18/10/2008 - The Superior General thanks the community of the Generalate
The Superior General thanks the community of the Generalate
“Thank you”. This is how the Superior General of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, Mother Antonia Colombo began her “Good Night” to the community of the Generalate yesterday evening.
“When one responds with love to the task entrusted to her, to the requests of the Sisters, to the signs of the times, to the will of God, one can see that even though 18 years have passed, the lightness of a beautiful period , there is no time to look at a calendar. Following closely the “response of love” does not allow one to think of herself, but simply “to be happy to do what the Father asks of us.”
Mother continued: “There remains only ‘God’s today’ to be lived with marvel, gratitude, trust and hope.” In this way “Time is no longer that of a calendar, but of service to God. It is a time for which to give praise to God and to sing our Magnificat. What we have lived remains a sign of our history.”
With her passion for the Institute, the clarity of her style of speaking and the simplicity that characterizes her, La Madre thus presented her “thanks to each Sister.” “It is a thanks, she said, that resounds like a note that makes up part of my life, and therefore I will carry it within no matter where obedience calls me. No matter where we will find ourselves, each day we will meet in the heart of Jesus.”
During the Good Night, Mother Antonia spoke, among other things, of her “last” entrustment, i.e. the “mandate” to the seven new missionaries present in Rome: four to Africa, one to Asia two to Europe. She then reminded the community that “in a week there will be the celebration for the ninth successor of Mother Mazzarello. We are here to walk with her. In faith, we want to help one another to live this time of change in which God, in His immense richness, changes face and style, but still carries out His plan. It is an agreement in which we are ready to collaborate with Him.”
Finally, Mother Antonia addressed a wish that projects the Salesian Sisters toward a horizon without borders. The wish has the flavor of concreteness: “We are daughters of a founder who had a very strong intuition and who dared to do great things using little steps. Let us join our energies together. Let us be in the midst of young people with love. They will reveal to us their faces and together we will study in an evangelical and Salesian way what we are to do.”
La Madre reminded us of the “treasure in our hands” as Daughters of Mary Help of Christians: “education”. This “transforms the world in the competition for a shared love.”
She then addressed to each Sister what Don Bosco said to Fr. Giulio Barberis in 1875: “You will continue the work that I have begun. I sketch it out, you add the colors. Now there is the seed...make it grow!”the
There was no better way that Mother Antonia’s good night could end. Until the last moment of her service to the Institute she continued to direct attention to the face of another because she is well aware that behind the face of the other person there is always the face of Christ.
“When one responds with love to the task entrusted to her, to the requests of the Sisters, to the signs of the times, to the will of God, one can see that even though 18 years have passed, the lightness of a beautiful period , there is no time to look at a calendar. Following closely the “response of love” does not allow one to think of herself, but simply “to be happy to do what the Father asks of us.”
Mother continued: “There remains only ‘God’s today’ to be lived with marvel, gratitude, trust and hope.” In this way “Time is no longer that of a calendar, but of service to God. It is a time for which to give praise to God and to sing our Magnificat. What we have lived remains a sign of our history.”
With her passion for the Institute, the clarity of her style of speaking and the simplicity that characterizes her, La Madre thus presented her “thanks to each Sister.” “It is a thanks, she said, that resounds like a note that makes up part of my life, and therefore I will carry it within no matter where obedience calls me. No matter where we will find ourselves, each day we will meet in the heart of Jesus.”
During the Good Night, Mother Antonia spoke, among other things, of her “last” entrustment, i.e. the “mandate” to the seven new missionaries present in Rome: four to Africa, one to Asia two to Europe. She then reminded the community that “in a week there will be the celebration for the ninth successor of Mother Mazzarello. We are here to walk with her. In faith, we want to help one another to live this time of change in which God, in His immense richness, changes face and style, but still carries out His plan. It is an agreement in which we are ready to collaborate with Him.”
Finally, Mother Antonia addressed a wish that projects the Salesian Sisters toward a horizon without borders. The wish has the flavor of concreteness: “We are daughters of a founder who had a very strong intuition and who dared to do great things using little steps. Let us join our energies together. Let us be in the midst of young people with love. They will reveal to us their faces and together we will study in an evangelical and Salesian way what we are to do.”
La Madre reminded us of the “treasure in our hands” as Daughters of Mary Help of Christians: “education”. This “transforms the world in the competition for a shared love.”
She then addressed to each Sister what Don Bosco said to Fr. Giulio Barberis in 1875: “You will continue the work that I have begun. I sketch it out, you add the colors. Now there is the seed...make it grow!”the
There was no better way that Mother Antonia’s good night could end. Until the last moment of her service to the Institute she continued to direct attention to the face of another because she is well aware that behind the face of the other person there is always the face of Christ.
25/10/2008 - If it is true, as some people say, that words are the mirror the soul, yesterday evening in the Generalate of the Salesian Sisters in Rome, words were the enchantment of the soul.
25/10/2008 - Fr. Pascual Chávez Villanueva, father of the Salesian Family and Rector Major of the Salesians, greeted Mother Yvonne Reungoat by narrating his own experience in the light of the encounter between Jesus and Simon Peter.
