Dear Sisters, Daughters of Jesus, and lay people with whom we share so much:
On the way to follow Jesus that M. Cándida opened, we have met Mª Antonia Bandrés, ‘Antoñita’. Congratulations because we come together to celebrate his feast and let the Lord himself be encouragement in our progress.
Congratulations to the youngest in our environment because she was always young. To the Daughters of Jesus “at the beginning of ongoing formation”, because their twenty-one years speak of a fulfillment that age does not automatically give.
Possibly we can discover in Antoñita, in the way of living “his sanctity” in a sociocultural context so different from ours, much more than we could believe.
“You have to get to the top”, she said; Or also, “I will strive to do ordinary things in an extraordinary way and I will say on each occasion, ‘My Jesus, for your love'”. In these expressions the first words that Pope Francis writes about holiness can resonate: “The Lord asks everything, and what he offers is the true life, the happiness for which we were created. He wants us to be saints and does not expect us to settle for a mediocre, watery, liquefied existence “,” each of us was chosen by the Lord “so that we would be holy and blameless before him for love”. What does God ask of me? What do you want from me, Lord? Where, how, do you want to meet me today?
Also at this time God has entered our dynamics, we feel him as the days go by in the simplest neighborhood initiatives and in those others that make human dignity present with all his strength. We could spend a few minutes on this day of the Feast of Antoñita to discover the signs of the presence of the Spirit that we can capture in our environment, as a religious community, or family, or neighborhood, as “human community.” “The Holy Spirit pours holiness everywhere”, “even outside the Catholic Church and in very different spheres, the Spirit raises” signs of his presence, which help the same disciples of Christ “”: let’s verify it, it will encourage our gratitude and It will also mobilize us to be a gift to others.
Antoñita left to work for God and learned to put her own sensitivity at his service. It could be the poor he met in the town, or the factory workers, or the domestic workers, or a discord that arose at home.
We appreciate the career of Antoñita and “the sanctity« of the next door », of those who live close to us and are a reflection of the presence of God”, “the parents who so lovingly raise their children in those men and women who work to bring bread home, to the sick, to the old religious sisters who continue to smile ”, to the public employees who do so much for us these days and as a gift that continues to be so due to the fact that not be discovered or applauded.
Let us ask on this day to be docile to the action of God and his light so that each one “discerns his own way and brings to light the best of himself, that which is so personal that God has put in him.”
