INSTITUTE OF THE DAUGHTERS OF MARY HELP OF CHRISTIANS
Via Ateneo Salesiano, 81 - 00139 R O M E
No. 952
Dear Sisters, I have just recently returned from Bolivia where, during the Feast of Gratitude at the world level celebrated on April 26, I felt the presence of the whole Institute. I wish to express my deep thanks full of affection for all the educating communities, for the young, for the members of the
Salesian Family.
The event was prepared and carried out with great love from all of you, especially Our Lady of Peace
Province in Bolivia. “Grow and Flourish with the Young where God Wants Us” proved to be an impassioned and demanding theme for everyone because it recalls the centre of our life and Salesian availability for the mission. I asked the Lord that the intense prayer and the numerous signs of solidarity that I received might be showered abundantly upon each of you, on our mission, and on the ecclesial and social realities in which you work.
Go d’s blessing can make the seeds of new hope and of joy blossom in this time of grace, even through the events that put us in synergy with the universal Church and the Salesian Family: the
Year of Consecrated Life desired by Pope Francis; the Display of the Shroud at Turin through which we contemplate Jesus who offered His life for the salvation of humanity; the announcement of the
Extraordinary Jubilee of Divine Mercy; the Bicentenary of Don Bosco’s birth received with great hope and joy in the whole world.
I invite you to live this exceptional historical time with Mary, missionary of hope and of joy. This is a call that places us on the road marked by the Gospel and that we live in the light of Salesian spirituality, so beautiful and attractive for today’s young people.
I trustfully unite myself with you on this journey in the awareness that our humble, courageous, and sometimes uncertain steps are accompanied by Mary’s presence. I dedicate this circular to her.
Together with her, I look with hope at the Institute today and for the future. In her, I acknowledge the real Superior who is present with her maternity that generates life and that helps us to be enterprising missionaries of hope and joy.
How I hope that in all of us there will be an ever more visible expression of a Marian face, so as to make us capable of going out to bring the beauty of the Gospel with enthusiasm. In fact, we are women of the visitation, missionaries with Mary and like Mary.
An Announcement that Proceeds
The preceding circular entitled, Transformed by the Encounter , opened our reflection on important aspects that emerged from the Chapter Assembly. Now I want to share with you the third choice of
GC XXIII: Be Missionaries of Hope and of Joy with Mary .
The root of her being a missionary is the great announcement of God who asks her to become the
Mother of the Savior, and her ‘yes’ to the mystery of love that she receives from the Angel’s words
(Cf. Luke 1: 26-38). Mary is regenerated interiorly by this call. She allows grace to dwell in her; she becomes God’s home. Rather, God Himself is generated in her. It is a call that immediately recalls another and to which she promptly replies: to go to Elizabeth, bringing her help, but above all, sharing with this elderly an d wise woman, the joy of the ‘great event’, certain that she would be understood.
Mary leaves in haste. She obeys the Holy Spirit’s inspiration to communicate the Good News to
Elizabeth, and also to John present in her womb. This is missionary ‘going out’.
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The encounter with the God of life is inseparable from the encounter with people. Mary, filled with grace because of God’s visit, becomes the first evangelizer. Her ‘going’ began a spirituality of journeying , which is the response to God’s plan, unknown to her, unheard of, but received in the joy of faith, fruit of a deep spiritual experience.
For us as well, God reserves an unheard of journey that may make us feel unprepared, perhaps a bit fearful and doubtful on the steps to take. Pope Franci s reassures us, “Never lose the momentum to walk…to proceed with uncertain steps or limping is always better than standing still, closed in one’s questioning or in one’s insecurities. May missionary passion, the joy of the encounter with Christ that urges us to share with others the beauty of the faith, remove from us the risk of remaining blocked in individualism” (Letter to Consecrated Persons Journeying on God’s Signs, p. 97).
Dear Sisters, like Mary and with her, we are called to take up or to continue the journey of evangelization to be ‘a credible word’ of hope with our life. This attitude opens us to new missionary dimensions that make us go with courage and joy, rooted in faith and hope, toward the peripheries of the young who need the light of the Gospel (Cf GC Acts XXIII, no. 62).
Mary teaches us to open ourselves to others and gives us precise conditions: abandon every kind of self-referencing, of individualism, to bring only the Word that saves, letting ourselves be guided by the
Holy Spirit as Mary did. From here arises the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing and the strength to respond to the challenge of a missionary spirit that is impassioned, vigorous, credible, and rich with gratuitous love. To love is already to walk. Those who love do not know passivity, routine, immobility. Love is movement; newness that blossoms, grows, and continually generates new life.
The Pope emphasizes that love for people is a spiritual power that leads us to meet God and, quoting
Benedict XVI, he aff irms that love is the only light that “always lights up anew a world that is dark and gives courage to live and to act” (Cf. Joy of the Gospel, 272).
