The letter provides updates on new missionaries, including 6 waiting to travel due to COVID-19 and a group arriving in October. It discusses a video conference with provincial coordinators and encourages reading a letter by Mother Mazzarello emphasizing joy, charity, and living detached from oneself to love only the Lord.

1. Rome, 14 September 2020
Dearest Sisters,
An affectionate greeting and best wishes for
each of you, your communities, and your family
members.
We are already at mid-September. Time passes
quickly. The world is still living the drama of the Covid-19
pandemic and its consequences. We hope to be able to continue
to welcome this time as ‘History of Salvation’. We know of the
difficulties that the pandemic has brought to the lives of so many
people. Many have been touched by the loss of their loved ones, the
loss of health, of work, of family harmony ... We seek to instill hope
and serenity in those close to us. Maybe we cannot solve the big
problems that afflict the lives of children, adolescents, young people, and families entrusted to us, but
we can be heart, hands, listening… for those in need. Let no one, having approached us, leave us
without a ray of hope or a word of comfort…
I would like to offer you some news regarding the Missions Sector. The new missionaries who
are at home with us for now are six, and are waiting for the possibility of a flight to leave and reach
their destinations or to go to learn a new language. There will be an opportune time and it will be
God's, not ours! This ‘new normal’ is also a time of formation to get out of our routines, projects, and
take on the new reality that challenges us at every moment.
The new missionaries of the next Missionary Expedition will be a lovely group! They will
arrive - if possible - between 2 and 15 October. We hope that they will be able to reach Rome to start
learning Italian. The date for the celebration of the Missionary Mandate in Valdocco - Basilica of
Mary Help of Christians - is not yet entirely sure. It will likely be in late March or April 2021.
Regarding the new missionaries of the 2018-2019 group, three of them are still in the United
States and one is in France as they continue to study the language. We hope that they will soon be able
to obtain a visa to reach their destinations.
As for the Video-Conference that was scheduled for last May, we postponed it and organized
ourselves to carry it out on 15 and 16 September. We are looking forward to this meeting with the
Sisters who are the Provincial Coordinators/Referents of the Missions Sector. Certainly these sisters
will have already received the guidelines and information necessary for a fruitful participation.
Now let’s resume our journey ... For today, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, I
would like to propose an encounter with Mother Mazzarello through Letter 63 - written from Nizza
Monferrato in January 1881, to the missionary, Sister Vittoria Cantù. In the letter, Mother
recommends that Sister Vittoria help the newly arrived missionaries and exhorts her to live fraternal
charity and detachment from herself.
A detail: this letter, as well as letters 59, 60, 61, and 62, were written before the departure of
the missionaries of the third expedition who left Nizza on January 20, and then left Genoa on
February 3, 1881 for South America.
You can read the entire Letter 63, first of all because it is very short, and then because in it we
find a Mother who writes with her heart, and starting from her life experience!
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2. I would like to focus on just one aspect of the letter. Mother Mazzarello insists on joy and
fraternal charity as usual: “I recommend that you comfort the new Americans, poor souls!...You and
the other good Sisters keep them cheerful, won’t you?...The most important thing is that you all
agree among yourselves…Help each other like true Sisters…everything will always go well.”
Joy and charity, for Mother Mazzarello, “no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is
there, namely, Jesus Christ”. (1Cor 3: 11).
Mother Mazzarello writes, “Try to continue giving good example, living detached from
yourself and never seeking to be flattered or favored, rather you should despise such foolishness. We
must be the first to show that our heart is made to love the Lord alone and not to seek to win love
for ourselves.”
During the Angelus of 2 July 2017, Pope Francis - speaking on the missionary discourse of
chapter 10 of the Gospel of Matthew - offered a very timely reflection which, in my opinion,
reinforces and deepens what Mother Mazzarello wrote in that distant 1881.
These are the words of Pope Francis, “Jesus underscores two essential aspects for the life of a
missionary disciple: the first, that the bond with Jesus is stronger than any other bond; the second, that
the missionary brings not him/herself, but Jesus, and through Him the love of the heavenly Father.
These two aspects are connected, because the more Jesus is at the center of the heart and of the life of
a disciple, the more this disciple is ‘transparent’ to His presence. The two go hand in hand.”
I perceive in these words of Pope Francis the very heart of Mother Mazzarello who, in her
simplicity, made her sisters understand how much our heart is made only to love the Lord. If our life
is centered in Jesus, we will be able to value positively all the events and all the things that are truly
important. When Jesus occupies the center, our small or great difficulties become a springboard for a
radical life of coherence and evangelical witness.
Pope Francis continues, “It is important that the people be able to perceive that for the disciple
Jesus is truly ‘the Lord’; He is truly the center of his or her life, the everything of life.” And Mother
Mazzarello will say, “Try to continue giving good example…We must be the first to show that our
heart is made to love the Lord alone.”
It seems stimulating to me to finish this message with the words of Mother Mazzarello and
those of Pope Francis: “It only remains for me to recommend charity, patience, and union among all
of you… May Jesus keep you in His Holy Grace and make you holy soon.” “May the Virgin Mary,
with her maternal intercession, help us to be free and happy missionaries of the Gospel.”
In preparation for GC XXIV, let us pray together: Mary, Mother of Love and Sorrowful
Virgin, fill our jars with the new wine of evangelical coherence and of fidelity. Help us to find Jesus,
the only center of our life and mission.
Dearest sisters, I assure you of my closeness and of my prayer for your intentions. With a
warm embrace and always in sisterly communion!
Councilor for the Missions
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