The document summarizes a letter from Sr. Alaíde Deretti to her sisters about a celebration where new missionaries received their missionary crosses. It then discusses the importance of having a gaze like Mary's at the Wedding at Cana, where she was able to intuit the lack of wine and invite Jesus to participate. Sr. Deretti encourages cultivating an integral, positive, prophetic, and missionary gaze to embrace the suffering of young people and communities today.

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Rome, 14 February 2021
Dearest Sisters,
A greeting of hope and of joy, accompanied by
deep communion in prayer for your intentions and for
your mission!
Today I have the joy of sharing with you some
good news. Our New missionaries present in Rome in
the Generalate, had the grace of receiving the
missionary Cross. This time, the Celebration did not take
place in Turin because of Covid-19, but rather in the
Chapel of the SDB Central Headquarters, near Sacred
Heart Basilica. The Rector Major presided over the
Eucharist in the presence of Mother and other Sisters, and
also some SDB. It was a very small group and yet
extraordinary in its simplicity, intensely lived as a profound
life experience. We thank the Lord for these Sisters who had the courage to give a free and
generous response to such a special call.
In last month’s message, we contemplated the heart of Mary, the Mother always present,
who at the Wedding Feast of Cana, anticipated Jesus’ hour and helps Him to accomplish the miracle
of life and of life in abundance. She, the outgoing woman, makes us feel strongly yet again, “Do
whatever He tells you” (Jn 2: 5), because only by doing what Jesus tells us can we be communities
that generate life in the heart of contemporaneity.
The second Chapter of John’s Gospel begins with the account we know, “On the third day
there was a wedding in Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples
were also invited to the wedding.” This was the passage that illumined our reflection in the month
of January. Then John continues, “When the wine ran short, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They
have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, how does your concern affect me? My hour has not
yet come.” (Jn 2: 3-4)
This rapid dialogue between Mary and Jesus may arouse a certain perplexity in us, above all
when our attention pauses on the question, “Woman, how does your concern affect me?” However,
I would like to invite you to re-read these two verses from another perspective, that of the gaze of
Mary!
After having contemplated the heart of Mary, the Mother who participates in the life of Her
Son Jesus, as she does in the life of all of us, her children, precisely because she is ‘Mother’, the
generator of life, she is present at the feast of life, it seems important to me to re-propose what we
already know. Mary’s presence at the Wedding of Cana was not a passive indifferent presence, a
presence of being only a ‘guest’. Her presence was active, an overall vision that became aware and
realized what was happening.
“They have no wine.” Mary is able to address these words to Jesus because she had a
Mother’s gaze, a gaze that always accompanies the life of a child. Mary, with her delicate, discrete,
and active gaze, intuits the difficulty and invites, rather, ‘Calls’ to participation: “They have no
wine.”

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We read in the Letter of Convocation of General Chapter XXIV, “Mary teaches us to have
an educational gaze, open to reality, to intuit the needs of today’s young people and to consider
them interlocutors together with the laity in the mission, valuing their potential. She educates us to
listen obediently to Jesus who, with His Spirit, regenerates our communities by working the miracle
of new wine for the joy of all” (Circular 985).
The theme of the gaze is very fascinating! Let us think of the looks of Jesus told by the four
evangelists. How did Jesus look? Whom did He look at? In which direction? And who knows with
what depth, intensity… sometimes with sadness or with compassion…!
Jesus had certainly learned from Mary not only to ‘gaze’, but to act after each gaze. Many
times one look is worth a thousand words! We have all certainly experienced this.
Mary’s gaze at the Wedding of Cana grasps the embarrassment of the spouses because of the
lack of wine. It is the same gaze that she turns to her Son and shares with Him the difficulty of the
moment, “They have no wine.”
We can think also of the gaze of Don Bosco, of Mother Mazzarello, of our parents, of those
who collaborated in our growth, of all the dear and important people who taught us to gaze at life, at
people, at events with the eyes of faith, of trust, of hope!
Let us think of the gazes of our daily life, in our educational-evangelizing mission. Circular
985 says that “communities today recognize that the wine of pastoral conversion is often lacking.
The gaze that knows how to grasp the opportunities to discern the ‘flavor’ of new wine in the
dreams of its members and in events is still weak.”
Dearest Sisters,
How beautiful it would be to make a constant and vigilant exercise to evaluate the quality of
our gaze so as to be able to cultivate a ‘integral and positive gaze’, a ‘prophetic gaze’, a ‘broad
gaze’, one that is very missionary, which knows how to embrace the hidden suffering and mute
suffering of our young people, of our reality, within our religious and educating communities; a
gaze of nearness, of closeness, in spite of the pandemic that urges us to maintain social and inter-
personal distance.
I would like to conclude this reflection by recalling the words of Pope Francis one year ago:
“Those who keep their gaze on Jesus learn to live for service. They do not wait for others to begin
but they go in search of their neighbor… Today there is need of gazes that look for their neighbor,
that come close to those who are distant. Men and women religious who live to imitate Jesus are
called to bring His gaze into the world, the gaze of compassion, the gaze that goes to seek the
distant; that does not condemn but encourages, frees, consoles, the gaze of compassion… The gaze
of consecrated persons can be only a gaze of hope… This is the secret, do not distance yourself
from the Lord, the source of hope. We will become blind if we do not look at the Lord every day…
Let us ask for a new gaze that knows how to see grace, that knows how to look for the neighbor,
that knows how to hope” (1 February 2020).
The gaze of Mary at the Wedding of Cana was a gaze that became service. We pray that our
gaze may allow itself to be drawn by the maternal gaze of Mary who intuits the difficulties and
invites to participation, “They have no wine.”
To each of you, dear Sisters, my sisterly embrace and the certainty of intense communion in
prayer, with our gaze turned to Jesus.
Sr. Alaíde Deretti
Councilor for the Missions