At 11:30am this morning, in the Consistory Hall at the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in audience those who are participating in the XI General Chapter of the Little Sisters of Jesus.
Dear sisters,
I am happy to welcome you on the occasion of your General Chapter. I greet your Director General and through you, I also greet all the Little Sisters of Jesus.
The celebration of a General Chapter is a moment of grace for every Institute of Consecrated Life. In a climate of prayer and of fraternal affection, Religious gather together to listen to the Holy Spirit, in order to face together the many questions and challenges that the Institute is facing in a particular moment in history. However, before being a moment of reflection on practical questions, a Chapter is a common spiritual experience of a return to the source of a call, personal and communal.
At the source of your Institute is the overwhelming experience of God's tenderness discovered by your Foundress, Little Sister Maddelena of Jesus. In the footsteps of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, she perceived that Almighty God, Creator and Lord of the universe, was not afraid to make himself a small child, to entrust himself into the arms of Mary, out of love for us, and he still wants to give himself for each one of us, ultimately out of pure love. Today, after almost eighty years of the existence of your Institute, more than one thousand Little Sisters are spread throughout the world. They are found in humanly difficult situations, with the smallest and poorest people. I am not only concerned with caring for, educating and catechizing - even if these things are all good - but with love, being with the little ones, like Jesus did, to proclaim the gospel with simple lives of work, presence, friendship and unconditional welcome. It is important, of vital importance for you to return continually to this original experience of closeness to God, who gives himself simply and humbly to us in order to save us and to fill us with his love. And this love of God should express itself more in the evangelization of gestures than through words: smiles, silence, adoration, patience. I have in my mind, the dialogue between the oak tree and the almond tree. The oak tree says to the almond tree: Speak to me about God, and the almond flowers bloomed. This is what the Church asks of you: flower, flower in gestures of your love of God.
Above all, dear sisters, be sure to keep your spiritual life fervent, for it is through this love, received from God in an insistent and ever-new way, overflowing your love for your brothers and sisters. From this spiritual life for which young people are thirsting, you help them to respond in their turn to the invitation of the Lord. It is from this spiritual life that the evangelical witness which the poor seek springs. The recipes are good, but afterward; if they do not exist, they can have no effect.
Do not be afraid to go forward, to carry within your hearts the little Child Jesus, to every place where the poor of our world are found. Remain free from ties to tasks and to things, free to love those you meet, where-ever the Spirit should lead you. Free to fly, free to dream. The difficulties of the present time allow you to share the sufferings of many of your brothers (and sisters): you too, together with them, find yourselves forced to close or abandon your houses to flee elsewhere; you also know the evidence of age, of solitude and of suffering; you also have experienced the difficulty of the journey when it comes to remaining faithful through deserts. But in all this, the love you carry in your hearts makes you women of essentials.
Keep in your hearts the quality of fraternal life in your community. Despite the trials, Little Sister Maddelena, following Jesus, poor among the poor, found true joy, a joy that she shared with everyone, beginning with her sisters. Simplicity and joy are part of consecrated life, and in a particular way these are your characteristics. The Child Jesus of Nazareth was joyous, He surely played and smiled with Mary and Joseph, with other children his age and with neighbours. In order to re-discover the taste for community life, we must always seek simplicity, affection, little acts of attention, service and wonder.
From this fraternity among you, service of authority is born. The exercise of responsibility in the Church is rooted in a common and fraternal will to listen to the Lord, to place ourselves in the school and the life of his Spirit, so that his kingdom may extend to all our hearts. In this context of common and fraternal listening, we find space for dialogue and for obedience, and in such obedience, like the Child Jesus, all the Little Sisters will grow in wisdom, age and grace in the eyes of God and in the eyes of others (Lk 2:52).
Fraternity lived among you, opens your hearts to fraternity among others. Your Foundress invited you to make yourselves arabs among arabs, nomads among nomads, workers among workers and, above all else, humans among other human beings (Annie of Jesus, The Little Sister Maddalena of Jesus. The experience of Bethlehem to the end of the world, Cerf, 2008, p. 184). Lunaparkisti with lunaparkisti, as it is here in Rome. And so your Institute has spread to many countries and you have encountered many of these little ones, from all races, languages, religions. Your hearts know no barriers. Naturally, you cannot change the world alone, but you can illuminate it, carrying the joy of the gospel to those neighbourhoods, to those streets, to those streets, mixing into the crowds, always staying close to the most fragile people.
Since you are among the little ones who the Blessed Virgin presents to her Son Jesus, our Lord, you can count on her maternal intercession, as well as the prayer of the Church for your Institute, above all on the occasion of this General Chapter.
I truly thank you, I thank you for your visit, and I ask you please to pray for me.
