Our specificity is
to be committed together. This commitment places us in the search for an ever greater fidelity to our baptismal consecration at the heart of the world. We live it in the diversity of our commitments, ministries and states of life. Situated in the Ignatian spirituality and in the spirituality of the Heart of Jesus of our founders – Pierre de Clorivière (1735-1820) and Daniel Fontaine (1862-1920) – we want to be contemplatives in action.
called to holiness.
Our whole life can be a welcoming of the Father’s love, a following of Christ, a joy of the Spirit. God became human and was not afraid to live our human condition, so that every dimension of our life has meaning and beauty. Nothing is outside the Father’s plan to accomplish and perfect everything. We sense the possibility of evangelical perfection at the heart of our lives. We also experience that shadowy areas are illuminated by what other members bring. In the call to prolonged prayer, we expose ourselves wholly to the love of the Father.
We are “called to holiness” (Life Project 5).
Seized by a love that precedes our own, we are called to surrender ourselves, totally and unreservedly, to the breath of the Spirit and we allow it to inhabit, direct and unify our lives according to each of its dimensions – Life Project n°6 Indeed, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us (Jn 1:14). ” From now on, nothing human is foreign to him ” (Life project n°9). The specificity of the SVECJ responds to the first intuition of priests of the Heart of Jesus who welcomed in their team life lay people, women and men, married or single. This specificity is concentrated in the announcement that every baptised person can feel called to follow “Jesus Christ more closely”. The sacraments of initiation (Baptism-Eucharist-Confirmation) lead to a journey of intimacy with Jesus Christ, in the Church, in order to unfold a specific vocation (presbyteral, diaconal, conjugal, celibate). The mixture of states of life in the SVECJ concretely manifests that “all those who believe in Christ, whatever their condition and state of life, are called by God, each in his or her own way, to a holiness whose perfection is that of the Father” (Lumen Gentium n°11) (Lumen Gentium no. 11). The commitments to poverty, chastity and obedience are part of this path of holiness and will be lived in a differentiated way, according to the state of life of the people in the SVECJ groups.
Missionary discipleship
Everyone can be a missionary disciple wherever they are, as the Gospel asks. It is good news that Baptism received and confirmed sends us to the heart of the world and to the peripheries. People of God (laikos), we are the Church, to be a sacrament of Christ for those around us.
In the midst of solidarity and divisions, solitude and fraternity, Jesus offers us a heart-to-heart with Him. He comes to live Nazareth in each one of us and to seize us at the deepest roots of our being” Life project n°11
The commitment to the SVECJ roots each one more deeply in the grace of Baptism and Confirmation. It is part of the dynamism of the sacraments received […] – Life project n°25)
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A sign of a possible communion between different states of life, the SVECJ.
Our contemporaries are in search of friendship and vibrate when they sense it. The SVECJ, like other groups, offers, as a specificity, a space of communion without confusion. This communion is experienced through the bonds of respect and trust within the groups, as well as within a spiritual family: the Cor Unum Family. It is composed of three Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Society of Evangelical Life of the Heart of Jesus. This diversified communion is experienced in particular in the retreats that are lived with other members of the Family. It is interiorised through prayer and meditation on the Word of God. Committed to the world, we seek to live this communion in all sectors of our lives. We live otherness and freedom within the Cor Unum Family and in our groups, allowing ourselves to be challenged. The SVECJ, within the Cor Unum Family, is a sign of the Kingdom already here and yet to come.
In a complex world, often a theatre of conflict, we are invited to discover the signs of the Spirit, to promote communion between our human brothers and sisters who are so different, to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the various Churches – Life project n°18 The SVECJ offers the bonds of a fraternal communion and proposes to its members the means to respond to their vocation and mission – Life project n°27
Each SVECJ group forms, as if in miniature, the People of God gathered together in a spirit of openness. This spirituality of communion lived in the SVECJ is also found at the level of the Cor Unum Family, in different ways, according to the different continents. The statutes of the Cor Unum Family give an equal place to each Institute and Society of Evangelical Life. What is lived out there structurally is lived out daily in a prophetic way within the SVECJ. Text of the General Council and the SVECJ France-Belgium leaders, September 2018