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March 19th 2025: Feast of St. Joseph
Dear Sisters
On this great feast of St. Joseph and our Congregational feast, I take this opportunity to send you our warmest wishes and prayers as we unite as One across the Congregation. As we renew our vows to day may we recall the enthusiasm and the sincerity of our first commitment and ask St. Joseph to rekindle those same feelings in each of us as we renew our « yes »in 2025.
This year we are in our final preparation stage for our General Chapter. This is the time when we reflect and discern the direction that our Dear Congregation needs to take over the next few years. We place our journey into the hands of St. Joseph who walks with us and who guides and protects us.
Pope Francis talks about how St. Joseph respected Gods plan and encourages us to be women of silence where we can reflect and discern the direction we must take. St Joseph never questioned or complained about the unexpected and unfavourable events in his life. He accepted that these events were necessary and part of God’s plan. He was ever content to keep a low profile, and quietly serve behind the scenes. In our Congregation can we let ourselves to be “infected” by the silence of St Joseph! “We live in a world which is noisy and frantic, which does not encourage reflection and listening to the voice of God.” (Pope Benedict XVI, 2005)
We have heard many times how Joseph was a man of dreams, but had his feet on the ground. Joseph had several dreams and all of these were life changing wake up calls for him, who obeyed God with great courage, fortitude, quietness, humility and trust. What are our dreams for the Congregation which might be life changing and what is the wake-up call for me? Are we in need of courage humility and trust in order to make our dreams a reality?
Today, where there is so much emphasis on ministry there is often less time to pray. We can lose the ability to dream the future. We all need to imagine how our lives could be better, how the planet might be more healthy and the world more loving and caring. Could our Congregation be a happier place? Would more young people find their place with us if we dared to dream? “When we dream great things, good things, we draw near to God’s dream, what God dreams about us.” (Pope Francis, 2018)
In the Scriptures, Saint Joseph appears as a strong and courageous man, a working man, yet in his heart we see great tenderness, which is not the virtue of the weak but rather a sign of strength of spirit and a capacity for concern, for compassion, for genuine openness to others, for love.” (Pope Francis 2013) What does this have to say to each one of us as we journey towards the thresholds we know we must cross? What would our Congregation be like if each one of us had this concern, this compassion and genuine openness to the other in a world where so many feel rejected, unloved and abandoned? What is this General Chapter calling us to be as SSJ? What do we need to let go of in order to be more relevant in today’s world? What attitudes and practices are no longer serving us well? What might be a better way, but more challenging to us and our comfort zones?
St. Joseph was a source of joy and hope for others. What has this got to say to us in our present living out of our Charism? Are we seen as a source of hope and joy for those with whom we live and with those who look to us for encouragement and example.? If we look through scripture there are no words written there attributed to St. Joseph. However, we see how he was someone who accepted Gods will often at a cost to himself. He accepted His engagement to Mary with all the anxiety that was around that for him. He set aside his own anxieties and put his trust in God as it was revealed to him in dreams. Perhaps over the next months we will be called to trust completely in God’s plan and to put aside our anxieties as we are challenged to cross certain thresholds and let go of those things which are no longer serving us. These are our dilemmas. These are the things that we are invited to entrust to the Lord.
St. Joseph also had to let go of all that he knew at times and showed courageous trust in the way he protected Mary and Jesus, leaving everything he was familiar with in order to keep his family safe. He did not know when it might be safe to return or if they could ever return. During the recent war between Israel and Lebanon, many Sisters of St Joseph had to leave their missions and move to a safer place where there was less danger of being bombed because of the presence of Hezbollah. They gathered together in one place which was predominantly Christian but they never knew from one day to the next if they were safe. They had to put their trust in God and ultimately their survival. How would we be in such a situation? We are constantly called by our Charism to reach out to the poor and those most in need. Joseph and Mary would have been considered to be refugees, fleeing from their homeland. In 2025 there are many others around us who are also fleeing for their live and fleeing from their homeland. How are we reaching out to those people, the children of God?
So, as we approach this General Chapter, we are once again, being invited to discern and reflect on the choices we need to make going forward. We are constantly being invited to move outside our comfort zones and to reach out to those most in need.May St. Joseph on this special feast of our Congregation, watch over each of us and protect us.
With every blessing and prayer,
Sr. Breda Gainey
Superior General