Dear Members of the Sacred Heart School Community,

During a recent conversation among the Religious of the Sacred Heart this past weekend, we reflected together on our world and its call to us as religious women. Sharing in the context of prayer, we went around with each one offering to the others in the simplicity of her heart—open to listening and to being led by the Spirit. 

As each one spoke, we gradually moved into a deeper contemplative space where we could hear the voices of the broken, wounded, anguished, and outraged of our world. An attentive quiet entered the space as we spoke about the fires burning across our country and, now, the world. Listening deeply, the palpable cry of our heart was in the pain, scourge and sin of our divided human family reflected in brutality, violence, and racism. 

Such pain and suffering in our country and in our world shock our sensibilities, disturbs us at our core, and it calls us to our knees. It begs for our prayer, for our attention and for our action. It begs for our conversion. It begs for dismantling. 

The fires are burning: What is our response? 

Walking onto our school campus this morning, the profound imperative of educating to a “Social awareness that impels to action” (Goals and Criteria of Sacred Heart Schools, Goal 3,) comes to the forefront of my priorities. This Goal is a foundational expression of our mission as a Sacred Heart school. 

The Society of the Sacred Heart makes our perspective, our call, and our continued commitment clear in its recent “Statement on Racism,” which appears below. I invite you to reflect on it and to share it with others.  

Today, with fires burning, we know that the pierced heart of Jesus calls out to each of us as individuals, as a community and as an institution for prayer, personal conversion, and social transformation. 

As a Pentecost people, we believe in the transformational power of Divine Love, and the hope of the God’s liberating Spirit. We move forward in the presence of this Love, confident in its enduring good working in one another and in our world. 

In CJM, 

Sr. Melanie A. Guste, RSCJ
Headmistress

Read the full statement against racism >