Missionaries of the Sacred Heart

We live in a society which has a basically capitalist orientation and structure, where wealth, power and prestige are given undue importance and emphasis. In following Christ, the MSCs not only take the option of the poor by espousing their concern for justice but enter into a covenant of interhuman justice that leads towards liberation and the coming of the Kingdom, where people will live in justice and love, where sickness and oppression will be overcome and God will be all in all.

Each Missionary of the Sacred Heart professes the Vows of Obedience, Celibacy and Poverty as a radical service to people’s genuine aspirations and struggle for full humanity and the coming of the Kingdom of God.

1. Vow of Obedience

Obedience is the total availability to the Father to whom all authority is subject.

Obedience compels us to surrender ourselves to the will of the Father to live a life committed to service. In the present time, this calls us to a practical solidarity with the oppressed whose deliverance from slavery is a motive force of salvation history. In this spirit, assignments and all forms of apostolate initiated by members are to be considered in dialogue with the Superior and the community; this process helps us to discern the will of the Father and to accept the decision that follows.

2. Vow of Celibacy

Consecrated celibacy is an emphatic sign that we have been created “for others”, not just for ourselves nor our family. We are called to be faithful to God as a radical form of discipleship.

Consecrated celibacy urges us to help in solidarity those who are compelled to live without aspirations and expectations and those for whom “having nobody” is a fact of life.
Members should manifest such deportment that our manner of life, words and actions express the refinement of character befitting a religious.

3. Vow of Poverty

Poverty as a biblical value (seen in the context of the “anawim”) is a protest against the obsession to have more for the sake of wealth, power and prestige.

To opt for this biblical poverty as a way of life motivates us to be in solidarity in praxis with those to whom poverty is not a “virtue” but an imposed life-situation, a social reality with economic, political and cultural consequences.