“Now, again, we recall the God who became a baby and was born for us all.”
“Dear Brothers and Friends of the Dehonian Family,” starts Fr. José Ornelas Carvalho, SCJ, superior general of the Priests of the Sacred Heart, in his 2010 Christmas message. “In our letter sent on the Feast of the Sacred Heart we referred back to that most generous gift from Fr. Dehon: I leave you that most precious of gifts, the Heart of Jesus (Cf. Spiritual Testament).
“This reference was more than simple pious attention-getting; it was a golden nugget from his personal experience that led him to found the Congregation. To speak of the heart does not mean an aspect or part of the person but its entirety, its essential totality, its very inner self as opposed to that which appears on the outside, the superficial. Someone’s heart is his or her deepest secret which is known only to the degree that the person chooses to reveal by communicating with another.
“Fr. Dehon’s bequest was designed to share with us his experience of God’s love with Jesus as witness. Jesus himself is our gift…
“By speaking of the Sacred Heart, Fr. Dehon wished to invite us to focus our eyes on the humanity of Jesus as the Word made flesh who had come to dwell among us (John 1:14). In his actions, one can see deeply into God’s solicitude for mankind. Jesus reveals his closeness to every person no matter what race, culture, or social status. It is from this humanity that Jesus becomes Emmanuel (God with us) and at the same time is the revelation of God’s love, a model one can imitate, and the path every man and woman in this world can follow…
“Now, again, we recall the God who became a baby and was born for us all. Come again, Christ Jesus! Come to those places where humanity has been silenced and become desolate, where the weakest are excluded and put to death, where social injustice is found on a grand scale. Come among us, into our communities, into the Dehonian family. Come to seek us out and console us; make level our roadway and fill it with hope. Enlighten our entities and those continental gatherings that will take place next year so that our responses be ever closer to what you will. In your dealings with us, allow us brothers and sisters to experience that You are God with us, the ‘Word made flesh.’”
