GENERAL CHAPTER 2007
Catherine Dolan, RSHM
Opening Address, June 27

After that inspiring ritual and liturgy of the Word, we gather now, having been formally called to this General Chapter. Earlier I mentioned the hope that we have left behind all the baggage we don’t need with us at this time. What we do need is an Institute mind and heart to enable us to have Institute eyes to see and Institute ears to hear what God is calling us to at this time. We come here from our province or region, carrying the love and support of our sisters and their confidence that we will serve the common good of the Institute and its precious heritage, the mission which has been entrusted to us by our founder, founding sisters and all those who have gone before us.

During the past year we have as an Institute been very much in touch with our Chapter logo and our theme and focus. We have been reminded of them through frequent communications and through the beautiful and meaningful prayers which provinces and regions have shared with us each month, as well as through the chapter prayer. They are very much in our consciousness now through the liturgy in which we have just participated. Thank you, Cathy, for preparing it.

I want to reflect a little on the theme: Fan into Flame the Gift of God. Possibly each us has been affected differently by that phrase, according to our own situations and journey. For me the theme itself has fanned into flame the gift of gratitude for the many gifts I receive each day. Maybe we can all name gifts which have been fanned into flame during the past year and share them sometime during this chapter? At this time, however, I want to remind us of common gifts we have for the chapter.

First of all fan into flame the gift of God, the gift of Godself. God is gift to us and to all humanity. God is gift to us at this Chapter. Is it possible for us to fan into flame this gift? I think we have already done that in our invoking the presence of the Holy Spirit in our midst as flame and fire, calling on the Spirit to be with us with divine light. We can also fan into flame, and share with each other, the gifts of gratitude for, and faith in, God’s presence, of conviction that God is the God of newness, of trust that God’s presence is active, and of peace because we know that with God all will be well. We need these gifts to help us during the chapter since our mission, as Gailhac so often reminded us is centred in Christ, in our God whose presence among us is fire, with its dancing, multi-coloured flames, inspiring dreams, visions, excitement, and giving life and light and energy. God is with us in this place at this time and this is where we will meet God as individuals and as a chapter.

Another gift we have at this time is the actual presence of each person here, whatever their role at this chapter. This is a place, an opportunity to meet, to share, to listen in community to the voice of the Spirit. Each of us brings our own gifts but the very person and presence of each of us is gift to each other and to the chapter, and hopefully we can fan the flame of this presence into passion and energy which will fire us as Institute to respond to what God is calling us to at this time. And, of course, to know what God is calling us to we need the gift of discernment, individual and communal, and we hope that this will be the prevailing attitude during this chapter, not only at the time of elections, but in all that we do. We need to be able to distinguish which sparks coming from the dancing flame of the Spirit of God we need to catch and fan into flame at this time.

A gift I would like to highlight is Gailhac’s vision which we want to set ablaze in our hearts. What a gift this vision is to us, and this vision for our day is what our chapter is all about! The purpose of a general chapter is to “reflect on our life and mission in the Church and make decisions with a view to greater fidelity to our apostolic vocation”. And Canon Law states that this reflection includes the duty to protect the sacred legacy of the Institute: “all that the founder intended regarding the nature, purpose, spirit and wholesome traditions”, taking into account ongoing change within the Institute, the Church, the culture and the world.

At the EGC Meeting of 2006 whose primary objective was preparation for this general chapter I spoke about Gailhac’s vision. I want to repeat a little of what I said there about characteristics of Gailhac’s vision which should still animate our present and future mission.

First of all, for Gailhac mission was primary, and it was mission rooted in the centrality of Jesus in the lives of the sisters. He very clearly recognized the absolute need of contemplation for action to be effective. This action he saw in relation to real needs to be met in the social, economic and political context of the day; needs of real people, and situations which called out for “life”: women in prostitution, girls at risk, orphaned children, girls - rich and poor - in need of education. He was determined to find ways to meet these needs and his prophetic stance led to opposition and even persecution. He also had imagination. For example, Gailhac imagined how the women in prostitution might have different lives, and acted to make this a reality.

Also Gailhac had a dream that the Institute with its particular mission and charism would expand throughout the world. He and the first sisters must have had passion, imagination and hope as within thirty years of foundation RSHM were present in 4 new countries and one new continent, having transcended boundaries of many kinds, relating to age, geography, scarcity of resources, prejudice, lack of experience, fear, ignorance and probably many more.

It seems clear that Gailhac wanted the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary to be women who are rooted in God and passionately committed to Mission in the world of many needs, with the ability to move freely beyond boundaries, to risk and embrace new situations for the sake of mission. This is our founder’s vision of RSHM, his dream. This is what he would want this chapter body to be.

The logo, the work of Sr. Isabel Grangeon, illustrates the theme so well with the conjunction of the flames, the world and our cross. The flame holds together our Institute represented by our cross and the world. It reminds me of the words from Wisdom: The Spirit of the Lord fills the whole world. It holds all things together, and knows every word spoken. And it reminds us that the cross is ever present with us, that discipleship is costly.

Everything worthwhile has its cost. Gailhac’s work in Béziers had its cost as we know from the persecution he underwent. It must have cost Gailhac a lot to send his daughters across the sea to Ireland and England and across the ocean to the United States, not only in terms of what those young women might have to face, but also in terms of reducing the numbers of sisters in other communities where needs were great. So being ablaze with Gailhac’s vision and acting from that vision will have its cost. The cross is never far away. That was the experience of Gailhac and our early sisters and has continued throughout our history. Our belief that the cross is the source of new life is borne out in that because our sisters assumed the cost of transcending boundaries we are all here today, from many different countries, many different cultures. If they had never left Béziers, where would we be now? In taking the risk to go beyond boundaries our ancestors were choosing life and effected transformation in the Institute and in the world.

This general chapter is called to effect transformation in our world at this time with its particular needs. When we look at the chapters which have preceded this one, we can from one perspective see a circular movement. Gailhac was present at the first chapter in 1876 and there the focus was on unity in the congregation for the sake of mission. Unity was integral to Gailhac’s vision and we know how much he was prepared to do to preserve this unity since well into his eighties he would travel each year to Bootle to give a retreat to the sisters gathered there from the communities of Ferrybank, Lisburn, Bootle and one or two from Sag Harbor. Gailhac saw in this a strong source of unity.

For many chapters after that first one, without Gailhac, the idea of unity degenerated into uniformity and chapters concerned themselves with establishing regulations to ensure this uniformity. The confusion between uniformity and unity basically lasted until our chapters in the 1960s. The 1968/69 chapter had two sessions, the first characterised by extreme pain as, in spite of the uniformity of customs in the Institute, delegates from different provinces, and from different cultural and theological stances spoke to one another for the first time from their differences. Great boundaries had to be overcome. By the end of the second session, however, a remarkable Open Letter from the Chapter to the Institute was written, “a magnificent sign of unity emerging from the decades of uniformity” (Kathleen Connell - commentary on RSHM general chapters).

All our chapters since then have called us to respond first of all to the call of justice, and also to that of unity, through identifying our common mission and focus on justice, expressing our unity as an Institute, continuing our efforts to be one body for mission, using our internationality for carrying out our mission. As an Institute we have been called back to, and have assumed, the unity Gailhac was so insistent on during his life and at the first general chapter.

Each chapter should bring to life Gailhac’s founding vision and charism, to make it real in its particular time. The reason I have emphasised the aspect of our Institute unity is that I believe we have a gift that the world needs. Particularly since September 11, 2001, one of the real needs to be met in the social, economic and political context of the day, is that of unity. In our day, all of these contexts – social, economic, political and religious are deeply fractured and fragmented, leading to the great injustices, divisions, conflicts, wars, which we are all aware of. Since the mid 1900s all our chapters have, as it were, interfaced with the needs of the world and set directions to find ways to work with others for change. Today, without being aware of it, this world of ours cries out for unity, the unity which Christ prayed for and which, I believe, is God’s dream for humanity. My own dream is that this chapter will have the ability through discernment together to identify the boundaries to this unity which we as an Institute can transcend and the imagination, inspiration and creativity to find ways of doing this. And like Gailhac, we all have the power to imagine. As a modern song says: “Deep within each heart, there lies a magic spark that lights the fire of our imagination.” (“The Power of the Dream”)

It is our time to choose. Are we going to catch the fire of Gailhac’s vision for our day, whatever the cost? Is our presence here as chapter going to effect transformation in our world today and for years to come? My belief and hope is that it will if we allow the spark in our hearts to blaze with the fire of Gailhac’s vision, and if we keep before us the conviction that “the Spirit of God fills the whole world” and empowers us, like Mary, “to say yes to God without condition” (Const.3).

© 2007 RSCM / RSHM