Positio <\/em>has ventured the opinion that Mercy is the predominant charism of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus. It\u2019s not simply because Cornelia claimed that the Society was founded for all the works of spiritual<\/u> mercy that she holds this view. She sees mercy running like a spiritual river through all the \u201cwindings\u201d and trials of Cornelia\u2019s life story. Ursula notes that by July, 1840, \u201cCornelia was contemplating Christ\u2019s all-embracing mercy: \u00b4Misereor super hanc turbam\u00b4 [Cornelia wrote in her journal] which was to be the outstanding impulse of her second vocation as an apostolic founder.\u201d<\/p>\nOther examples span the years. For her irresponsible son Merty at school at Stonyhurst, Cornelia pleads mercy. In 1844, Cornelia is at the Trinita pondering her future and that of her children. Her dismal spirits are raised by the merciful suggestion of Cardinal Vicar Patrizi that Frank should remain with her until he is five years older. She is merciful toward the scheming Emily Bowles and she mercifully pays the court costs of a husband who betrayed her. Her alienated children are lovingly received on their once-in-a-lifetime visit to their mother. The Preston cabal all but broke her and the subsequent intervention of Bishop Dannell and his alien rule tested her to the limit, but she remained firmly united to her merciful God and at one with the Mother of sorrows.<\/p>\n
The break with the religious of the Sacred Heart came about because Cornelia did not want a cloistered life with all its restrictions. She wanted to \u201chelp souls\u201d actively, like Ignatius. The spiritual works of mercy were more in harmony with her own natural calling but she certainly drew from their devotion to the merciful heart of Jesus a deeper understanding of mercy and a wealth of spirituality that she brought with her to the SHCJ. The other strong influence came by way of the Salesian tradition that witnessed to the sweetness and tenderness of God. Her devotion to the Holy Child is more allied to that tradition.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the clearest references to the possible centrality of Mercy in the SHCJ are found in Cornelia\u2019s rule text of 1853, now enshrined in our Foundation Texts: \u201cMysteries of the most sublime teaching are to be found in the humble, hidden life of the Holy Child Jesus in which God manifests in the most wonderful manner the treasures of his mercy and of his boundless love.\u201d And \u201cContemplating the Eternal Wisdom in the lowliness of his humanity we are to seek to attain the knowledge of our own nothingness and misery and that of his infinite love and mercy.\u201d It sounds even better in the original French: \u201cEt quel enseignement plus sublime pourront-nous trouver que le myst\u00e8re de l\u2019Incarnation? C\u2019est ici que Dieu nous manifeste de la mani\u00e8re la plus merveilleuse les tr\u00e9sors de sa Mis\u00e9ricorde y de son Amour immense.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even up to the end of her life, (1875) Cornelia was encouraging her religious to \u201cjudge of things as our good and merciful God judges them\u201d. A lifetime of yearly Spiritual Exercises would have overwhelmingly confirmed that first direct contact of \u201ccreature with creator\u201d as a merciful exchange. Finally, the one she had learned as a Protestant to call \u201cthe almighty\u201d received her at the last as Mercy. Her repeated death-bed cry was \u201cMy Jesus have mercy on me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
March 30, 2016 By Elizabeth Mary Strub, SHCJ \u201cAnd you, little child, you shall be called prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare the way for him. To give his people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins; this by the tender mercy of our God […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":385,"featured_media":566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shcj.org\/african\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shcj.org\/african\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shcj.org\/african\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shcj.org\/african\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/385"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shcj.org\/african\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shcj.org\/african\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shcj.org\/african\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shcj.org\/african\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shcj.org\/african\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shcj.org\/african\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}