For us, Mary is the model who daily inspires us in all situations, in the various calls that God trustfully offers us. All the encounters we live among ourselves and with the people, especially the young, speak to us of God. We are called to bring their voice to the Lord in our prayer. Don Bosco and Mary
Domenica knew how to weave in one movement of love, their relationship with the Lord and their selfgiving in the mission. “In the Virgin Immaculate Help of Christians, we contemplate the fullness of giving to God and to our neighbour” (C 44).
I have met many sisters who, with concrete gestures, in silence and humility, look at Mary to learn from her how to receive the daily annunciations and find in them the seed that brings life, hope, joy! I want to thank each of them for this witness that is a treasure in the life of the Institute and guarantees its future.
We can ask ourselves, how do we recognize and value the callings of God in our daily life so as to be missionaries of the Word, ready to go out of our house and open paths of hope and of love, embracing horizons of trust which we, the new generations, and the family urgently need?
Are we aware that our life is a precious pearl in God’s eyes when, even in the fatigue and difficulties the mission presents, we know how to discover the good that lives in our sisters, in every person, especially if young, and with this glance of light, sing the Magnificat for the great things that God accomplishes in us and around us?
Life as Witness
The joy of life is being merciful and witnessing hope in a society that is often weighed down by unrest and conflicts, by injustice and self-interests present in various areas of the world; incapable of globalizing solidarity, respect for human dignity, and the rights-duties that proceed from it. It is a society that very often wounds the young generations that are already disadvantaged, exploited, and marginalized.
Let Mary draw us. Let us place our hand in Mary’s, like daughters who take the hand of their Mom.
Let us allow ourselves to be accompanied by her with humility and determination on the rocky, tortuous road, or on the level, easy road that we newly discover each day. God invites us to be a small light that brightens; a little flame of goodness that comforts; a docile heart that knows how to
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understand and to love; a presence that always knows how to bless and encourage. I am certain that all of us want to follow this road that is translated into concrete, visible gestures, as the Holy Father teaches us.
I am aware that I am not telling you anything new, but I feel it urgent that together we re-confirm our decision to be FMA with a Marian face, ready to take Mary into our interior dwelling and our community, and with her, instead of whispering timidly, to loudly proclaim our fiat. Only in this way can we be missionaries of hope and joy in the Church and in society, among the most disadvantaged young people, and the families in a state of fragility.
Pope Francis reminds us that “Mary is the model of every vocation and was not afraid to pronounce her own ‘fiat’ to the Lord’s call. With the generous courage of faith, she sang the joy of going out of herself and trusting God’s plans for her life”. The Pope continues, “We turn to her to be fully available for God’s design on each of us so that the desire to go solicitously out to others may grow in us” (Luke
1:39). (Palm Sunday Homily, March 29, 2015) Saying yes to God, like Mary, is not always easy, but it is the condition to make us credible witnesses of His love, not only with words, but with our life.
We are too used to ‘hearing’ the word ‘witness’. But who is the witness today? The witness is a person who has seen, remembers, and recounts. These are the three verbs highlighted by Pope
Francis and which describe its identity and its mission. A change of life, a change of mentality presuppose reviewing our criteria for judgment; of passing from one way of thinking to another, aware of one’s own fragility, with the humility of one who knows how to begin again always.
These are not easy steps because accepting change calls for abandoning the logic of
‘we have always done it this way’ (GCXXIII Acts, nos. 33, 34). Above all, it calls for changing ourselves. Pope
Francis reassures us this regard saying that we are ‘God’s dream’, and, as a true lover, He wants “to change our life”. It is precisely love. He only asks us to have faith to let Him do it. In this way, “we can only cry with joy” before a God who ‘re-creates’ us (Pope Francis, Meditation at St. Martha
House, March 16, 2015).
Isn’t this the path that Mary followed, totally ready to receive God’s surprising action, bringing joy and life? How can this become our personal and community journey as well, to radiate joy and hope in us and around us; to look at the reality in which we live with new eyes and for which we give our whole selves?
To Make Life Dance
The presence of Mary in Elizabeth’s home makes life dance. The child that the elderly cousin carries in her womb leaps with vitality and joy. In the narration of the Visitation, there is a close connection among three generations. The announcement brought by the Angel to Mary becomes closeness, communion, and encounter. The encounter makes the life of the new generations vibrate and exult.
The reality of our mission as well is born from an encounter, from communion. Now “communion generates communion and is essentially configured as missionary communion” (ChL no. 32). In the icon of the Visitation, representing Mary’s attitudes, we find the vital synthesis of this reality.
The Magnificat flows from the encounter between two women. In this song, the One who carries the
Savior in her womb offers a wisdom reading of reality. God is on the side of the poor, of those who suffer injustice, of the excluded and rejected, of those who live on life’s peripheries. With Him, the course of history changes direction. Mary lives this change of perspective in herself and reveals it in her song of exultation. To make life dance is also our mission. We realize it by helping the young to project themselves toward adult life, guiding them to look at life with trust and love, in a vision of service. The Magnificat is the song of hope and of trust in the action of God’s Spirit in history.
Together with the young and with the educating community, we want to intone a choral Magnificat so that even today, life may be stronger than death, hope prevail over resignation, and love over egoism.
