It is a form of spiritual accompaniment offered to the tenured faculty. This (in-person) spiritual conversation between the chaplain and a tenured faculty started in the Grade School in late January 2020 but got discontinued because of the Covid-19 pandemic. This SY 2020-2021, it is now offered online to all the departments.

The key to understand what the Sacred Heart Reserve is and what it is for is to be clear about its unique matter (what is talked about). And one way to do this is to distinguish the matter for each of these one-to-one conversations/relationships below and identify what the matter is for the Sacred Heart Reserve.

Each relationship gives its own cura personalis but in their own way -

a) The sacrament of Reconciliation (confessor and penitent)

This has to be understood from the very person of Jesus who came to save sinners and from the very mission of the Church to make present God’s mercy and forgiveness.

The confessor stands in the person of Christ in bringing Jesus’ mercy to the penitent.

The sacrament presupposes in the penitent contrition (sorrow for one’s sins and the resolve for conversion)

The Church has zealously guarded and protected the inviolability of the seal of confession.

b) The Spiritual Exercises (retreat-giver and retreatant)

The inspiration is St. Ignatius, patron of the retreats, and his own experience of conversion and call. The spiritual exercises come from this experience of God. And at the heart of it is the conviction that God speaks to the individual soul. Through discernment, that is, applying his rules for discernment on one’s personal experience of consolations and desolations, the exercitant is able to respond to God. This is basically what Ignatian prayer is.

Like the one-to-one retreat, the stuff of spiritual direction is also prayer. While the 30-day or 8-day retreats cover only the prayer experience in them, spiritual direction covers the prayer experience over time.

In the school context, we pray in our yearly retreat, quarterly recollection, and even in our daily examen (our spiritual warm up and cool down). These help us to reflect on how the Lord is speaking to us through the events of our day. Through the day we may experience a moment of felt gratitude to God, of indifference, of resolve and confirmation, of sorrow for sins, of being loved and forgiven, of profound joy, and so on.

The matter for Sacred Heart Reserve is the same as the matter of the Spiritual Exercises, that is, one’s experience in prayer, one’s religious experience, anything that has an impact on one’s relationship with God. It could be about anything, but it isn’t just anything goes. It is the person’s sense of what God is asking of him/her in his/her life now. And this is brought to the chaplain who, like the retreat-giver or the spiritual director who looks after the spiritual wellbeing of the tenured teacher, walks with him/her in his/her journey of seeking and finding God in all things.

It is clear from this that just as in the retreat and spiritual direction, the Sacred Heart Reserve presupposes in the tenured teacher the desire to have a deeper relationship with God. This means having his or her prayer and life connected.

c) Counselling/Psychoanalysis (counsellor and counselee)

This deals with the unconscious material, trauma/shaming in childhood, psychic conflicts or issues, mental health, etc.

d) Principal and Teacher

This deals with teaching load, career development, salary, workplace issues, etc.

e) Between close friends

This deals practically with anything under the sun.

So, what is talked about in the Sacred Heart Reserved? Mainly the matter of b, but it can also be the matter of a. However, in this time of pandemic, when done online, it is limited to b.

The guidelines on confessions given by the CBCP dated May 16, 2020 may help here:

• The sacramental nature of confession requires that it must be done in person…

• Priests are reminded not to hear Confessions via telephone or Zoom teleconferencing, though they may use these methods to offer the penitents spiritual counsel.

• Act of Perfect Contrition. When the Sacrament of Reconciliation is not possible, for example, to a patient who is isolated or in quarantine, he/she can make an Act of Perfect Contrition. The Act of Perfect Contrition always has been a part of our Catholic tradition. God is always present to us, even when the Sacrament of Reconciliation is not possible. While a priest cannot give absolution over the phone, he can use the phone to give a blessing and even guide a person to make an Act of Perfect Contrition. This can be done provided the person expresses faith in and love of God above all things and resolves to make a sacramental Confession as soon as possible. All his/her sins, even mortal sins, are forgiven.

• Here’s the prayer for the Act of Contrition: O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend You, my God, Who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Your grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.

1) To facilitate or deepen one’s prayer, in terms of being able to articulate what’s happening in one’s prayer, being able to listen more to what God may be communicating, and being able to discern and respond to God’s invitation. (Thus, this complements the other formation structures already in place, like the yearly retreat, quarterly recollections, and even the daily warm up and cool down. This proposed one-to-one spiritual conversation, therefore, provides the structure and aids in the practice of the Ignatian principles of God personally communicating to the individual and of finding Him in all things, of discernment of spirits, of indifference and magis, and of personal love of the poor and humble Christ, etc.)

2) To provide the time or structure by which one is able to talk about one’s experience in prayer, one’s religious experience, or anything that relates to one’s relationship with God - something which usually is not shared with others either because there is no one who they feel would honor such an experience and keep it in confidence or such thing is just not talked about or is difficult to articulate.

3) To offer to the tenured faculty this form of spiritual accompaniment, this form of cura personalis.

The inspiration is the Starbucks Reserve. This is how Starbucks describes it: Starbucks Reserve is a selection of the rarest, most extraordinary coffees Starbucks has to offer.

Before the word reserve is used for coffee, it has been used for wine. One entry which Merriam-Webster has for the noun reserve is this: a wine made from select grapes, bottled on the maker's premises, and aged differently from the maker's other wines of the same vintage.

So, we can say that the word reserve is used to refer to wine made from select grapes and aged differently from other wines or to coffee made from select beans and brewed differently. In other words, it is a special kind of wine or coffee.

What do we mean then by Sacred Heart Reserve? On one level, Sacred Heart refers to the School, the institution, or this specific structure. And we use Reserve in this context to mean our select experiences brewed in prayer and spiritual conversation. On a deeper level, Sacred Heart Reserve refers to our Lord’s choice graces coming from His Sacred Heart as the matter for our spiritual conversation.

In Church practice, the rector of a seminary decides whether or not to approve a candidate for ordination to the priesthood. Because of the nature of the work of the confessor or spiritual director, however, the rector can’t seek any information about the candidate from these two to base his decision. This principle applies to the Sacred Heart Reserve. Besides, the chaplain is not part of the School Administration. So, the chaplain keeps what is shared with utmost reserve. Anything shared by a teacher can’t be shared by the chaplain with the administrator, even when asked. It goes without saying that neither can it be shared with anyone.

For privacy reasons, it is recommended that the Signal Private Messenger app be used for the Sacred Heart Reserve. If you aren't using it yet, you can download the app from this download page . Then, using Signal, send me a message with your name and preferred schedule to +63 918 947 9113.