Rome (Italy). The Superior General of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, Mother Chiara Cazzuola, in Circular no.1055 presents to the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians the 2026 Strenna of the Rector Major, Fr. Fabio Attard:
«Do whatever he tells you – Believers, free to serve»
After the Jubilee Year – through an evangelical reference “very dear and familiar to us: Do whatever he tells you (Jn 2:5)”, as he accompanied GC XXIV of the FMA Institute – the Rector Major orients himself in the transition from being “Anchored in hope, pilgrims with young people” (Strenna 2025) to welcoming the theme of faith on which our hope is based.”
The Strenna calls for listening, and Mary’s thoughtful request to the servants is “an invitation to trust in the person of Jesus, which becomes a gesture of responsibility generating communion with Him, and authentic freedom.”
The subtitle – Believers, free to serve – gives a further orientation to the Gift, that of service, “from faith true freedom is born and from freedom comes service, which makes us open and available to others.”
Mother Chiara continues by offering some charismatic reflections and thus leaving each FMA and the Educating Communities “the joy of deepening the richness of the 2026 Strenna, trying to grasp its relevance and fruitfulness, at the beginning of this new year.”
It first recalls Don Bosco and Mother Mazzarello’s approach to reality, which consisted in adapting to the times” not as a passive alignment, but in an appropriate intervention, in “an active and finalized process, which requires discernment.
Adapting the charism does not mean losing its depth through an easy compromise, but rather discovering its potential to respond to the challenges that arise, without running the risk of a purely horizontal approach that could obscure the dimension of grace.”
From the perspective of discernment, the Strenna is proposed by the Rector Major “as a spiritual itinerary, which offers orientation and guidance in the growth of faith and pastoral experience, both personally and communally.”
This implies, as the Salesian Family, a commitment to consolidate faith in Jesus, “to live with authentic freedom and be able to serve, unconditionally and selflessly, the reality we inhabit.”
While specifically the commitment of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, on the basis of the capitular requests, “is to continue to respond to the call to be a presence that generates life. A presence that accompanies, with love and patience, the growth and maturation especially of young people, restoring to them the ‘wine’ of hope and trust.”
Speaking of young people, Mother emphasizes the importance of “feeling a living part of the Church and society, available to step outside the narrow horizons of one’s daily life with an eye towards a better future, more worthy of the human person.” And it captures Pope Leo XIV’s recent video link with young Americans gathered in Indianapolis to attend the National Catholic Youth Conference, where he urged them “to dream big and be open to what God can do through their lives.”
Moving towards the conclusion, he recalls that in 2026 the Institute enters the second year in preparation for the 150th of the First Missionary Departure of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians for Uruguay and invites us to trust Mary, “so that she can help us to be women who know how to bring, with courage, the ‘new wine’ of hope and faith in a time like ours, struck by wars, suffering, violence, but open to allowing oneself to be filled with the ‘amphorae’ of hope, justice, universal brotherhood, peace between Peoples and Nations.”
Thanking the Rector Major on behalf of all for the opportunity of the Strenna, she expresses her wishes “to the Salesian Confreres, to the various groups of the Salesian Family, to the educating communities, especially to the Salesian Cooperators, who will celebrate 150 years since their birth, a peaceful and holy year 2026.”
