School Sisters of Notre Dame
Generalate

Via della Stazione Aurelia 95
00165 Roma, Italia
Tel: +39.06.6652.01 Fax: +39.06.6652.0234

25th World Day for Consecrated Life
2 February 2021

Jubilee Letter – 2021

Embracing Our Deepest Identity
Moving toward the fullness of personhood in Christ, ... (YAS, C 46)
Dear Sister Jubilarians of 2021,
With a joy-filled heart, I think of each you and congratulate you on the anniversary of your first
profession of vows, some 25, 40, 50, 60, 70, 75, or 80 years ago! As you celebrate this momentin your life, I pray that you experience anew God’s fidelity and intimate love.
Your jubilee is a great source of hope for us and our world, especially during these uncertain
and trying times. Your lives bear witness to God’s love and desire for abundant life for all.
We thank you for the gift of your fidelity; we thank God for how God has been present throughyou and for what God has accomplished through and in you.
In some ways, jubilee is a crossroads: a moment to pause, reflect, and celebrate, and an
invitation to embrace the challenge of the newness of the Gospel for our times and to choose
new life, a new path forward. “Every crossroads is a leap of faith, an opportunity to grow,transform and become more of who God intends for us to be” (Ted Dunn, Graced Crossroads:
Pathways to Deep Change and Transformation, p. 238).

What delighted our Blessed Theresa was the inward transformation of her sisters toward thelikeness of God (cf. YAS, “Origins of our Congregation”). Our identity as consecrated persons, rooted
in the divine mystery of the Triune God, is not static, but dynamic, ever evolving toward newlife and toward our deepest identity. Who does God need you and us to be for our world today?
Praying for each of you by name, I wondered about your experience at crossroads in your life,
making choices and moving toward fullness of personhood, toward new life, toward yourdeepest identity. During your jubilee year, I encourage you to reflect on this movement, thistransformative journey. How has God invited, even urged you, to grow into your true self?

Life: A Radical Following
We are called and consecrated … for a radical following … (YAS, C 48).
Consecrated for a radical following of Christ, our life is for the world, for God’s mission in theworld. Our call begins and unfolds with an encounter and an invitation to “come and see,” to“come, follow.” This encounter touches the restlessness, that deep yearning for God at the coreof our being. Our minds and hearts open to love that impels us into discipleship.

Through the ordinary days of our lives as we strive to follow Christ faithfully, we begin to live
the life of Jesus until one day his life becomes our life. Then it is no longer merely a following,
although following is challenging enough. “Caught up in Christ’s unconditional love, wejoyfully commit the totality of our person to him… in him we find our all” (YAS, C 13). In ourresponse, we find ourselves on a journey of becoming more, a beloved disciple.
The Gospel of John offers us two beautiful examples of such discipleship. We recall thereferences made to the “disciple Jesus loved.” At the last supper, reclining next to Jesus (cf. Jn
13:23), the beloved disciple knows such intimacy that he is attuned to Jesus’ heartbeat, to Jesus’concerns, to all that Jesus loves. A short time later, this disciple is given as son to Jesus’ motherand she is given as mother to the disciple (cf. Jn 19:26). The other is of Mary of Magdala. Driven
by her yearning that flows out of the intimacy of love, while it is still dark, she is at the tomb,searching for her beloved. On hearing her name spoken by him, she is transformed andbecomes disciple to the disciples.
“As our intimate relationship with (Christ) deepens, he frees us to love more radically” (YAS, C13), to follow more closely, to look more honestly upon the needs of our world, and to live andact more boldly. We are driven by love, made new, and empowered to respond in unsuspected
ways; for God’s “love constantly impels us to find new ways forward” (Laudato Si’, 245).
What has been your life experience of an intimate, radical following?

