Message to the whole HOSPITALLER COMMUNITY
Christmas 2020
Christmas!… Hospitality! “God-with-us”!
Once again, Christmas is upon us! With the sisters of the General Government, I am writing to all of you who make up Hospitaller Community – our sick guests and our co-workers and their loved ones, volunteers, benefactors, friends and sisters, with my greetings and my heartfelt best wishes:
¡FELICES FIESTAS DE NAVIDAD! MERRY CHRISTMAS, JOYEUX NOËL, BUON NATALE, FELIZ NATAL!
We are living through a year that has been mainly marked by worldwide suffering because of the Covid19 virus pandemic, and its consequences. A year that has awoken a particularly intense “awareness of being a world community that sails in the same boat, […] where no one is saved alone […], with the blessed awareness that we are part of one another, that we are brothers and sisters of one another”. [1]
And even now, our celebration of Christmas which, regardless of different beliefs, always calls to mind meeting others, friendship, sharing, light, gifts and solidarity, will take place in many different ways, while being tightly constrained by restrictions laid down by governments in many countries, to protect us and to prevent fresh outbreaks of contagion.
Overshadowed by such a bleak prospect, we may rightly wonder whether there will be a Christmas at all this year? What is the point of celebrating Christmas? With so many people unable to be with us, what does it mean to celebrate “the Presence”? Is God really with us?
The answer to these questions is the celebration of Christmas itself, for in the “Babe of Bethlehem” we find God who has pitched his tent “among us” (cf. Jn 1:14), who has taken on our history, who is sharing our journey, who is freeing us from darkness and has come to bring us light: ” In him was revealed the grace, the mercy, and the tender love of the Father: Jesus is Love incarnate.”[2]
The central message of Christmas is that GOD is a present God, HE IS A GOD-WITH-US.
Christmas is a gift… of Jesus to humanity; a gift of so many men and women of goodwill who make themselves a gift for others.
Every day, we witness this gift in the pathways taken by all the members of the hospitaller community: pathways of encounter, service, dedication, creativity, humanity… pathways full of deeds and words that give life to others.
We have seen it very tangibly in all those of you who have given yourselves to others in the pandemic that is assaulting us. The gift of caring for fragile lives, the gift of enthusiasm that dignifies, the gift of the embrace that soothes pain, the gift of prayer for uniting and consoling others, the gift of reaching out to meet others, and the gift of sharing. The images accompanying my message are intended to gather together everything we have received and all we have offered as a gift… more or less consciously, forming part of the dynamic of the gift which induces us to be instruments of love for others.
May Jesus, the gift of God, God-with-us, “through our frail hands clothe those who have nothing to wear, give bread to the hungry and heal the sick. Through our friendship, such as it is, may he draw close to the elderly and the lonely, to migrants and the marginalised […]. May He bring his tenderness to all and brighten the darkness of this world.” [3]
In conclusion, I wish us all a very happy Christmas, trusting that the New Year 2021 will bring us joy, peace and hope, always driven by the gift of “practising Hospitality”.
Anabela Carneiro, Superior General
Rome, 23 December, 2020
[1] POPE FRANCIS, Encyclical Fratelli Tutti, Rome 03/10/2020, 32.
[2] POPE FRANCIS, Christmas Homily, Rome 24/12/2013.
[3] POPE FRANCIS, Message Urbi et orbi, Rome 25/12/2019.
