Our MSC Charism and Mission: A pressing responsibility and a big challenge

Often I wondered about our charism and our mission. We participate in the charism of our founder and profess that ‘May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be loved everywhere’. As often as we profess that we are faced with the question as to the word ‘everywhere’, as to … loved where exactly? Are we absolutely clear that the Sacred Heart is loved? If yes, who are the recipients? Do we acknowledge and accept that the Sacred Heart is loved everywhere, including in our communities and even more precisely ‘May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be loved in my own heart personally. When I am convinced that this particular love fills my heart and mind, that I start to become a missionary of that Sacred Heart, let I become a mockery of my vocation. In other words, I am a missionary of the Sacred Heart first and foremost to my own heart, then to my community and others.
Our missionary spirit has its origin in Our Lord Jesus. Our human hearts are missionaries of His Sacred Heart. Our commitment must have the same clarity as Jesus when he tells the people that he must announce the Good News of the Kingdom of God to others also. It is synonymous with the proud yet humble confession of all MSCs: I must announce the Good News of the love of God revealed in the Sacred Heart of Jesus first being a missionary to the self in order to become a missionary to all.
Fr. Chevalier witnessed the ills of his time a great threat to the wellbeing of humanity. He became a missionary to bring the people to the Sacred Heart to find remedy to those ills of the society. Once again we have a difficulty in understanding our position here clearly.
Since our outlook on the ills of our time are the ills of the ‘so called’ sinners our there – the Dasein of Heidegger. If an MSC is not be able to witness the ills of his own self and continually attempt to better himself, his focus on witnessing and addressing the world on the evils of the society would not be efficacious and transformative.
Let us build our own selves, our own hearts to be better equipped to face and address the evils of the world – a relatively smaller problem compared to facing and addressing the evils of the self. Certainly evils of our society make us active missionaries, full time missionaries. If we are exhausted focusing our own evils of the self and of our communities, we would not have time left for the missionary activities to the society.
As responsible people, shouldering such a great responsibility as that of being Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, we should take our title and charism seriously and responsibly. In the words of Robert Frost, ‘We have miles to go and promises to keep’. Let us walk forward on those miles and keep those promises. Amen.