Rome (Italy). The General Mother of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, Sister Chiara Cazzuola, opens Circular No. 1043 recalling the special moment lived by the Church with the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, an unfinished process “entrusted to each one of us, so that we can carry it out in a daily journey as a true personal and community conversion.”
From the final document of the Synod, Mother takes up the theme of relationships, through which passes the proclamation of salvation, which is lived and witnessed together. “It is a reminder to us to consider how the vocation of the Daughter of Mary Help of Christians is not conceivable without communion lived in a community permeated by the family spirit, oriented to the educative mission of evangelizing lived in the style of synodality. (…) We are communities of women ‘called’ to follow Jesus, ‘sent’ for young people in the spirit of the da mihi animas cetera tolle.”
The then calls to mind the opening of the Triennial in preparation for the 150th anniversary of the first missionary departure of the FMA, a time of gratitude that brings us back to the origins, that rekindles the desire to feel in mission, and to be “life-generating communities in the heart of contemporaneity. We will be thus, if each one awakens within herself the original freshness of the vocational fecundity of the Institute. The more we are generative of life, the more the world will be full of hope and new life.”
The beauty of the sequela
Being vocational communities: is the explicit invitation of the first priority choice of General Chapter XXIV and the aspect of the identity of the FMA that the Mother chooses to deepen in this Circular. She highlights “the need to witness together to the beauty of the Salesian vocation and to live with renewed vocational impulse beginning with our lives. The Lord asks us for a renewed responsibility: to make the charism more visible and to commit ourselves to transmit it and revitalize it in fidelity in today’s context.”
She therefore poses a question: “what are the expressions today that make evident to young people our happy belonging to the Lord?”
Joy, gift and responsibility, is the most significant feature that emerges from Circular no. 960 of Mother Yvonne Reungoat (24 April 2016), which Mother Chiara proposes as a reflection of great actuality: “vocational communities are not, first of all, places where vocational animation activities are organized, which are also necessary, but spaces in which one lives and witnesses one’s vocation and expresses it with joyful fidelity in the fabric of daily relationships and mission.”
A joy that that draws from the source of God’s love, manifested in Jesus Christ. Therefore, Mother emphasizes, “Every community, in order to be vocational, can and must be a true ‘schola amoris’ and visibly express fraternity.” And she continues, “Our communities have prophetic value if they are joyful witness of the gratuitousness of God’s love.”
Even in the temptations of the present life, from which one is not exempt, the specific mission of consecrated life in the Church and in the world is “to bear witness to the Lord Jesus with life, works, and words.” Mother Chiara recalls that “the passionate love for Jesus Christ is a powerful attraction for young people whom He, in His goodness, calls to follow Him closely and forever” and that, “Our contemporaries want to ‘see’ in consecrated persons the joy that comes from belonging to the Lord.”
Mother adds, “In this sense it is an important witness of communities centered on Jesus and prayer” in which we learn to love with the gratuitousness of Jesus and are enriched in serene and fraternal relationships lived in the evangelical sense at the school of Mary, Teacher of prayer and communion who, as the first one evangelized, “nourishes in us a strong missionary impulse.”
“You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you”
It is the quotation that opens and illuminates the section of the Constitutions concerning the identity of the FMA Institute (art. 1-7) which makes evident the vocation as a gift and gratuitous call, a grace in which the initiative is God’s. A vocation born, as Don Bosco said, by attraction and contagion. For this reason, Mother recalls, “If our life testifies and makes the charism fascinating, we set the conditions so that young people will question themselves in depth.”
If the witness “of those who live their vocation with awareness, responsibility, authenticity, and joy” can help young people in the difficult task of discerning the path to follow in their lives, it is also necessary to guide their journey by offering an environment rich in models and values in which they can “find answers to their thirst for God” and “a systematic, patient, and discreet accompaniment so that they may gradually discover the Father’s design for them.”
In this regard, Mother recalls the responsibility of each community that “in the context in which it lives and works, has the task of prolonging the Salesian charism over time, so that it continues to be fruitful in the good for many young people” and invites us to read again Article 73 of the Constitutions.
The educative motherhood of Mary Domenica Mazzarello
Mother Chiara draws on the charismatic heritage, highlighting the great “ability to accompany and guide young women and Sisters” of Mary Domenica Mazzarello, who humbly assumes the mission of “Mother”, uniting to her gifts in the direction of souls confidence in Mary, Mother and Teacher, from whom she learns the art of taking care of each one, and in the Lord, in the certainty that “without Him, we can do only evil” (L 66.2).
Mother concludes, “It is a clear and maternal invitation to ‘assiduous and concordant,’ prayer so that the Lord may make our communities fruitful, according to His will. Thus, they will be authentic vocational communities.”
The Circular ends with a gaze at the Advent journey, now at the door. “May Mary, Immaculate and Mother, who knows how to help us, guide our steps towards Bethlehem together with all the children, young people, educating communities, and those who share with us the Salesian charism.”
And with the wish, also on behalf of the General Council, for a holy Christmas of peace and hope to all the FMA and their families, to the educating communities, to the families, to the children and young people who come to our houses, especially those in most difficulty.
Mother also wishes to “live together Jubilee 2025, which is about to begin, as Pilgrims of hope” and addresses a special wish to the Vicar of the Rector Major Fr. Stefano Martoglio, to the Salesian Confreres, and members of the Salesian family.
She expresses her special closeness “to the Sisters and communities who live in difficult situations due to wars, violence, natural disasters, poverty, and on all humanity, we invoke with faith the gift of a true and lasting peace.”
