The Salesian Sisters General Chapter is “An exceptionally important time of reflection, assessment and guidance in a common search for God’s will”. The aim: “ To study the problems relative to the various social and common cultural situations. Together they will make decisions designed to increase the vitality of the Institute, in fidelity to the spirit of its origins and to the Church at that particular moment in history”

1. some pointers for reflection on the theme ...

4. We are challenged by today’s reality. There are seeds of hope in the world. However, due to the lack of love, humanity is threatened in its very life today and in the future.

5. We are preoccupied by the violence that exists throughout the world, often affecting family and educational relationships; the gap between faith and life; widespread relativism; the idols of competition, profit and possession.

6. Like Mary, at Cana, we feel responsible for looking at the reality in which we live with the attention of the heart so as to perceive its deepest needs. “ They have no wine” becomes our prayer that rises trustingly.

7. In the ecclesial community, the echo of the appeal to love that Benedict XVI sent out to the world in his encyclical: D eus caritas est ,

8. On the broad horizon of consecrated life we feel called to manifest the wonders that the God who is Love performs in the fragile humanity of persons who follow Christ.

10. With realism we recognize that there are many forms of fragility in community relations and this is a real challenge for us. They often express themselves through difficulty in dialogue and in forgiveness, lack of affective maturity and of openness to accept those who are different.

11. They manifest themselves in individualism, in a lack of mutual accompaniment and in the weakening of apostolic ardour. Awareness of this fragility is an invitation to open ourselves to the “liberating power of God’s grace” (cf. C66).

12. He sends us, today, to young people so that they may have life in abundance. What Don Bosco tells us in his letter written from Rome in 1884, that : it is not enough to love, but it is necessary that young people feel that they are loved, has not lost its significance for today.

13. A God of great love

14. The experience of the foreseeing love of God, rooted in the Covenant, is the greatest treasure of our life. It fills us with joy and nourishes fraternal communion and missionary courage.

15. “ God is love” (Jn.4,8): this is the great truth of biblical faith. The love of God is freely given and faithful, always takes the initiative and makes all things new.

16. In Jesus, the mystery of the Father’s foreseeing love takes on a human face, reveals itself in all its fullness and culminates in the mystery of the cross and resurrection and in the effusion of the Holy Spirit.

17. In the Church, home and school of communion, through the charism of preferential love for young people, we help them to experience the personal love of God, to the point of encouraging commitment to being , in their turn, signs of love and hope in the world.

19. The exercise of the presence of God was for Don Bosco, the first step in any form of prayer and for Maria Domenica the life of prayer was remaining constantly in the presence of God.

20. This experience, shared with young people and the laity, becomes the path of holiness that characterises the spirituality of the everyday as tending continuously towards love.

21. The experience of a God of great love reawakens our passion for Christ and gives us a taste for contemplation and the courage to look at reality through the eyes of faith. It helps us to regain our fascination for religious life lived in joy and creativity through the eyes of faith.

22. Mary, a sure guide: I will give you a teacher