at having to recommence a novitiate, or perhaps disillusioned by not finding at Issoudun the occupations which they had had at Rue de Vanves. Despite the good offices of Father Jouet, a definitive separ ation became inevitable.

However, a few Sisters remained faithful to Father Chevalier and to their title of Daughters of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. Sister Felicite from this time on assumed the charge of Superior of the reduced Issoudun community and con sidered herself the ‘foundress’ – unwilling to adopt the intentions of Father Chevalier, himself named the Superior by the Archbishop of Bourges. Mother Felicite herself preferred to confide in Father Jouet; the first chaplain of the com munity. From the end of 1875, however, Father Jouet lived in Rome. During the year 1875 there were still nine Sisters. Following upon certain disagreements with the Superior, two withdrew, soon however to be replaced by other postulants.

At the time of her profession in September, 1876, Sister Felicite had accepted to pronounce a fourth vow – that of giving herself to the education of girls. Never theless, this work will be more and more set aside by her, and this despite the inten tions of the Founder. She will get Sisters who entered the community for this purpose to quit it, She will refuse postulants manifesting similar dispositions. She dreams only of a contemplative congregation. As Father Founder himself avowed in March, 1877, “In order to justify herself, she falls back always on her own private inspirations from God.”

One day, she had made a resume of the Constitutions with the intention of presenting it to Rome in the hope of receiving a Decree of Praise. Father Chevalier corrected this resume putting the work of education in the forefront. Mother Felicite wrote to Father Jouet protesting that her idea would never be to oppose this praiseworthy and holy end of Father Chevalier. “Nevertheless.” she adds, “as long as he leaves me Superior, I shall consider that I am failing in my duty by allowing it to be undertaken to the detriment of the good of the community and of souls, and as long as it is obvious that God does not approve of it. We must always hold absolutely to the carrying out of His Holy Will.”

Father Chevalier will inform the Archbishop of Bourges very clearly of this attitude based on a “dangerous mysticism”, reminding His Grace that the Constitutions which he himself had approved have been based on those of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart:

They have two principal ends in order to respond to the aspirations of the Sisters:

• The contemplative life which consists in the exercises of piety, in adoration, and in reparation;

• The active life which comprises the education of girls and other works of zeal compatible with their vocation.

Mother Felicite, however, no longer wants to hear the word ‘education’. She wants to shut herself up in the contemplative life. It is useless to say to her that the rules state the contrary; that it does not belong to her to alter them or to change the end of the foundation; that it is not for her to pledge the future or to turn aside from this young community vocations which present themselves under the best conditions and with the aptitudes and the attraction for teaching. None of these forceful arguments can make the slightest impression on Mother Felicite who can compromise everything if Your Grace does not intervene .. . She has not fear of putting herself into opposition with me or with the rules. It is time to define very clearly the end of these religious . . .

(October 18th, 1877)

The Archbishop will do everything possible to prevent a total dissolution of the community. The years 1877-1881 will be marked by new flights of fantasy on the part of Mother Felicite, by new trials for the young institute. We cannot dwell at further length upon these difficulties. Always they will be overcome by the indomitable courage of Father Founder. Unfailingly, he exercises patience even when Mother Felicite goes so far as to forbid the Sisters to communicate either directly or by letter with him (this does not hinder certain ones from so doing), or when she judges it useless that he come to give spiritual conferences.

When the hour of the Foreign Missions will sound (1881-1882), Mother Felicite will withdraw from the Congregation, leaving, as she herself says, “the responsibility to Father Chevalier”. There will still be problems of a financial order since she is largely the proprietor of the three little houses which then com prised No. 10 Place du Sacre-Coeur. A solution, however, will be found to these.

It is now the hour of Madame Marie Louise Hartzer – March, 1882.

During almost seven years, the direction of the pious but erratic Mother Felicite, who could not see eye to eye with Father Chevalier in his intentions for the apostolate, had nearly put the frail institute on the way to complete annihilation. No such thing happened, however, thanks to the patience and tenacity of Father Chevalier – always supported by his Archbishop – and to the fidelity of a few generous Sisters.

Marie Louise Hartzer, the new Superior and “a woman of intelligence and great merit,” to quote Father Chevalier, will assure the continuity: the same Founder, the same title, the same habit – at least for a time – the same residence and. above all, the same fundamental rule. As for Mother Felicite, she left Issoudun in about mid-June, 1882, not however without manifesting her regard for Sister Marie Louise Hartzer. She found lodgings first of all with the Ladies of Calvary in Paris. In the spring of 1883, she entered the Visitation convent at Poitiers, she herself having a sister in the Visitation institute at Nice. From the summer of 1884, however, the Countess was a lady boarder with the Religious of the Sacred Heart at Villa Lante, Rome.

With gentleness and firmness, Marie Louise Hartzer will know how to carry out the authentic intentions of the Founder. She will reorganize the young institute, give it a new lease of life, and assure its rapid development for the service of the Church and of her missions.

In 1899, towards the end of his life, Father Chevalier wrote The Religious History of Issoudun. With delicacy and charity, he passed over the difficulties of the first years. Well aware that the continuity of his work was now assured, he also confirmed the fact whilst Mother Marie was still alive that, based upon an unfailing confidence in Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, the foundations of the institute had been laid on SUNDAY, AUGUST 30th, 1874.