Nota : on video, click over “CC” to get the english subtitles

Sr Micheline Cormier, Superior General of the Congregation of the Daughters of Jesus, offers us her New Year’s wishes for 2018.

It gives me joy at this season of Christmas and New Year, to be able to address these few words to each one of you, dear Sisters of the Daughters of Jesus throughout the world. I address them equally to our brothers and sisters of the Associates, our families, our friends, and to those who visit our web site.

This year of 2017, now drawing to its close, has seen a succession of events whether it be worldwide, in our respective countries, or in our families and communities. These many events have profoundly touched us and shaken us.

In the middle of our night …

The passing from one year to another that we are living out invites us, does it not, to take a moment to “interiorise”. It invites us, like the shepherds during the night at Bethlehem, to perceive or recognise what has been given to us “to see, to hear, to discover”, in the middle of our night.

Keeping in mind our experiences

It is important, is it not, to keep in the memory of our heart the experiences that we have lived, witnessed, or heard about …

• Experiences of gestures of fraternity or solidarity
• Experiences of pardon received and / or given
• Experiences of relationships lived out in truth
• Experiences of welcoming the other in his or her difference, in his or her distress
• Experiences of openness to that what is new, to creativity …

It is important, likewise, to keep in mind all these facts of life through which we have discovered the beauty, the grandeur and the of the Love that inhabits us and bring us together?

Welcoming 2018

In this way we will be able to welcome the year 2018 that is opening to us. With all the shepherds of yesterday and today, let us remain attentive to the Word that is announcing Good News to us: let us part without fear, with eagerness, for the mangers of today where a “Treasure” awaits us. In the life experiences that we will go through to get there, may we receive the grace to “strengthen the bonds of charity and solidarity between us”, going beyond all frontiers or exclusions.

With these words of blessing from the Book of Numbers, I wish you a very Good and Happy New Year 2018 from the bottom of my heart:

The Lord bless you and keep you!
The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you!
The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace!

(Numbers 6, 24 – 26)

Sr Micheline Cormier fj, Superior General of the Daughters of Jesus