Rome (Italy). January 14, 2018. Happy Birthday Mother! Together we celebrate the feast of your life, with the joy and awe of those who see the days and years woven with gestures of Love. Magnificat!
We bring the thank you message which Mother wrote in response to the Birthday greetings she received.
Dearest Sisters,
I desire to thank you for the many greetings that came to me for my birthday. With you, I thank all the people who gave me the gift of prayer. I would like to respond to you one by one, but it is impossible. I do it with this brief message with the wish that it enter into every heart and make you feel all my gratitude for the numerous expressions of affection. You have moved me deeply.
I feel enveloped by your prayer that encourages me to proceed on the journey, not alone, but together. It is the most beautiful and concrete gift that I receive from all of you. Your words of greeting that come from good hearts with a deep sense of belonging, are small and precious lights that direct my steps every day. These lights revive in my heart the joy to be able to proclaim the beauty of the Gospel to the many young people I meet, especially those who have greater need of loving gestures, of tenderness, of understanding: the poorest and most forgotten, those whom Jesus and also our Founders, favored.
Today is a family celebration and thus I ask you to unite with me in thanking the Lord for having called me to be a Daughter of Mary Help of Christians, missionary of His love in the Church and in our great and beautiful religious Family.
May the power of the Holy Spirit increase the strength of and make contagious communion among us, that it may be a credible witness and arouse in many young people the desire for a serious search for the joy of meeting Christ, and of accepting His call to follow in the style of Salesian spirituality.
Through the intercession of Mary Help of Christians, I have asked the Lord to pour out on all of you, on your communities, on your families, on the young and on the laity who share the mission, the abundant prayers that were given to me. It is an exchange of gifts that brings me much happiness and makes me look to the future and challenging horizons with the eyes of hope.
Continue to accompany me and the Sisters of the Council with your prayer in this time of the Triennial Evaluations so that, through an itinerary of discernment, we may be able to understand what the Holy Spirit wishes of us today and to be ever more courageous missionaries of joy and hope with the young.
I close, wishing you to live this month so rich in holiness in communion with the Salesian Family: Blessed Luigi Variara, Blessed Laura Vicuña, St. Francis di Sales and St. John Bosco.
May God bless you and Mary be beside you with the tenderness of her motherly love.
Rome, 14 January 2018 Sr. Yvonne Reungoat, FMA
