01/01/2025
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
We are about to start another year, but it will not be just any year. The Holy Father has already inaugurated the Jubilee Year of Hope, a hope that does not disappoint. What a beautiful opportunity to experience a strengthening of this virtue in our souls! Pope Francis says: "Storms can never prevail, because we are anchored in the hope of grace, which makes us capable of living in Christ overcoming sin, fear and death..., it transports us beyond trials and exhorts us to walk without losing sight of the greatness of the goal to which we have been called, Heaven."
We don't know what next year will bring. Perhaps we are reaching the end of this 2024 in the midst of suffering and trials that we would not have wished for, and we have no apparent reason to celebrate the new year. But here God invites us to raise our gaze and to remember that we are his children, that there is nothing and no one that can separate us from his Love, and that the hope to which we have been called is still intact, it is still valid. There is no reason to lose joy, peace, enthusiasm... everything here below will pass away: "I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth... And I saw the Holy City coming down out of Heaven from God, and I heard a loud voice saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God among men... He will wipe away every tear from your eyes, and death will be no more; there will be no more lamentation, no more pain because the first things have passed away... behold, God makes all things new." (Rev 21:1-5).
No suffering is eternal... if we knew its value in the eyes of God when we offer all our sufferings OUT OF LOVE to Him and crucify ourselves together with Him, they become sweet and surrendered sufferings... We would really thank Him for each of them. Let us rest, therefore, in the certainty that everything that may happen to us in 2025 will be for the purification and good of our souls; that our Guardian neither sleeps nor rests, that He will preserve us from all evil and keep at our right hand . And let us ask Him for the grace to be faithful to Him, not to waste the extraordinary grace of the Plenary Indulgence that this Jubilee brings us, and to cling more firmly to Christ, believing in his Word and nourishing ourselves with his Eucharistic Presence, a sure pledge of eternal salvation.
Happy New Year and God bless you!
Mission For the Love of God Worldwide