Le Mans, 1^st December 2020

The people that walked in the darkness

Has seen a great light,

God himself comes to save you.

Isaiah 9.1

Dear Sisters, Family and Friends,

The difficult situation that we are going through and that continues, is like a long walk in the night. We are at the mercy of a pandemic that is difficult to control, we witness uncontrollable violence, and human dignity is being violated all over the world... Today, more than ever, men and women desperately need Hope.

Christmas, an invitation to true hope...living in hope

Christmas is Good News: the distant God that men and women have been searching for since the dawn of time, the unknown God that many still wait for in the darkness, has come very close in this newborn infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. His name is Jesus:  God saves, Emmanuel:  God with us, the source of all hope.

Living in hope is different from being hopeful. Hopefulness has its limits and can disappoint.  How many disappointed hopes end up generating despair, misery, unrest, revolutions, violence and tragedies...  Events in each of our countries bear witness to this.

Living in hope remains, it is an inner strength. The hope that Christ puts in our hearts through his presence gives us the strength to overcome the worst storms. In all circumstances it allows us to remain confident in faith which is a source of comfort and joy. It establishes us in peace and serenity, sure of the Presence of God in our lives.  It blooms in the heart of our trust in Providence - God who takes care of us and who at the same time relies on us to be sowers of hope.

One day when Pope Francis was speaking of the importance of educating for Hope, recalled that living in hope allows people to create links and build bridges, in other words to move the world forward.   At the end of the first chapter of his encyclical,  Fratelli Tutti,  he writes that Hope is audacity, knowing how to look beyond personal comfort, small securities and compensations that narrow the horizon, in order to open up to great ideals that make life more beautiful and dignified.

Christmas, an invitation to open our hearts

to true love, to communion...

Through his incarnation, the Son of God tells us that salvation comes through love,  acceptance, respect for our poor humanity,  which we all share in a wide variety of ethnicities, languages, cultures... ,  but all as brothers and sisters in  humanity! Pope Francis 25 December 2018

Because of Jesus, our Universal Brother, who came among us, and for us, human beings are no longer strangers.  He came to teach us brotherly and sisterly love, love in communion. 

To enter into the mystery of communion, welcoming is very important. Without being able to welcome, our self-giving runs the danger of cluttering up the search for ourselves, of complacency... Only those who know how to welcome with simplicity can give with humility... Being able to welcome purifies our self-giving insofar as it opens our hearts to be attentive to what the other is ready to give...  Not just "What can I do for you?” but also "What would you be happy to do for me?" in the interest of valuing the other, of giving them the joy of giving pleasure, the joy of giving, the joy of loving...

There are three degrees in love: love-need, love-served, love-valued, and it is at the level of love-esteem that we find the place of communion, for esteem is both gift and welcome - I give you my trust, and I receive and welcome you as you are, not as I would like you to be...*

The passage that follows was a discovery for me, which runs counter to what we usually feel but which gives a profound meaning to a stage of our lives that can make us anxious when we think about it. Many of us are already there...

Entering into such logic of acceptance, allows us to gradually understand that even in a situation of dependency, love can be abundant: it is not only linked to offering one’s dependency (offering is also a gift) but to dependency itself, as such….. dependency, which must be viewed as part of love and not as an optional aspect. In other words, dependency should be considered as acceptance in its purest state, with whatever it implies in terms of trust and reliance on others...Let us not be afraid to accept being dependent on each other! When we are no longer able to run, when our mental condition will no longer allow us to give, our hearts will always be able to welcome.... If we live the communion, we will not be caught out by illnesses and dependency in old age, but it will be our way of loving to our last breath. *

Welcoming difference, a path of communion.

Loving difference is not spontaneous. It bothers us and it scares us. We live in our communities with people we have not chosen, who do not always see things as we do, who do not reason or function like we do, sisters with different education and formation, sisters of different generations and different nationalities.  Difference can unsettle us to the extent that it calls into question our way of seeing...

We are called to live in depth, to go beyond the stage of annoyance, prejudice, and susceptibility to go down to the level of our will, where we decide to love... Living in depth means understanding that we can only change ourselves and we must take seriously the daily call to conversion, to listen to the One who is “gentle and humble of heart”. To live in depth, means being convinced that “absolute similarity” is sterile. Exchange is creative. Otherness is fundamental to being able to live in communion. Wonder involves difference. Let us put out “into deep waters”, in order to accept each other sincerely, not simply by preparing a local dish on a birthday or including a folk dance at the offertory in our liturgy.... *

How do we look at each other? How do we regard those who come from elsewhere..., a look of esteem that invites them to really take their place, in their own way and not ours?

All this sharing puts us in touch very concretely with our theme of the year: Sisters of Providence, let us live an evangelical fraternity, a prophetic sign for our world today.

Let us contemplate the Child of Bethlehem, who is our Hope. He is the gift of the Father who reveals the dignity of each person. He was all welcome and all gift. Let us learn from him communion with the Father and with our brothers and sisters. May Christmas enable us to experience profoundly that I am precious in the eyes of God and enable us to live as sisters and brothers regardless of our origin, our culture, our language or our age.                            

May the joy and hope of Christmas

accompany us throughout this New Year.

Sister Josette

* "Experts in Communion?" Sr Marie Laetitia Yushchenko OP/ at the 2016 UISG Assembly