The Congregation of the Sacred Hearts is celebrating its XIII Provincial Chapter this week at the SSCC Retreat House in Pindamonhangaba, in the state of São Paulo (Brazil). Under the motto "We carry this treasure in clay vessels" (2 Cor 4:7), seventeen capitular brothers from Brazil and Paraguay, together with Alberto Toutin sscc and Fernando Cordero sscc from the General Government, gather from May 25 to 29 to make decisions that will shape the future of the Province and the Region of Paraguay.
The Chapter began on Sunday, May 25, with the opening Mass presided over by the Superior General, Fr. Alberto Toutin sscc, who, drawing on the feast of Mary, Mother of the Church, emphasized that she welcomes us as at Aparecida. Now it is our turn to welcome her into our lives and communities. May she help us follow her Son, as beloved disciples and friends. May the capitular dialogues lead us to discernment and consensus, asking the Father what we are called to be.
The spiritual retreat
Tuesday, May 26, the feast of the Martyrs of Picpus, was dedicated to the spiritual retreat. The opening Eucharist set the tone with a homily highlighting that beginning with a day of retreat before deliberating is not a logistical detail, but "a theological affirmation: before deciding what we will do, we need to remember who we are." The four Martyrs of Picpus — ordinary men, with ordinary frailties, who found in the Mazas prison the deepest retreat of their lives — were presented as a model of what the Chapter is called to live: the stripping away that precedes every authentic decision.
The spiritual talk, given by Fernando Cordero following the Eucharist, unfolded four movements of contemplation drawn from 2 Corinthians 4:5–12:
The scandal of clay. In the ancient world, the clay amphora was the disposable container. Paul deliberately chooses that material to speak of the apostles. The talk invited the capitulars to honestly name their weariness, their invisibility, the fruits that never came: "The XIII Chapter arrives with those questions on the table. Clay is not a problem God tolerates reluctantly. It is a deliberate theological choice."
The treasure is not yours — that is why it is free. The love of the Hearts of Jesus and Mary is not guarded: it is poured out. The open Heart of Christ is "the ultimate clay vessel: a wounded body that is, at the same time, the source of all grace." Here the recent apostolic exhortation Dilexi te (2025) of Pope Leo XIV was cited: "Contemplating the love of Christ helps us to pay greater attention to the suffering and needs of others, and makes us strong to share in his work of liberation, as instruments for the spreading of his love." And the figure of Blessed Eustaquio van Lieshout was evoked — his poor Portuguese and his repeated humiliations did not prevent thousands of people from following him: "What made him irresistible? Not his talent. His transparency."
Cracks are autobiography. God does not use his instruments in spite of their wounds, but through them. The talk recovered the Japanese art of kintsugi — which repairs broken ceramics with gold, making the fracture shine — as a theological image: "The cracks in your story are not the moments when God abandoned you. They are the moments when God entered." The Chapter's preparatory documents courageously name "a crisis of identity, fragility in the sense of community, a diminishing sense of belonging." The talk did not avoid that reality: "These are not words of defeat. They are the cracks."
The Chapter as a vessel. The retreat closed with an invitation to remember the person who, in each participant's own history, was a clay vessel transmitting the charism. "There is a chain of broken vessels that reaches to this point. The charism of the Sacred Hearts traveled from France to Brazil, from Holland to these lands, inside fragile lives. No one transmitted this treasure by being brilliant. They transmitted it by being transparent." The Chapter itself was presented as yet another vessel: "It arrives carrying a treasure it did not make. And the task is not to protect it, but to let it pass through."
In the evening, Alberto Toutin recalled that the "treasures" of the Kingdom of God (Mt 13) are already there, waiting to be recognized and welcomed as grace — an unexpected treasure hidden in a field, or something greater than what we were seeking (the pearl). To find these treasures, we need eyes and hearts filled with hope, and the hoe to "unearth" the hidden treasures.
The axes to be addressed at the Chapter, prepared over months in the communities of Brazil and Paraguay, are: unification of the Province of Brazil and the Region of Paraguay, statistical analysis — a moment of historic decision, mission, community life, formation and vocation, service of authority, economy, and youth.
The Chapter is assisted by Friar Evaldo Xavier Gomes, O.Carm., as advisor.
05/27/2026