The condition is that we, first of all, must allow ourselves to be transformed by God. Each day we receive from Him an announcement of life.
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If we accept it, we can contagion the young generations with joy and hope, allowing them to stand up, to walk without hesitation and with their enthusiasm, to contagion all those they meet on the road of life.
This mission is demanding. We are fragile and poor, but God is greater than our heart. His mercy overcomes our limitations, and His grace renders our weak efforts efficacious. To be with Him on the road of life, gives us a new outlook on our communities. It makes them more open to His love, capable of generating life even in advanced age, of leading the young generations on the road of life, and also of knowing how to receive life from them. They contagion us with the dance of their youth.
Let us not be afraid of the problems and the educational challenges that touch the lives of the young.
They repeated this to us even during GC XXIII. Let us live in their world with empathy, knowing how to recognize even the small signs of hope present in our times. With the children and the young people, we will open ourselves to a fruitful future if we know how to go on the journey and view the daily obstacles as new opportunities for growth, as occasions to bring the Good News of the Gospel everywhere together.
Evangelization calls all of us to a real missionary conversion, the ex ercise of Mary’s own maternity to become a Church that “generates, gives growth, corrects, nourishes, and leads by the hand; a
Church that is able to rediscover its maternal womb of mercy” (Pope Francis, Discourse to the
Brazilian Episcopate, cited in GC XXIII Acts, no. 51).
If God accompanies us, a light arises on our road. Like Mary and like the disciples of Emmaus, together with the whole educating community, we follow roads of joy and of hope, roads of the future.
Mary Help of Christians is the Madonna of difficult times. With her we can be sure that a road to the future can always be opened. Trust in her makes us women of hope.
On May 24 th , I will be in Turin with the whole General Council. In the Basilica, I will pray to Mary Help of Christians for each one of you, for your communities, for the young. I will trustfully ask her to obtain for the Church and our Institute, of which she is the true Superior, generous and holy vocations.
I renew my gratitude with all my heart.
May Mary Help of Christians bless you, above all in this month dedicated to her.
Rome, 24 May 2015
Your affectionate Mother
Erection of a new Province
During the plenary session of the General Council, a new Province was erected, Our Lady of the
Nations (FRB) formed by the unification of the Provinces of France and South Belgium. It will begin on August 5, 2015.
New Provincials 2015
Africa
Province of Central Africa “Our Lady of Africa”
Sr. Marie-Dominique Mwema Mukato
Province of East Africa “Our Lady of Hope”
Sr. Gisèle Umurerwa Ndekezi
Province of Madagascar “Mary Source of Life”
Sr. Bernadette Chongo Cola
AFC
AFE
MDG
America
Province of the Antillies “St. Joseph”
Sr. Basilia Ramírez
ANT
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Province of Brazil “Mother Mazzarello”
Sr. Maria Américo Rolim
Province of Haiti “Our Lady of Perpetual Help”
Sr. Aline Nicolas
BBH
HAI
Pre-Province of Canada “Our Lady of the Cape” CND
Sr. Elizabeth Purcell renewed for one year
Province of China “Mary Help of Christians”
Sr. Carolina Wu Miu Yin
CIN
Province of CambodiaMyanmar “Mary Our Help” CMY
Sr. Jessica Salvaña
Province of the Philippines “St. Mary D. Mazzarello” FIL
Sr. Mabel Pilar
Province of Japan “Alma Mater”
Sr. Wakayo Teresina Morishita
GIA
Province of India “St. Mary D. Mazzarello”
Sr. Ritha Dora Thomas
Province of India “Mary Help of Christians”
Sr. Rose Ezarath
INB
INC
Province of TimorIndonesia “St. Mary D. Mazzarello”
Sr. Alma Castagna
Province of Vietnam “Mary Help of Christians”
Sr. Rosa Vu thi Kim Lien
VTN
TIN
Province of Lombardy “Holy Family” ILO
Sr. Maria Teresa Cocco
Province of Emiliana-LigureToscana “O. L. of the Cenacle” ILS
Sr. Carla Castellino
Southern Province “O. L. of Good Counsel”
Sr. Maria Rosaria Tagliaferri
IMR
Province of Rome “St. John Bosco”
Sr. Angela Maria Maccioni
IRO
Province of Sicula “Mother Maddalena Morano” ISI
Sr. Maria Anna Pisciotta
Province of Triveneto “St. Mary D. Mazzarello” ITV
Sr. Palmira De Fortunati
Province of Czech-Lithuania Rep. “Mary Immaculate”
Sr. Jana Svobodová
CEL
Pre-Province of East Europe- Georgia “Mother of God” EEG
Sr. Gabriela Rohde
Asia
Europe
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Province of France-South Belgium “Our Lady of the Nations”
Suor Geneviève Pelsser
Province of Poland “Mary Help of Christians”
Sr. Anna Świątek
PLA
Province of Spain “Mary Help of Christians”
Sr.
María Dolores Ruíz Pérez
SSE
FRB
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