Christmas Greetings from Sister Rebecca Ann Gemma, OP

Dear Friends,

On behalf of all Dominican Sisters of Springfield, I greet you joyfully and offer our prayers for your peace and good health at this moment for courageous hope, this moment when we affirm and celebrate the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary.

The merriest of Christmases to you and those you love!

Perhaps it is difficult this year to find your Christmas cheer or give yourself over to the joy you’d like to feel. That is okay.

As Pope Francis said in his latest encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, this pandemic has created much pain, uncertainty and fear. It has led us to the realization of our weaknesses and limitations—as individuals and as a society.

He goes on to say that unless we want this difficult time to be “just another tragedy of history from which we learned nothing” we need to learn from and grow through this critical moment in the human story.

“If only we might rediscover once for all that we need one another,” Pope Francis writes “and that in this way our human family can experience a rebirth, with all its faces, all its hands and all its voices, beyond the walls that we have erected.”

What do we learn from the Incarnation of Love in Jesus if not this: We need one another and we can heal one another and the Creation through rebirth.

Every day, as I walk the halls of Sacred Heart Convent, I see tender evidence of this mercy at work as I witness the care our sisters and staff show one another.

During phone conversations with our sisters at their missions across this continent and in Peru, I hear stories of the courage, the hope, the desire, and the will to bear witness to the Good news we celebrate during the Christmas feast: God is among us.

In this way, I find the hope, and the courage to respond to the world with mercy.

May you, too, be attentive to ways small and large that the Love of God, made manifest in the humans, the stars, and other created beings who share the universe with us, can enkindle in your heart the courage to hope once again.

May God Creator bless you, may God Redeemer heal you and may God the Holy Spirit fill you with light.