|
Religious
Communities for Women The
Consoling Sisters of the Origin It is in 1961, in an atmosphere of fervor and enthusiasm, or even better, of all that can be beautiful, great, noble in a youth illuminated and fortified by grace, that was officially born our Congregation. Its founder, Fr Basilio Rosati, Passionist, had infused in our hearts the flame of a great ideal: consoling the Divine Heart of Jesus, so afflicted by the ingratitude, the coldness, the outrages, the betrayals of so many souls that are particularly dear to Him, souls that He redeemed with his most Precious Blood.
The Sacred Heart When Fr Rosati was speaking about the Passion of Our Lord, his soul was vibrating with emotions, with zeal, with supernatural love. As a faithful son of St. Paul of the Cross, he would have wished that the whole world knew Jesus crucified, that all the souls prostrated themselves at the foot of the Cross to worship the only true God who loved us as far as of immolating completely his holy humanity. His tireless zeal brought him to preach missions and Lent conferences throughout the whole Italy; he thus had the occasion to know and then to gather in a community life a first group of five girls coming from different regions of the country, and to entrust their formation in religious life to a soul of great virtue, to his penitent and spiritual daughter, who from that day became our mother. The Lord does divinely well all what He does. While our souls were opening themselves to this great ideal, God was preparing a house for his new religious family: on the night of the 5th of August 1960, the Passionist Fathers were receiving us in their convent of Saint Eutizio, a little town in the commune of Soriano nel Cimino, in the province of Viterbe. The fellow brothers of our founder allowed us to use a unoccupied wing of their great convent, and it is there, in this holy place sanctified by St. Eutizio martyr, that our community life began.
Part of the Community On the 2nd of December 1961, H.E. Mgr Massimiliani, bishop of Civita Castellana was approving by decree the “Pia Unio of the Consoling Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus”, was entrusting its direction to the R. Fr. Basilio Rosati, Passionist, and its future novitiate to the R. Mother Elisabetta Pezzarossa. At the end of the period of probation started in August, on the Vigil of the Immaculate Conception, on the 7th of December 1961, we were receiving from the hands of the Bishop our religious habit, which would remind us and also the world that we freely and totally consecrated ourselves to the service of God, renouncing all the vanities of this world to follow the steps of our Divine Master. And after the period of novitiate, the first Sisters finally made their religious profession. The Divine Heart of Jesus was blessing the Congregation, and an important number of girls were asking to join us. Thus, in 1975, our religious family could count 30 members. His Excellency was expressing his satisfaction, and was present at every ceremony of reception of habit and of profession. Our small community spent the first years of its foundation in a quiet spirit of recollection; our souls were nourished with the exclusive food of Tradition, which in the past leaded the way to a great number of saints. Without delay, many bishops made pressure on our founder to open other houses; thus, after a few years, we were present in four dioceses. Such an expansion should have brought lots of good fruits. On the contrary, it would be the prelude of bitter and painful disappointments for Fr Rosati and for us.
The Convent Chapel The crisis It was the time where the winds of contestation and independence were penetrating the minds of the laity and of the religious. Such an atmosphere could only affect and weaken the authentic Christian spirit that must be the basis of our faith and of our action. The fever of novelty and aggiornamento was weakening the souls who were imprudent, and was leading them astray… astray mostly from the pressing call of Jesus Christ: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.” This crisis would not spare our young family. Moreover, it would strongly affect us, because we were still in our growing stage, and thus deprived of that solidity of formation and of culture issued from Tradition, strength that grows only with the many years of existence of a religious congregation. This sickening anxiety for aggiornamento and renewal had contaminated some of our fellow sisters, and the vigorous corrections of our father were useless. He had become like “the voice crying in the wilderness”, he had to drink the bitter chalice of betrayal and of abandonment. How painful it is to attend the devastation of the Lord’s vineyard. Our little vessel, beaten by the waves of the storm, was living hours of great peril. But the Divine Master was taking care of it, and did not permit its shipwreck. Vigne de Narni, center where our founder retired at the end of his life, was staying a strong reference point for all those who were searching for the truth and for the reinforcement of their faith. Vigne had become like a cenacle where the faith was braced by the devotion toward the Blessed Sacrament, in front of whom our father was spending long hours of silent and penitent prayers. The faithful minister was sharing the agony of Gethsemane with the Divine Victim… and was waiting with confidence for the hour chosen by God. And that hour came! A small number of 6 Sisters remained faithful to their constitutions, and in spite of the wounds received in the battle, climbed back up the hill… How? By what means?
