“Closeness, compassion and tenderness: Dear Sisters, while I propose to you again what the Holy Father has told us, at the end of the General Chapter 2021, I would like to invite every Sister of Charity, in whatever territorial reality she lives, to celebrate this Holy Year of Hope with these three attitudes: closeness, compassion and tenderness”. Thus writes the Superior General Mother Maria Rosa in her Circular on the occasion of the beginning of the Jubilee Year 2025.
“Sisters, let us light up in our heart and of course even in our Chapels, three lamps that will burn during this Holy year to remind us of the commitment we have made as a Congregation to live as “pilgrims of Hope” as we carry the light of “closeness, compassion and tenderness”. This will help us to walk together as a FamilyCongregation and to be a living presence in the Church according to our Charism.
At the beginning of a new year, of a jubilee year, «How important it is for us to make good use of time! »: said Mother Thouret to her daughters in the Circular of 30 December 1808. Let us treasure her exhortation and welcome this Jubilee year as an event of great spiritual, ecclesial, social and Congregational significance.
Let us set out as “pilgrims” in the footsteps of Jesus. His journey is indeed marked by the preaching of the Kingdom of mercy, by the compassionate listening to those who suffer, by the hours of prayer stolen from the night, by the overflowing joy of the Spirit and by the bold proclamation: «Blessed are the poor, blessed are the afflicted! ».
With the Incarnation everything is now sacred, a place worthy of God; the temple, but even the road, the hospital, hunger, marginalisation and the prison.
Father Frei Betto wrote: «We look for Him in the temple, but He is in the stable; we look for Him among the priests, but He is among sinners; we look for Him thinking that he is free, but He is a prisoner; we look for Him clothed in glory, but He is on the cross covered in blood. He is sitting on the steps of our receptions, awaiting a piece of bread».
Jesus made man, has chosen a path that changed the way we think of God and of encountering Him, because he rendered the road a theological place, with its difficult individuals, its demands and its times.
Since then, the path of the Church has become the Church of the road!
Dear Sisters, let us continue steadily together as a Family-Congregation to love God and to serve Him in the poor. May the power of hope made up of “closeness, compassion and tenderness” fill our present time”.
From Circular No. 47 by the Superior General, Mother Maria Rosa
Rome, 1 January 2025
