This information (consult the previous post) led me to backtrack and reflect on
Shriver’s statement: “Piety” is a tricky
word”. I have found myself saying, “I
don’t like that person’s piety.” When do I say that? On retreat at the beginning of this year I
sat next to a woman who upon entering the chapel for Mass, immediately put a
white mantilla veil on her head. During
the Eucharistic prayer, while all the rest of the attendees stood, she kneeled.
After reading Mark Shriver’s words on
“piety” I confess I have been among those who do this: “Today, when you hear someone called pious,
the adjective usually implies sanctimony, a holier-than-thou bearing.” In searching my Webster dictionary for the
etymology for “piety” I was lead to “pious” and then to “piosity”. Webster
describes the word Piosity this way, “the quality of being excessively or
insincerely pious.” These ruminations
confronted me with the need to have the attitude Pope Francis had when asked
about homosexuality, “Who am I to Judge?”
Just recently I was contacted by David Schimmel , U.S. Province of the Priests of the Sacred Heart director of
Dehonian Associates and lay director of the Dehonian Spirituality
page. He wrote: I'm wondering if you might consider writing a reflection
on your experience in the social apostolate. During the June 2017
postings on the Dehonian Spirituality page, I will
reprint Tom Sheehy's 1969 article, The Social Reality of Sacred
Heart Devotion, in a four-part series. What I would be most looking for is for you
to share how these experiences shaped your understanding of Sacred Heart
devotion and/or priesthood as an SCJ/former SCJ.” During my years with the SCJ’s 1957-2007 my
spirituality also was shaped by my novitiate experience. My own year as a
novice with the Priests of the Sacred Heart was in 1956-57. In May of 1956 Pius XII published his
encyclical Haurietis Aquas (On
Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus). Our novice master spent considerable
time going through this encyclical with us.
In beginning to explore what I might write about my own experience in
the social apostolate I went back to Pius XII encyclical on Devotion to the
Sacred Heart. I discovered that Pius XII
started by defending the cult of the Sacred Heart from charges of naturalism
and sentimentalism. Further on in the encyclical I was struck by the pope
calling devotion to the Sacred Heart, "this most beautiful form of piety.”
There was only the slightest touching on the subject of this devotion and the
Social Apostolate. No wonder I had
continuously felt something lacking in our following of our founder. He was a man of action and a promoter of the
Social Doctrine particularly of Leo XIII.
In a retreat that Fr. John van
den Hengel, S.C.J. gave in 2007 he talked about how reparation “found a
fruitful harbor in the devotional life.
However, theology had not followed suit. …Something changed in the
congregation’s understanding of reparation between the 1870s and the beginning
of the 21st century.” In the last conference of the retreat he spoke
on the topic, “An Apostolic spirituality.” Fr. Van den Hengel writes: “Although
he (Fr. Dehon) had tried to ground the spirituality of the community into the
accepted forms of the devotion to the Sacred Heart, his own spirituality –certainly
between 1877 and 1902 sought to burst beyond the seams. I think that is the reason why Leo Dehon
expanded the “Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus” in the late 1880s to “the
reign of the Heart of Jesus in souls and societies.” Van den Hengel quoted another SCJ, Wim van
Paasen who wrote in 1993: “We can now
rightly call the social apostolate and the faith experience of Fr. Dehon
together as the two integral parts of his charism with a new challenge for the
future.”
Since my
departure from the SCJ’s in 2007 I have continued to follow developments in
this area. I believe that by becoming
more international, the SCJ’s of the United States Province have become more
aware of the social apostolate in action in other parts of the Congregation
No comments:
Post a Comment