The Sisters who remained faithful in 1996 God introduces us to the Society of St. Pius X He, the Infinite Love, always takes the greatest care of the souls and wants that none of them perish in the storm of life, as long as they do not make a different choice. In the inscrutable design of the Providence, to them who love Him, all things work together unto good, even sufferings, storms, darkness, and separations. We were then intimately afflicted by the grave illness that struck our founder. Our hearts were thorn at the thought of the coming departure of the one who had transmitted to our whole existence this great and luminous ideal. We were like nailed at his bedside to offer him the filial and supernatural tribute of our prayers and sacrifices. We knew that our spiritual father had offered his life for the salvation of our souls. We were sure that such charity would obtain him the grace to not let us alone, without a strong and luminous guide, when God would call him back to eternity. This assurance finally had its full realization on the night of the 9th of February 1996, when our founder, in the presence of almost all our religious family, entrusted us to Fr Emmanuel du Chalard SSPX, asking him in the name of God to assume the care of our congregation and to guide us firmly in the way of perfection. Such was the highest and most concrete expression of the great zeal of his sacerdotal heart. The agreement of Father du Chalard was immediate and generous, and became for our founder the source of supernatural serenity and of immense thanks giving toward the Good Lord who had finally heard his insisting, prolonged, and penitent prayers. For now on, he could return serene and confident to his Creator, for he had secured us in the hidden and tormented heart of the eternal Church, where shines the sovereign Truth! Fr Basilio Rosati would die on the 23rd of August 1996. He knew that he was leaving us, his little soldiers, on the field of a rough battle, and he did not omit any opportunity to encourage us and to remind us that God is faithful; to us would be sufficient to give our humble and supernatural submission to our guide. He assured us that when he would be in front of the Lord, he would obtain us all what we need. In fact, it has been continuously verified: beside great temporal graces almost miraculous, he has obtained for us many other spiritual graces, much greater and more precious, even if we keep them jealously hidden in the secret of our souls. Among them, there is the spiritual direction of Father du Chalard, the assistance and the zeal really holy of the bishops and of the priests of the Society of Saint Pius X in their care for the poor, small and insignificant sisters that we are, and the prayers addressed to the Lord by so many faithful souls. Since the Society entered into our lives, we have been overrun by a holy revolution, and we understand today what we were searching for a long time ago, and was veiled by a deep fog in our souls. Today, we feel our faith coming back to life. We receive from the priests of the Society instructions of sane theology, of morals, of ascetical life… like the land receives the ploughshare that clears it from the weeds and the brambles, to prepare it for an authentic spring of grace. But the grace of grace is the holy Mass celebrated each day by the priests of the Society in our very modest chapel (blessed by Mgr de Galarreta on the 16th of December 1997). Understands who can… since only faith reveals us the immensity of such a mystery. This is why the Lord gave us to know the Society of St. Pius X and, through it, to rediscover the eternal Church. Our souls are bursting with gratitude towards God for all his predilections, and it is with a sincere emotion that we declare our resolution of docility and supernatural submission to all those who, with patience and charity, guide us and encourage us to follow the narrow but sure path leading to eternal salvation.
The Institute of the Consoling Sisters of the Sacred Heart Our ideal To complete this simple and modest presentation, we would like to expose the great lines of the ideal of the Consoling Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as transmitted by our founder, and the means proposed to obtain it.
A breath-taking view form the convent’s garden, longing for eternity
Schedule The day of a Consoling Sister is varied and well fulfilled: psalmody, meditation and adoration of the Blessed Sacrament intermingle harmoniously with the different activities. The Blessed Virgin Mary is the great model that each one strives to imitate with the purpose of consoling the Divine Spouse. Our keen participation to the development of the Mystical Body and our conscious and loving adhesion to the motherly solicitude of the Church, for a greater radiation of Christian truth and for a more authentic testimony given to Jesus Christ, this is what constitutes the soul of all the apostolate of our Consoling Sisters. Behold our motto and our program: “Heart of Jesus, that we love Thee, and make Thee loved!” Concerning our prayers in community, here are the details of our schedule:
Final considerations The Consoling Sisters of the Sacred Heart are divided in two categories:
The priests of the Society of St. Pius X, with a zeal and a spirit of sacrifice that are edifying, assume daily the care of the religious services and of the spiritual assistance, not only for our small community, but also for our guests advanced in age. To these tireless ministers of God goes our profound and supernatural gratitude. Our great desire is that our houses be as many “Bethany” where Jesus Christ, rejected by so many souls, families and societies, would find generous hearts who would welcome Him and console Him, like when He was stopping in Bethany at the hospitable house of Lazarus, Martha and Maria. May, by His grace, our little squad becomes rapidly legion, to realize rapidly a program so noble and so holy.
Part of the Convent Mother
Superior Tel.
[39] (0744) 79 61 71
|
