Dear sisters, laity, friends, family:
In these days we celebrate the coming of the Lord, that God comes and brings us his consolation. As a Church we will live the Jubilee “Pilgrims of Hope” and the Daughters of Jesus are preparing for the next General Congregation.
At Christmas we celebrate that our God becomes incarnate and enters our history as a child wrapped in swaddling clothes. To wish us a Merry Christmas is to invite us to look at the world with God’s heart. A decisive gesture of the Trinity in his Incarnation, which reveals to us his logic: from below, small and fragile, meek and humble, among the poor. Such are the things of God, they amaze and touch us. With his grace, they convert us, change our gaze, open paths of new opportunities for his children [1].
To pause before the mystery of Bethlehem in our historical context, so uncertain because of so many open wars, arouses in us perplexity and hopefully a deep attitude of silence. Silence before this God who wants to learn from us to be human and, at the same time, wants to communicate to us that we are CHILDREN OF A FATHER who loves us. Silence before a reality that hurts and overwhelms and in which we implore the Trinity to teach us to live in unity, to link us respecting the differences and, in them, to keep us united, not confronted. God becomes one of us, humble love that happens in time to heal time, to heal our wounds, our relationships and the meaning we give to our lives.
With our best wishes for Christmas, we invite you to be silent and look at this world, to feel it, to listen to its voices, to what is happening here and there. Silence will allow us to come out of ourselves and listen to others, to welcome reality, to suffer with it, to listen and to let ourselves be affected by the “let us make redemption of the human race”. Then the life that only the Prince of Peace can give will be possible.
Let us humbly approach the manger and ask the Child to bring peace to our lives, to bring reconciliation to our hearts, to encourage us to live the poverty that He lived to enrich others, to let hope be born, without which no life can have horizon and meaning. Let us ask him to incarnate for us the values that humanize and that he lived to the end.
This Christmas, as we approach the manger and contemplate the child, the Word made silence, let us prepare our hearts for the next XIX General Congregation. Let us receive the gifts that He wishes to give us, of peace, trust, hope, joy, fraternal union, of not desiring first places because He became the last and we want to be like Him!
Bethlehem shows us the simplicity of God, who does not reveal himself to the wise and learned, but to the little ones, to those whose hearts are pure and open. Like the shepherds, let us too go without delay and let us marvel at the unthinkable event of God who becomes man for our salvation. He who is the source of all good becomes poor and asks for our poor humanity as alms. Let us allow ourselves to be moved by the love of God and let us follow Jesus, who emptied himself of his glory to make us sharers in his fullness. [2]
We end with that greeting from Santa Candida:
“I wish you a very happy Easter, may the Child Jesus be born in our hearts and communicate to us his profound humility and meekness.”.
(CMF n. 200, Salamanca, December 14, 1900)
Christmas greeting from the General Government of the Daughters of Jesus
[1] Liliana Franco Echeverri, Christmas Novena. Year 2024
[2] Pope Francis. Christmas 2022
