Reflection for the Feast of St Madeleine Sophie 2007

Jamie Lewis, Head Girl, Baradene.

The wink of God as a student of the society of the Sacred Heart is found the moment you walk into the school grounds. Though I was not aware of it at first, I soon discovered that it is something that gradually becomes apparent, through thinking about it and through experiencing it.

At the outset, I thought Cor Unum was all about Madeleine Sophe Barat herself and the spiritual home of Sacred Heart education on the other side of the world.

And then I went there, visiting Sacred Heart schools in Tours, France and Jette, Belgium, I met fellow students and staff who, though on the other side of Australia and New Zealand, were living out the same goals exactly as we do here.

I then went on to the small convent in a suburb of Brussels in Belgium, where Madeleine Sophie's body lies.

And as powerful as an experience as that was, it was on returning home to Stuartholme and even coming here to Baradene that the penny finally dropped.

Cor Unum is not a building, it's not a place, it's not even one person, it's all of us.

We are the spirit and force of Sacred Heart education and it's something we share in common with the three schools across the Tasman- Kincoppal Rose Bay, Sacre Coeur and Stuartholme, across the Pacific to Forest Ridge and the other 20 schools existing within the United States alone and the rest of the Sacred Hearts schools spanning across a the globe.

You've met some of the girls from these schools, I've been fortunate enough to be a guest and host and I'm convinced that we are indeed fortunate to share this unique gift.

A gift, that is not only present during the quiet contemplative moments in the chapel and during liturgies, but helps define all the activities we undertake here at Baradene.

We are many and we are different in so may ways, but when brought together by Madeleine Sophie, here in the spirit of Sacred Heart education, we are one.