Light: Prophetic Witness
Becoming more like Christ, we witness … (YAS, C 13).
In the darkness of our times with the raging pandemics of disease, division and discrimination,
violence, and devastation of Earth, what greater need is there than light—a light that shines inthe darkness and cannot be overcome (cf. Jn 1:5). Christ, light of the world, light for all nations,has called us to be light and to shine for all to see (cf. Mt. 5:14, 16). This we celebrate today: The
Presentation of the Lord, who is light, and Consecrated Life, that is "prophetic vision …” (PopeFrancis, 2019 World Day for Consecrated Life).

Following Christ, we come to know God, who is light and in whom there is no darkness, andwe are empowered to walk in the light and “live our lives in the light” (1 Jn 1: 5,7) and becomechildren of light (cf. Jn 12:36). Only in an intimate, radical following of Christ who is light do
we begin to reflect the light received and shine and radiate the light we become.
Becoming light, becoming more like Christ, “prophetically we proclaim the primacy of God’sreign, present yet still to come” (YAS, C 12). By our very being, we are “called to radiate lightand communicate life” (Evangelii Gaudium, 83) in our world, witnessing God-with-us and God’s
universal love for all (cf. YAS, C 13).
“Here and now…the Lord’s disciples are called to live as a community which is the salt of theearth and the light of the world (cf. Mt 5:13-16). We are called to bear witness to a constantly
new way of living together in fidelity to the Gospel” (Evangelii Gaudium, 92), to embody attitudes
and values, shaping a soul-force that counteracts forces of darkness and division. In our life inmission, we are called to create relationships and God-enlightened spaces (cf. Gaudete et Exsultate,142) that foster healing, oneness, universal communion.

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Is this not the essence of the commitments of our Directional Statement Love Gives Everything?
To be transformed, to deepen our consciousness of who we are, to give prophetic witness ofunity in diversity, to live more interculturally, to respond boldly. Fidelity to our consecrated
life is light to the world, is prophetic witness of God among us, of God’s love for and in us.
This love creates a cosmic, all-inclusive communion, encompassing all humanity and the wholeof creation.
What light, what prophetic witness does God ask of you?

Love: Our Deepest Identity
As we identify more deeply with Christ, the very pattern of his life becomes ours (YAS, C 46).
A life of radical following of Jesus leads us to becoming light, to becoming Godly, to becoming
love—the fullness of personhood, our deepest identity. Witnessing to God’s all-inclusive love
opens us to experience and to accept the paschal mystery in our lives (cf. YAS, C 5).
“We are drawn anew into Christ’s self-emptying, into the mystery of ongoing redemption”(YAS, C 33). Loving as Jesus loved, we become love incarnated in the world, a love that gives
everything. This evolving journey is cruciform, demanding that we take up our cross daily (cf.
Lk 9:23), love graciously and generously, and lay down our lives so others may live.
Love's unfolding requires self-emptying. From a surrendered and emptied place, we neither
cling to nor identify with our small selves. Rather, through the power of the Spirit, wetranscend ourselves to be ever more deeply united with our God and with God’s people, to be
more for others (cf. YAS, Foreword).
This is the transformative journey of love: growing into our truest selves, into the divine imageof God, into our deepest identity that is love. God’s infinite, unconditional love is the reason
for our being. Love is the essence of who we are. “Nothing less than an infinite union withInfinite Love will do” (James Finley, Intimacy: The Divine Ambush). Created in the divine
image of the Triune God who is infinite Love, our life journey is one of welcoming grace andchoosing love—the essence of who we are, our deepest identity, our destiny.
At what crossroads on this transformative journey do you find yourself?

My dear Sister Jubilarians, God is with you. God breathes life within you and shines lightthrough you. God loves you and sends you forth to witness to Love, to be love. Today andthroughout your jubilee year, may you praise and thank God for the gift of your vocation andcelebrate the experience of ever-faithful, infinite Love.
May you discover yourselves at the crossroads for a new moment of choice for life, as light,and of love on this transformative journey of embracing your deepest identity.
With you on this journey,

Sister Roxanne Schares
Sister Roxanne Schares, SSND
General Superior
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