O, Mary, Mother who has known deepest sorrow and deepest love,
moved by profound gratitude for the innumerable gifts
you have poured out on this little Society,
we come together today as Province and Society
to acknowledge what we owe to your motherly protection,
and to the goodness of your Mother’s heart,
wounded by the sight of your suffering children everywhere.
Continue your work in and for us, dear Mother,
as we stand at the threshold of a new millennium.
Love gave you the cross,
grant that the cross may give us love.
May there never be for Religious of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
any other cross than the cross of Jesus.
May we have the courage
to bear His cross;
both the sufferings of His passion
and the remembrance of His woundedness for others,
so that in ministering to the wounded and torn of our world,
we may find in His cross
less the pain and suffering He experienced
than the height and depth of His love and compassion
for the Poor and Suffering of our world.
We ask this in and for Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen