Items filtered by date: Saturday, 27 March 2021

Come Closer

(3^rd Sunday of Easter: Acts 3:13-19; 1 John 2:1-5; Luke 24:35-48)

Today’s title quotes Mary’s first words to the children at La Salette. She adds, “Don’t be afraid.” We recognize the pattern, in reverse, from the Scriptures.

In last Sunday’s Gospel, Thomas was invited to come so close as to touch Jesus’ wounds. Today, Luke tells a similar story. While two disciples were telling how they had met Jesus on the road to Emmaus, suddenly, there he was!

He reassured them, “Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.”

In both accounts, Jesus’ first words are, “Peace be with you.” Of course, this might simply have been the normal greeting, “Shalom,” but the context gives it a richer meaning. The invitation to touch is viewed as a way of restoring inner peace.

It is almost as if the Church this week is giving us a second chance, a second invitation to recognize Christ crucified, Christ risen, and to desire ever more zealously to be his faithful disciples.

Peter’s speech in today’s first reading acknowledges that his audience missed their chance to accept Jesus as the Redeemer and, instead, put him to death. But all is not lost. If we read between the lines, Peter is saying, “Even you can be saved.” By telling the people to repent and be converted, he is inviting them to draw closer to the one who can give them true peace.

Is that not what Our Lady tells us? Even we can be saved. She reminds us in her own way of what we hear today in the second reading: “Jesus is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world.”

After calming his disciples’ fears, Jesus said, “It is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” All are called to come closer.

Maximin said that, when he and Mélanie ran down to the Beautiful Lady, “No one could have passed between her and us.” She came to bring her people closer to her Son, to restore us to peace with him. We are called to make that message known.

Wayne Vanasse, and Fr. René Butler, M.S.

Holy Easter 2021

“Christ died for our sins, he was buried and he was raised on the accordance with the scriptures” (1Cor 15,3-4)

“If they are converted....” (Our Lady of La Salette)

Dear brothers,

like last year, this year again Easter greetings from the General Council and from myself reach you in your communities and in your places of pastoral work, as the coronavirus pandemic shows no signs of calming down. On the contrary, it continues to rage with varying degrees of intensity all over the world, sowing fear and uncertainty about the future, and putting a strain on the health, social and economic systems of our various countries.

In different ways, we all feel involved in this phenomenon which is changing our way of conceiving and seeing the world, society, interpersonal relationships and our own life. We are in fact experiencing a true “Copernican” revolutionregarding the values around which we are called to build the near future, ours and that of the world, in the hope that it will be better than the present one. From the centrality of doing and efficiency, we are rightly passing to the centrality of the person with his or her rights to be respected and the duties to be implemented.

Consequently, even religious life is not entirely exempt from this ongoing great change. Far from the frenetic pace of life that characterized our condition as religious and priests, suddenly limited in our movements and our ministries, we discovered, throughout this year, the importance of interpersonal relationships, made above all of small gestures of welcome and listening to others, of attention and mutual services, of generous gratuity and shared time. We have also experienced, together with the challenge of living the faith in community..., the beauty of the rediscovered taste for personal and community prayer life, accompanied by the effort to "keep up to date" the way of being present to the people of God entrusted to our pastoral care.

I hope that this experience, unwanted but imposed by force and without warning by the adverse circumstances that we know, will be transformed into a "Kairós", in a favorable time of grace for all of us and will help us to pick ourselves up and get back on track with responsibility, determination, enthusiasm and without fear by profoundly renewing our way of living our fidelity to follow the Lord in the light of the message of the weeping Mother of La Salette.

It will be a missed opportunity if, once this "pandemic storm" has passed, things go back to the way they were before in our personal and community religious life and even in our pastoral ministry without leaving any trace of its passage and the stimuli that it fostered. Pope Francis has stated that from this pandemic, one either comes out better or comes out worse..., and in any case never the same as before. There is no other way. If this is true for everyone, much more it must be true for us, missionaries of La Salette.

Together with the whole Church, we too will be called to renew our "religious" language, which often appears worn out and obsolete, made up of abstract and empty words and therefore unable of communicating with freshness and incisiveness the richness of the Gospel and the joyful witness of our religious life to today's world. It is a challenge that confronts us all personally and from which none of us can easily escape.

We should come out of this unusual and in many ways painful experience renewed and heartened at all levels. This is my wish for each and every one of us.

There is no Easter of Resurrection without the narrow passage of suffering, the cry of abandonment and death experienced on Good Friday. Only in this way does Easter become the celebration par excellence of hope that does not deceive and of the explosion of new life offered to all and inaugurated by the risen Christ.

We all know that the message of La Salette is essentially an Easter message made up of strong calls to conversion, to personal commitment, to review and renew one's relationship with God and with the Church, but also of promises of a fullness of life enlightened and purified by that dazzling light which emanates from Christ, crucified and glorious at the same time, hanging on the chest of the Beautiful Lady. For this reason, together with St. Paul, we too can strongly and loudly affirm: "The risen Christ is our hope" (1 Cor 15).

The Paschal Mystery, of death and resurrection, of suffering and rebirth, also accompanies this year the two La Salette missions in Africa and the Region of Myanmar.

In Mozambique the situation does not seem to have improved from what was reported in the Christmas letter. In fact, it continues to be critical and seems to have gotten out of control of local and national police forces. Recently some news agencies have reported horrific crimes against children in the Cabo Delgado region, which is in the hands of unscrupulous jihadist groups. At the moment, Father Edegard is working in the city of Pemba assisting and as companion to the many refugees who are from the parish of Nangololo and other regions. In close collaboration with the Provinces of Brazil and Angola, the GC plans to restructure the community as soon as possible and to reorganize its pastoral presence in the diocese. The diocese, after the recent transfer of Bishop Luiz to another charge (in Brazil), is headed by an apostolic administrator in the person of Bishop Juliasse, auxiliary bishop of Maputo. While waiting for the new bishop, with whom we will discuss the future of the La Salette presence in the region, we keep this community and its future development, as well as the persecuted people it serves, constantly in our prayers.

In Tanzania, we are in the process of purchasing a house and an adjacent piece of land in view of the opening of a first vocation promotion program and a formation house for young people who wish to become part of our religious family. The plan of the GC, supported by the community of Rutete, is to begin the formation program in the current Marian Year or at the latest at the beginning of 2022. I place this project with great confidence under the protection of the Beautiful Lady of La Salette, our Mother and Patroness. At the same time I entrust it to the attention and prayers of the entire Congregation. 

On behalf of the Congregation, I would like to express our spiritual closeness and solidarity with our confreres in the young Region of Myanmar who are experiencing a moment of great bewilderment and concern for the fate of the democratic process in the country, abruptly interrupted by the recent military coup (February 1). We hope that the state of war established by the military, which caused the understandable popular uprising and unfortunately the death of so many innocent people, will end soon and that justice and respect for democratic rules properly restored will prevail over the hatred and divisions now present in the country. In this context of uncertainty and fear for the near future, the four new priestly ordinations that took place on March 19, feast of St. Joseph, are a great sign of hope for the country, the Region and the Congregation. We thank the Lord for the gift of their vocation. Enlightened and guided by our charism, they will certainly work to foster paths of reconciliation in the country, which is thirsting for peace and justice, with their words and above all with the witness of their lives.

May this Holy Easter, with its overwhelming load of light and new life, lead us ever more to integrate our existence as human being and as religious into that of the Risen Christ and to allow us to communicate life in fullness through his Spirit!

May the Resurrection of Christ encourage us to give reason always and without fear to this faith and this hope which must animate our life as Christians and religious everywhere and in every situation!

To our elderly or suffering brothers, to those who are immersed in pastoral work, to the young religious, to the novices and to those who are in formation, as well as to the sisters of La Salette and to the many La Salette Laity who, animated by the charism of reconciliation, work with us in the field of evangelization and charity, I address also in the name of the General Council, my best and most Christian wishes for a         

Happy and Holy Easter of Resurrection!

Fraternally yours,

Fr. Silvano Marisa MS

Superior General

March 2021

Letting oneself be guided by God

Conversion does not necessarily mean just turning away from evil and toward good. This can be called a conversion that saves eternal life.

There can also be another conversion, consisting in renouncing the good that depends on our will, which in its own way discovers a beautiful and good vocation in life, and follows the vocational path indicated by God’s decision.

As religious we should be aware of our natural vocation to family life, to marriage and to paternity, but we have chosen to live the religious vows, inspired by the Message of the Beautiful Lady or by the example of life of the members of La Salette. In this way, we have interpreted God’s will for each of us; that is, we have converted to another vocation, more demanding than the natural one. And Mary, did she also experience a conversion?

In the first sense - never, because she is an immaculate person.

In the second sense - yes, and many times.

She already had her plans for a virginal life in her marriage to Joseph. She was to become a wife and housewife in the house of Nazareth. This is how she had interpreted her vocation in life. At the Annunciation of the Angel, God changed this plan and Mary immediately “converted” her will, making her obedient to the will of God. Asking the Archangel Gabriel, the question: “How is this possible? I do not know any man”, she practically wants to know who should participate in the conception, since with Joseph she had already established the pact not to be joined carnally. The Virgin Mary immediately points to the concrete. As we know, Gabriel explains to her the role of the Holy Spirit in this act. Her famous fiat voluntas tua is a decision to abandon her own (very noble) plans and to involve herself fully in God’s unexpected plan.

Similarly in Jerusalem, having found Jesus after three days, she does not understand Jesus’ explanations, but she keeps all these things in his heart. She does not allow herself to be tormented by thoughts about not paying attention to Jesus, but she imprints this fact in her memory: she converts (turns) her thoughts to God and expects explanations from Him. She recognizes that she will receive explanations at the right time, when God wills it. Perhaps that experience of the three days of separation helped her to sustain the three days of waiting for the resurrection of her crucified Son. There is yet another trait of conversion in Mary’s life.

When people began to judge Jesus, believing him to be insane, the family wanted to defend his reputation and sent for the Mother. When Jesus learns that His Mother and brothers are waiting for Him, He replies, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?” And turning to those sitting around him, he says, “Here are my mother and my brothers.” (cf. Mk 3:20-21.30-35).

In this event, Jesus did not fail to mention doing the will of God. Why is this an occasion of conversion for Mary? She understood at that moment that her role as Mother, Educator and Friend of Jesus had ended. From then on, she became the disciple of her Son in doing the will of God. Maintaining the authority of the Mother of the Savior, she follows the example of humiliation and obedience to her Heavenly Father, following the model of Jesus, in her journey of faith.

Karol Porczak MS