Today, March 27th, the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts commemorates the death of its founder, Father José Maria Coudrin, ss.cc. Marking this important date for the Church, the Provincial Father of Brazil – Paraguay region, leaves a message for all religious men and women, lay people, and others. Read the full message below:

Dear Brothers, as we commemorate today, March 27th, the 186th anniversary of the death of our founder, I want to encourage each Brother to live with boldness and renewed missionary zeal the ideals that we received as a spiritual inheritance from our founders on the day of our Religious Consecration.

The charism of our religious family continues to be a gift from God to be shared through our actions and attitudes in the community and mission where we are involved. Here we must recall some fundamental values of this charism, the hallmark of our identity as Children of the Sacred Hearts: Consecration to the Sacred Hearts; Reparation (Adoration); Apostolic Zeal (Mission); Eucharist and Fraternal Life (Family Spirit). These are the five fundamental elements that we need to constantly reclaim in order to respond faithfully to the call that God makes to us in the present moment of our history as consecrated persons. It is necessary to rekindle the gift of God that is within us, as the Apostle Paul reminds us (2 Tim 1:6).

Following Jesus, we learn to be disciples, allowing ourselves to be guided by the One who called us. To be a disciple of Jesus means to conform to Him who made himself a servant even to the point of giving himself on the cross (Phil 2:5-8). We know that the mystery of the cross is a legacy we received from our founder, when he himself said that the Children of the Sacred Hearts are the Children of the Cross.

We celebrate the feast of our founder during this Lenten season, a journey that leads us towards the celebration of Easter. Father Coudrin lived his last days on this earth, enduring illness, precisely during Lent, and was able to celebrate his definitive Easter on Easter Monday, March 27, 1837. The fruits of this grain of wheat fallen to the ground (John 12:24) spread throughout the world, making the dream of our founder a reality. This intuition should always accompany us; we cannot stop dreaming. But as the song says: "a dream dreamed alone can be pure illusion, but a dream dreamed together is a sign of solution," therefore let us not stop dreaming together.

In this celebration of the definitive Easter of our “Good Father,” I wish each Brother and their respective communities a Happy Easter! This wish extends to our Sisters and lay men and women of the Secular Branch. May the light of the Risen One illuminate our lives, our projects, and the mission we have undertaken as sons and daughters of the Sacred Hearts.

To the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, all honor and all glory.

Fraternal embrace: Fr. Osvânio Humberto Mariano, ss.cc.

Source: sscc.org.br