Saluto di Sr. Alaide Deretti (English)

1. Fatima, 4 March 2018.
Dearest Brothers and Sisters,
Welcome to this Seminar of Missionary Animation and Formation:
The Initial Proclamation and Salesian Mission.
Certainly, you have with you many questions about these days. Perhaps you are asking yourselves:
What is the purpose of a Seminar on the Initial Proclamation? How can we make it concrete in our
province realities?
I hope that these days will be for everyone the rediscovery of the Initial Proclamation… But… let
us try to ask ourselves: ‘Where do we begin?’
Precisely within our great Salesian Family we find women and men who have proclaimed Jesus
more with the pedagogy of gestures than with words. Thinking of the reality of Europe and the
Middle East, I propose as a model of the Initial Proclamation Blessed Sr. Laura Meozzi, FMA,
contemplative at the service of the little ones and the least ones.
Laura was born at Florence into a noble and well-off family that soon moved to Rome where she
studied with the Sisters of St. Dorothy. She then frequented the University and, still at Rome,
became a Doctor. After a journey of discernment, she entered the FMA Institute and made her First
Profession in 1898. Then what did Sr. Laura do? Where did she begin?
She was a great missionary ad gentes, a missionary in Poland. She was a prophetic, resilient
woman, able to involve everyone and restore hope to the least ones so that they would have life.
As an FMA, she first worked in Sicily and in 1921, she was chosen to coordinate the group of the
first FMA sent to Poland. Her activity was incessant and, especially during the events and the
sufferings of World War II, the ‘little mother’, ‘Mateczka’, as they called her, lived a story of
courage and of love. In the most extreme poverty, she succeeded in opening houses for every need.
She began with homes for orphan and abandoned children and then for girls. She opened schools,
workrooms, homes for the Postulants, Novices, Sisters… refugees, the persecuted, the sick, the
dispersed. Mother Laura was able to comfort everyone!
‘Where do we begin?’
Looking at Mother Laura Meozzi, we can respond: let us begin with the pedagogy of gestures,
with witness, with the joy of being at the service of the least, in the human and life peripheries.
When Mother Laura arrived in Poland, she was about 50 years old. She needed to learn the Polish
language! They say that after a while, she understood a lot, but it was very difficult for her to speak
in Polish… however, they all affirm that, even if she did not know the language well, she intuited
the meaning of the words by following the tone of voice, the facial expression, and even understood
the interior joy of those confidences and stories that were entrusted to her.
At the outbreak of the War, Sr. Laura renounced returning to Italy. She decided to remain beside
her Polish daughters to share their risks and suffering. She did this with the large heart of a
mother, without ever measuring the many difficulties.

2. Thinking of the Initial Proclamation, we can say with certainty that she let herself immediately and
forever, be appealed to by the others, by the poor, because she felt in them the suffering that cannot
wait and heard in each of them the voice of the Crucified God!
Mother Laura had a ‘heart that attracts’. Her presence was like the attraction of God’s mercy that
bends over the least ones to give them life again, and at the same time, to open new horizons of
hope to the young generations, even amid the challenges of war and persecution.
I want to offer you a metaphor taken from one of the publications of Paul Suess, Theologian and
Missionary. He states that missionaries are like the gardeners who take care of the garden and its
flowers. It is the flowers that attract the butterflies. Missionaries are not butterfly catchers. They
must not run after the lost souls to save them. Missionaries are called and sent to attract and save
people through the virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
We FMA and SDB, have a mission that is called ‘a garden’. Our task is to take care of the flowers
so as to attract the butterflies. We must not run after the butterflies…
Nature teaches us this and much more. Nature does not run after (like the butterfly catchers do!): a
chestnut tree offers its chestnuts in the middle of the woods or forest! It offers them…this is its
generosity; it is its fruit that attracts people!
Mother Laura ‘attracted’ people with the gift of a strong and sweet maternity. She knew how to
accompany with wisdom and graduality. She was a woman capable of discerning, of listening, of
consoling. “Love and seek Jesus alone; live and work only for Him”, was her spiritual program.
The best wish we can have for each other is that this Seminar may help us to broaden our gaze, to
widen the space of our heart to be with the young, with the least ones, a presence that proclaims
Jesus and His Gospel. A Presence that speaks with life, with gestures, with all its being ... and, if
necessary, even with words! The Saints - men and women of our Salesian Family - help us to
continue in their footsteps of holiness.
Therefore, I wish everyone a joyful experience of communion, fraternity, and of the Initial
Proclamation in this Seminar!
Sr. Alaide Deretti FMA
Councilor for the Missions