Easter 2018

Circular Letter of the Prior General

   

He has risen, rejoice!

All the Brothers and Co-workers, membersof the Hospitaller Family of St John of God

With the approach of Easter, Iwish to offer my Easter best wishes to all the members of the St John of Godfamily, their loved ones and our guests in the Order’s Centres and Services,praying that Our Risen Lord will fill you all with joy and hope. A very HappyEaster to you all!

The joy of Easter that brings points our lives in a new direction andchanges them, by liberating them from the pessimism and the shadows thatfrequently affect us. This is a joy which is founded on the Resurrection ofChrist. In Him, we can be hopeful, because God the Father has raised Him up, overcomingand conquering sin, suffering and death. Neither of these things which cast ashadow over our lives and cause us suffering will ever have the last word, andneither of them wields power over the life which the Risen Christ has won for usall, and for all time.

Our faith, and the Church’s liturgy during Eastertide, invite us toundergo an intense experience of the joy of the Resurrection through anencounter with the Risen Christ. He isnot here, He has risen! These were the words spoken by the angel to thewomen who went to the sepulchre grieving at the loss of a loved one, and withthe explosion of joy that this message would bring with it at their latermeeting with Him. It is true, He is alive! This was also the experience of theapostles and the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and of so many other people. Andwe have also been given the joy of this experience, if we have the courage toopen up our hearts and the eyes of faith to see Him and feel Him among us.

Reality is sometimes certainly not easy, and indeed it can be extremelydifficult, and sometimes be pushed to extremes. It is not necessary to draw upa list of painful situations in life that generate  exclusion, suffering and death in our world.Only a few days after joyfully celebrating the Feast of our Founder, Saint Johnof God, we witnessed the death of a young father who, for reasons that Godalone knows, decided to take his life, leaving behind his newborn baby, and hiswife. I know that this is only one example of so many cases that occur in oneway or another every single day. But the grief was terrible! It left me shaken.Why, Lord? How can I proclaim the joy of life and the love of God when allthese things keep happening, and are so real that no-one finds them unusual,and we are not affected by them because our lives are unable to endure suchpain and such violence?

And this was also the same experience that our Lord Jesus had. It was Hisfaithfulness to His mission and to His Father, His boldness in refusing to backdown, or to allowing himself to be bought for any reason to desist frompursuing His project, that led him to the Cross, to the most cruel of deaths. Hisexample has been followed, and is still being followed today by so many men andwomen, some following Jesus’s same cause and others following other causes, butall with the same result. And yet, faced by so much pain and suffering, Godraised up His Son. For this reason, and even though life sometimes pushes us rightto the cliff edge, and even beyond, as in the case of Our Lord, life for allmen and women will triumph over death, and will have the last word. That wasthe decision taken by God our Father, which was embodied in His first-born Son,in Christ Jesus, whose Easter, whose Resurrection, we are about to celebrateand in which we all called to play a part.

Tell the disciples to go to Galilee and there theywill meet me. On previous occasions I have reflected onthis instruction that Jesus gave to the women. It is crucially important. Thejoy of Easter is the joy of meeting the Risen Christ already, in the here andnow, in our own lives. It was in Galilee that Jesus began His public life, His mission.It is in our lives, in our families, in our hospitals or workplaces, in ourparishes and our communities that we find our own particular Galilee. It isfrom there that each one of us is called to go out and meet the Risen Jesusand, in His company, to continue along the path of life following the Gospel,discovering and noting the signs of life and Resurrection; helping to movebeyond the signs and experiences of death and darkness that we encounter everyday, bearing witness to our faith and our personal experience of the LivingChrist.

Hospitality itself expresses God’s life and merciful love, and theresurrection of Christ. Through Hospitality, we are called every day toproclaim and give visible form to the life which the Risen Christ brings us, tomake it possible to experience Easter. Very often by treating people, and on otheroccasions providing company and offering consolation and comfort, or prayingwhen feeling powerless and begging our Lord to take matters in hand and to fillus with life through His love, or serving and bearing witness to the prophecyof Hospitality, as a sign of the life which vanquishes death. If only we couldall have this personal experience of the life which Gospel-inspired Hospitalitybrings, in the spirit of Saint John of God. 

We have practically completed all the Provincial Chapters, and at thismoment only the Polish Province remains, and will be held shortly. All theChapters have been an experience of the new life which the Holy Spirit hasgiven us. I would say that they have also been an experience of resurrection, ofoutreach to the life and the future of the Order in each of our Provinces. Maywe remain faithful to our Lord so that the Hospitality of Saint John of Godwill continue to live on. Next year, we shall be celebrating the GeneralChapter as a new opportunity for us to renew our beloved Order and the wholeSaint John of God Family, and to give it a new lease of life, opening us up tothe future that the Holy Spirit is asking of us. It will provide the possibilityfor us to live and send out a sign of the life which the Risen Christ isbringing us. I urge you all to pray and, from this moment onwards, to preparecarefully for this most important event in the life of our Institution.          

Speaking on behalf ofthe General Government and the whole Hospitaller Family of St John of God atthe General Curia, I wish you all A VERY HAPPY EASTER! 

 

 

 

Brother Jesús Etayo

Superior General

 

 

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