Dearest Sisters,
Easter is an event of overwhelming power. It is a proclamation of beauty, the forecast of a luminous life that irradiates grace: Jesus is risen–he is alive!–and we can meet the Living One as he was met by the women who came to his tomb at dawn on the third day.
Let us allow ourselves to be pervaded by the spell of the resurrection, by the allure of the risen Christ, and let us exclaim with the Apostle Thomas, who touched his pierced side: “My Lord and my God!” (Jn. 20:28)
In the light of Easter, “every new tragedy that occurs in the world’s history can also become a setting for good news, inasmuch as love can find a way to draw near and to raise up sympathetic hearts, resolute faces and hands ready to build anew” (Pope Francis, Message for World Communications Day 2017). Let us become proclaimers of good news so as to “shine like beacons in the darkness of this world, shedding light along the way and opening ever-new paths of confidence and hope” (ivi.).
Let us irradiate good news first of all in our communities, urging one another to see the positive sides of different situations and to believe that every event, even the most insignificant, is part of salvation history.
Let us irradiate good news through the social media we normally use by spreading words of peace, reconciliation, new life….
The spectacles of the Good News that we receive at Easter give us a gaze of faith that allows us to see beyond, because the resurrection of the Lord has already penetrated the fabric of history (cf. EG 278).
To see beyond…
– so as to welcome the mysterious fertility that springs from “renouncing the attempt to plan and control everything, and instead letting the Spirit enlighten, guide and direct us, leading us wherever he wills…” (EG 280);
– so as to perceive, even in the spiritual deserts of today, “a branch of the almond tree” (Jr. 1:11), the forerunner of spring, announcing the beautiful season [to come];
– so as to “discover the thread of God’s love running through the whole of our life” (Pope Francis, Message for XXXII World Youth Day).
In this time, let us pray in a very special way for our sisters the Pious Disciples who, on 30 April, in the joy of Easter and the consoling expectation of the Spirit, will begin their 9th General Chapter on the theme: New wine in new wineskins. May new wine flow abundantly over their assembly for the good of the whole Pauline Family.
Together with the sisters of the General Government, I want to offer you all our very affectionate best wishes for an Easter of hope. We want to remember in a special way our younger sisters: may they find in our communities an environment that allows them to “explode with life” and “light a fire in the heart of the world” (EG 271).
Sr. Anna Maria Parenzan
Superior General
