Letter Superior General 12 Aprile 2015

CONGREGAZIONE

SUORE DELLA PROVVIDENZA ROSMINIANE

Via Aurelia, 773

ROMA

2 Sunday of Easter and of Divine Mercy

12 April 2015

Dearest Sisters,

We were united yesterday Saturday 11 April with Pope Francis, on the momentous occasion through the official proclamation ofBull of Indiction, Misericordiae Vultus – an Extraordinary Jubilee Year for the Church, “Holy Year of Mercy”, beginning on8 December 2015, the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second Vatican Council, and concluding on 20 November 2016, the Feast of Christ the King.

Pope Francis announces that the Holy Door will open on 8 December, feast of the Immaculate Conception; “it will be on this occasion a Door of Mercy, where whoever goes through the door experiences the love of God who consoles, who pardons and who gives hope”. He explains the reason for this Extraordinary Jubilee Year: “The church, in this time of great change, is called to offer strong signs of the closeness of God”. In the homily he says it is “A Holy Year to experience strongly within ourselves the joy of having been found by Jesus, the Good Shepherd who has come in search of us because we were lost. A Jubilee to receive the warmth of his love when he bears us upon his shoulders and brings us back to the Father’s house.  A year in which to be touched by the Lord Jesus and to be transformed by his mercy, so that we may become witnesses to mercy.” 

Indeed the Jubilee will be a “time for mercy.  It is the favourable time to heal wounds, a time not to be weary of meeting all those who are waiting to see and to touch with their hands the signs of the closeness of God, a time to offer everyone” – ‘everyone’ he repeats – “the way of forgiveness and reconciliation”.