Thank you.
Speech of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
addressed to the Little Sisters of Jesus
Dear sisters,
I am happy to welcome you on the occasion of your General Chapter. I greet your Director General and through you, I also greet all the Little Sisters of Jesus.
The celebration of a General Chapter is a moment of grace for every Institute of Consecrated Life. In a climate of prayer and of fraternal affection, Religious gather together to listen to the Holy Spirit, in order to face together the many questions and challenges that the Institute is facing in a particular moment in history. However, before being a moment of reflection on practical questions, a Chapter is a common spiritual experience of a return to the source of a call, personal and communal.
At the source of your Institute is the overwhelming experience of God's tenderness discovered by your Foundress, Little Sister Maddelena of Jesus. In the footsteps of Blessed Charles de Foucauld, she perceived that Almighty God, Creator and Lord of the universe, was not afraid to make himself a small child, to entrust himself into the arms of Mary, out of love for us, and he still wants to give himself for each one of us, ultimately out of pure love. Today, after almost eighty years of the existence of your Institute, more than one thousand Little Sisters are spread throughout the world. They are found in humanly difficult situations, with the smallest and poorest people. I am not only concerned with caring for, educating and catechizing - even if these things are all good - but with love, being with the little ones, like Jesus did, to proclaim the gospel with simple lives of work, presence, friendship and unconditional welcome. It is important, of vital importance for you to return continually to this original experience of closeness to God, who gives himself simply and humbly to us in order to save us and to fill us with his love. And this love of God should express itself more in the evangelization of gestures than through words: smiles, silence, adoration, patience. I have in my mind, the dialogue between the oak tree and the almond tree. The oak tree says to the almond tree: Speak to me about God, and the almond flowers bloomed. This is what the Church asks of you: flower, flower in gestures of your love of God.
Above all, dear sisters, be sure to keep your spiritual life fervent, for it is through this love, received from God in an insistent and ever-new way, overflowing your love for your brothers and sisters. From this spiritual life for which young people are thirsting, you help them to respond in their turn to the invitation of the Lord. It is from this spiritual life that the evangelical witness which the poor seek springs. The recipes are good, but afterward; if they do not exist, they can have no effect.
Do not be afraid to go forward, to carry within your hearts the little Child Jesus, to every place where the poor of our world are found. Remain free from ties to tasks and to things, free to love those you meet, where-ever the Spirit should lead you. Free to fly, free to dream. The difficulties of the present time allow you to share the sufferings of many of your brothers (and sisters): you too, together with them, find yourselves forced to close or abandon your houses to flee elsewhere; you also know the evidence of age, of solitude and of suffering; you also have experienced the difficulty of the journey when it comes to remaining faithful through deserts. But in all this, the love you carry in your hearts makes you women of essentials.
Keep in your hearts the quality of fraternal life in your community. Despite the trials, Little Sister Maddelena, following Jesus, poor among the poor, found true joy, a joy that she shared with everyone, beginning with her sisters. Simplicity and joy are part of consecrated life, and in a particular way these are your characteristics. The Child Jesus of Nazareth was joyous, He surely played and smiled with Mary and Joseph, with other children his age and with neighbours. In order to re-discover the taste for community life, we must always seek simplicity, affection, little acts of attention, service and wonder.
From this fraternity among you, service of authority is born. The exercise of responsibility in the Church is rooted in a common and fraternal will to listen to the Lord, to place ourselves in the school and the life of his Spirit, so that his kingdom may extend to all our hearts. In this context of common and fraternal listening, we find space for dialogue and for obedience, and in such obedience, like the Child Jesus, all the Little Sisters will grow in wisdom, age and grace in the eyes of God and in the eyes of others (Lk 2:52).
Fraternity lived among you, opens your hearts to fraternity among others. Your Foundress invited you to make yourselves arabs among arabs, nomads among nomads, workers among workers and, above all else, humans among other human beings (Annie of Jesus, The Little Sister Maddalena of Jesus. The experience of Bethlehem to the end of the world, Cerf, 2008, p. 184). Lunaparkisti with lunaparkisti, as it is here in Rome. And so your Institute has spread to many countries and you have encountered many of these little ones, from all races, languages, religions. Your hearts know no barriers. Naturally, you cannot change the world alone, but you can illuminate it, carrying the joy of the gospel to those neighbourhoods, to those streets, to those streets, mixing into the crowds, always staying close to the most fragile people.
Since you are among the little ones who the Blessed Virgin presents to her Son Jesus, our Lord, you can count on her maternal intercession, as well as the prayer of the Church for your Institute, above all on the occasion of this General Chapter.
I truly thank you, I thank you for your visit, and I ask you please to pray for me.
Thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment