The Sacred Heart Community

5.1 To express and realise our total consecration to God and to unite our whole life with the Christ, we accept the Lord’s call to pledge ourselves privately in the first instance as members of the Sacred Heart Lay Community. These vows are not considered as ‘religious vows’ and if members were to leave they would automatically cease. When the Lay community becomes consecrated, members take public and perpetual vows as members of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart by the vows of consecrated celibacy, poverty and obedience.

5.2 These vows are an act of love for God who first loved us. By our vows we are committed to single-hearted intimacy with God, trusting and surrendering ourselves to His will. In consecrated celibacy we wish to love with the freedom, openness and availability that can be recognized as a sign of the kingdom. In consecrated poverty we seek to share the lot of the poor and to unite in their cause, trusting in the Lord as provider. In consecrated obedience we join with the sisters in community and with the whole church in the search for God’s will.

We dedicate ourselves privately to the vow of victim hood. This vow is spiritual in term of reparation and forgiveness; and practical, embodying the principle of availability for service and oblation.

5.3 We want to live our vows in such a way that our lives will call into question our societies obsession with individualism, consumerism and entitlement. Prophets stand before the world as signs of that which has enduring value, and prophets speak and act in the world as companions of the Lord in the service of his kingdom. We pray to live our vows well enough to offer such witness and service to all we serve.

5.6 By our vow of poverty we commit ourselves to hold our goods in common and to share them as sisters. All renumeration for our services, all income, gifts and benefits are ours to share or dispose of as a community. In all of this, our hope is that the common purse will be expressive of true reliance upon one another and will free our hearts for possession by the Lord.

5.7 By our vow of obedience we commit ourselves to the direction of the Pope. We are no less responsive to the needs of the local churches wherever we live and work. With regards to worship, ministry and labour for the kingdom we are under the pastoral authority of the bishop. We are also faithfull to the decisions of those in authority within the Sacred Heart Community and Dehonian Family. We join with the whole community in a common discernment of God’s will as manifested in prayer, communal reflection, scripture and the Spirit’s guidance in the church. Once we become a religious congregation, this vow will includes the entirety of our life in the Sacred Heart Community, and through it we hope to discover and accept the Lord’s will more surely.

5.8 Our vows not only bind us in community but marks our life as community. Open, generous and hospitable love is to characterize our house and our service. As a community we are committed to the use of few belongings and to live simply.

The community may in time live their consecration in many lands and cultures. Our commitment is the same wherever we are, but we seek to express it in a manner rooted in and enriched by the varying contexts and cultures in which we live. In this way we hope to make our witness and service more effective for the kingdom.