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One of their most important cares must be to win the hearts and confidence
of the pupils. they must show to all geniality, gentleness, and kindness,
leading them to everything that is good, encouraging their efforts, sometimes
excusing their failings, recognizing no other distinction among them but
that of virtue
and good conduct.
Rule of the Class Mistress (1815)
As a rule they must lead their pupils by means of gentleness, religion,
and kindliness; when obliged to punish, which must sometimes happen, they
must do so with prudence, accompanied by firmness and consideration.
Rule of the Class Mistress (1815)
Let them be convinced that they must not notice everything, and that
it is prudent to shut one's eyes to many things in which discipline is
not concerned. Let them never punish save with reluctance and after having
exhausted kind and charitable means.
Rule of the Class Mistress (1815)
Education given at the Sacred Heart aims at developing strong and well-rounded
characters. A high standard of moral integrity is presented as a value
to be attained through growth in self-discipline. This self-discipline
implies that a student can make herself do what costs, refuse herself
sometimes what she likes, be independent of what others say of her, and
learn to live face to face with her own conscience under the eyes of God.
Life at the Sacred Heart Today (2nd Edition)
The secret of bringing up children well lies in the knowledge of the
human heart, in patience, in influence, in example. An education which
does not give self-possession, personal discipline, is an ?ducation
manqu?e. Remember that the children often become like the mistress
whom they most love. . . .Some of you are too agitated, always running
about. That's time lost. Hold your children through the heart, through
their sense of honor, reward them generously, but three or four times
a year it is well to come down upon them with the majesty and thunder
of the Last Judgment.
Aloysia Hardy, RSCJ
You must yourself love to study if you wish to give your children a love
of it. We cannot impart what we do not possess. Understand well that your
own education is never finished, therefore continue daily to cultivate
your minds that you may be better fitted to the cultivate the minds of
your pupils. They will be just what you make them, and you will make them
just what you are.
Aloysia Hardy, RSCJ
I shall draw those entrusted to me to the love of wisdom, that savoring
knowledge of God and his attributes and His mysteries, according to the
capacity of each intelligence; for intelligence; for intelligence must
understand and penetrate before wisdom judges, compares, and acts. This
is the program that I am drawing up in my laboratory; it remains to draw
up a classical and methodical itinerary. It will be done in time.
Josephine Goetz, RSCJ
Each child confided to us has a right to instruction appropriate to the
capacity with which she is endowed, with a view to her future as a Christian
in family and social life.
The Spirit and Plan of Studies
Courage! Try to wake some answering note in these little worldings. Speak
to them of their last end; wake up reason with natural truths, and go
from there to faith. Feel around; see if history, geography, arithmetic,
or poetry will touch them. Exploit whatever is most developed in them.
Then you can burn up the straws of vanity. If you succeed in making a
serious worker out of a vanity box, believe me, you will have saved a
soul.
Aim?e d'Avenas, RSCJ
... they must love and desire that simplicity which springs from
the calmness of a soul who seeks and longs for nothing but her God, and
who, without any thought of self or of her own interests, looks only to
God whom alone she wishes to love and please.
RSCJ Constitutions #348
Written into the Constitutions as one of the basic attitudes she dreamed
an RSCJ would possess she said: " ... When they are called upon to
perform acts of these different virtues, they need only cast one look
upon the Sacred Heart of Jesus in order to conform and unite themselves
to his interior dispositions."
RSCJ Constitutions #71
A prayer to St. Madeleine Sophie Barat:
Madeleine Sophie, help me to love and desire simplicity. Obtain
for me the calmness to seek and long for nothing but my God, so that without
thought of self or of my own interests I may look only to God whom alone
I wish to love and please in all things.
adaptation of #348 in the Constitutions, done by Dolores Aleixandre,
RSCJ
in her book entitled: In the Shadow of the Word
The heart refers to the totality of the person, to its primary and ultimate
center: there where action is planned. It represents what is deepest,
what is most interior in a person. It synthesizes what is most affective,
most intellectual, and most willed. It is the "i" in its source,
uniting all that is had of intelligence, liberty ... and also of tenderness."
Dolores Aleixandre, RSCJ in her book entitled: In the Shadow of the
Word
October, near Mater's feast:
"Sr. Pauline Perdreau, the Religious of the Sacred Heart who begged
for permission to paint Mary's picture on that wall of our convent in
Rome was an instrument of God. The picture was not pretty, and Sr. Perdreau
was embarrassed that it was so ugly that they needed to cover it with
a curtain. It was a humbling situation. Over time, however, it became
something beautiful. What was once hidden was transformed and is now visited
by thousands of people; it is an instrument of tremendous strength, hope,
and love for Sacred Heart students all over the world."
(from
a homily given Oct. 20, 1998, Anne Wachter )
WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED FROM HER?
What have we learned from her? The value of a steadfast purpose; the success
of failure and the unimportance of our standards of success; the power
of grace released by deep, divine desires and simple duties daily done;
the old, unearthly, stark, unwelcome fact that God is the worker, we the
tools, so that God often takes the keen edge of our choice plans and uses
it in God's own way, not ours, producing wonderful results entirely beyond
our understanding - but only if the handle of the tool is smoothed and
rounded to God's hand by sacrifice and prayer.
ON St. Philippine Duchesne
by Rev. T. Gavan Duffy |
