7 October 2013 75th Foundation Day
A message from our Congregation Leader, Sr Marta
75 years have already passed since the Lord, using Blessed James Alberione, gave origin to the charism of our Congregation, in the Church and in the Pauline Family.
We have been called and are recognised with the name “Sisters of Jesus Good Shepherd”, thus belonging to Christ, closely linked to his life and his pastoral mission.
On 7 October 2013 we shall express our grateful remembrance to the Blessed Trinity for these years of life of our Congregation. While we give thanks for the gift received, I desire with you to enter a little more deeply on this simple preposition “of”, that normally indicates ownership, both in the sense of possession and of belonging, it is good every so often to recall it in order to rekindle the gift of new life received in Baptism and confirmed in the Religious consecration.
The question that the Apostle Paul addresses to the Christians of Corinth, I feel today made also to me, to us Pastorelle: “Do you not realise that Jesus Christ lives in you?”
Together with you I would then ask the Apostle of the Gentiles, that he would help us to recognise and rekindle the signs of this indwelling in our daily lives, to astound us again and rediscover new apostolic momentum.
Let us listen to what Paul, wants to say to us Pastorelle, while we celebrate 75 years of presence in the Church and in the world: “You are of Christ and Christ is of God ; to die together and to live together3!
Remember while you were still sinner, Christ died for you4. Through Baptism you have been
buried with Him into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, you too may live a new life5.
You have already experienced during these years of your personal and congregational history that if one is in Christ, he/she is a new creation, the old has passed and the new has come6. Therefore consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Jesus Christ7 and continue to offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life8. Learn not to place your trust in yourselves, but in God who raises the dead9, because God who has called you into his fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ, is faithful10. You were bought at a high price11, do not ever forget this! Trust that nothing nor anyone will be able to separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus12. Be it that you live or that you die, you belong to the Lord13! (cont.)