Sr Anne's Reflections

Dear Sisters,
As we welcome the Season of Advent this year, Pope Francis has recently announced that 2025 will be a year of Jubilee, beginning in Advent 2024 and ending on the Feast of the Epiphany 2026. The theme chosen for the Jubilee is “Pilgrims of Hope”. Waiting in Hope, as we know, is at the heart of Advent and the overall message of the Jubilee theme is one of journeying together as pilgrims of hope. It is probably not by chance that the Union of International Superiors General (UISG), which meets in Rome in the Jubilee year, have chosen as their theme “Consecrated Life: a Hope that Transforms”.
The Jubilee year is a special year of grace beginning just before Christmas with the opening of the Holy Door in St Peter’s Basilica. Advent also offers us a special occasion of grace, and an opportunity to be pilgrims, making a spiritual journey, a journey of renewal.
Pope Francis writes that hope is a gift from God and a task for every Christian. He says it is not a mere act of optimism, like hoping for good weather, but hoping is waiting for something that has already been given to us: salvation in God's eternal and infinite love. To hope, then, is to welcome this gift that God offers us every day. To hope is to savour the wonder of being loved, sought, desired by a God who has not shut Himself away but has made Himself flesh and blood, to share our lot.
Advent calls us to hold onto the hope that Christ’s birth brings, a hope that transcends all circumstances. During Advent we read from Isaiah 9:2, 6-7:
"The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. ... For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.."

It is God’s promises, God’s faithfulness, that gives us hope even in the darkness, even as we live in a world where there is so much uncertainty, fear, and injustice.

Ronald Rolheiser speaks of Mary as the pre-eminent figure of hope when he says:
She shows us hope: Not only did she believe the promise, she became pregnant with it, gestated it, gave it her own flesh, went through the pains of childbirth to give it reality, and then nursed a fragile new life into a powerful adulthood that saved the world.
Advent is the season for us to imitate Mary’s hope by, like her, gestating faith, God’s promise, into real flesh.
We also look to the example of Alice Ingham, a woman of hope, who always trusted in the faithfulness of God, and she was not disappointed. When we were just a young congregation, of thirteen fully professed members, she sent five of her sisters to Borneo to give hope to those in need. We today in our different ways, are women of hope, reaching out to the poor, to those left the furthest behind in our world. This may be in our daily interactions with others, in our prayers, in our option for the poor through our various ministries and in our listening to the voice of the Lord in our lives.
My hope and prayer for us all is that we may enter into this time of Advent with an active and attentive Waiting for the birth of Jesus in our own lives, and in the lives of all those we love, journey with, reach out to support in mission and ministry, and those struggling in desperate situations.

With love & prayer,