| Jules Chevalier - MSC Founder |
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Every vocation is a call. God calls someone because he wants to intensify his relationship and his friendship with that particular person, and consecrate that person to himself. But God also calls the person to a definite mission, by consecrating the one called for the service of others. Both aspects of the call are inseparable. Jules Chevalier was a man who understood that God was calling him for a mission: to communicate God’s love to people. He was born in Richelieu, Touraine, France, on 15 March 1824. In the course of his seminary studies, he discovered the spirituality of the Sacred Heart, a spirituality that is centred on God’s merciful love for human kind. Ordained priest on 14 June 1851, he dedicated his life to spread devotion to the Heart of Jesus, as a remedy for the evils of the time, among them indifference and egoism. In Christ, who is love itself, he discovered his compassion and his concern for humanity. In him, who loves us with a human heart, he discovered the Redeemer, the Liberator, the only valid solution to life’s problems. His own feeling of inadequacy before so many problems disappeared once he realized that he was called to work as a salvific instrument of Christ. For Jules Chevalier, devotion to the Sacred Heart summed up the entire Christian life. The Heart of Christ represents his entire person, his love for human beings. What most attracted him in the person of Christ was his compassion for humanity, his mercy, his courage and strength, the image of the Good Shepherd… These are the aspects of Jesus’ personality that Jules tried to live and that we, who share his charism, also try to live. Having reached a good old age, he died at Issoudun, Indre, France, on 21 October 1907, in a house belonging to a family of his parish, where he was given refuge after he had been expelled from his presbytery by the anticlerical government of France. His motto well expresses his missionary spirit: “May the Sacred Heart of Jesus be loved everywhere”. |