The liturgical remembrance of the birth of Saint Maria De Mattias and the anniversary of the Foundation of our Institute are two celebrations at the beginning of each year that allow us to relish again the richness of our charismatic identity. They bring us together once more around her who, in an admirable way, helps us to grow as one, offering herself again with the freshness and newness of her life lived as a sign of prophecy.
Celebrating Maria De Mattias’ holiness means retracing her experience, tried by the paschal exodus and forged by the Spirit that made her a gift for the Church and the world. Her life was awaiting, a desire, an impetus to share and give of herself, which made her a bright and intriguing sign.
Hers was a journey of the heart, an existential pilgrimage toward an encounter with Jesus, in a covenant characterized by searching, trusting abandon and the daily option to center herself more and more deeply in His Paschal Mystery which she assimilated into herself.
Her missionary ardor flowed from this deep-rooted interior relationship driving her to commit herself passionately for the salvation of all those to whom Love sent her. The experience of something greatly felt in the intimacy of her heart made her sense within herself the urgency of an announcement woven not of words but of radical, concrete choices and thus of contagious choices filled with prophecy.
The Word of the Blood found fertile ground in her. The voice of the Beloved, meditated upon daily, created in her that intimate space for the fire of God that enflamed her with an ardent desire for “the salvation of souls.”
Contemplation and missionary concern: the two pearls sown in the furrows of history laid out by Maria, the two stones set in a daily fullness of heaven.
In a time of obvious uncertainty and great challenges for Consecrated Life, which inevitably also touch our reality as Congregation, we must perceive the urgency of keeping this fire burning and center ourselves again upon what is essential in order not to squander its dynamism and fecundity.
(From the Circular Letter of Sr Nadia Coppa, General Superior, in the occasion of the Feast of S. Maria De Mattias, February 4, 2020)