Reaching out to our neighbour: the prophecy of hospitality

2 February 2018

To all the Brothers and Communities of the Order

Dear Brothers,

Since this year coincides with the celebration of the Provincial Chapters throughout the Order I wish to extend to you all my best wishes for the World Day for Consecrated Life which we will be celebrating on 2nd February throughout the Church. I urge you to celebrate it especially with joy, giving thanks to Our Lord for the gift of Consecrated Life with which He continually graces the Church, and in particular each of the Brothers who belong to our beloved Order.

In the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis invites us to embark on a new evangelisation phase, marked by joy, and one of the most meaningful keys he has given us is the need to create a culture of encounter. He indicates the essence of this culture by inviting all Christians, everywhere, at this very moment, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ... The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk (EG, 3).

If the whole of the Christian life is based on an encounter with Christ, the Consecrated Life and hence our lives too must have a permanent encounter with Christ as its beginning and its end. “Consecrated  life,  which is  at the very heart  of  the  Church as  a  decisive  element  for  her mission,  must  look to that heart  to discover and  understand  itself. The  Religious  Brother finds therein the profound meaning of his own vocation. In this contemplation he is inspired by the figure of the Servant of Yahweh described by Isaiah, to whom God says: "I have made you a covenant of the  people" (Is 42:6). That  figure is  perfectly  reflected in  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  who sealed with his blood the new covenant and calls  those who believe in him to continue the task entrusted to the Servant, to be a covenant of the people.”(Identity and Mission of the Religious Brother in the Church, 5). In a daily encounter with Our Lord, with a carefully nurtured and fruitful spiritual life, it is possible to live and renew every day the figure of the Servant of Yahweh who we are called to be, to be signs in the world of God’s presence and infinite love for all men and women.

The culture of the encounter is also a call to an encounter with our Brothers, to be builders and promoters of Gospel-based brotherhood in its twofold sense. Firstly, as a gift we receive and share with our fellow Brothers. We are called to live in a fraternal community and this is a central pillar of our consecration. In it, we live and grow spiritually, humanly and apostolically, on the basis of a fruitful encounter with the Brothers. Secondly, our fraternal community, which is always open to the world, is a permanent sign for the Church and for the world of the brotherhood that God wishes for all his sons and daughters, a sign of the covenant which God renews with the world day after day. “Communion is proposed today in the Church as a particularly pressing challenge in the new millennium, so that it may be transformed into the home and school of communion. Brothers are active inhabitants in this home and are both students and teachers in this school; that is why they make their own the urgency that the Church proposes for itself, to live and promote a spirituality of communion” (Identity and Mission..., 7).

Lastly, the culture of encounter is a permanent mission for Religious Brothers to build up brotherhood in the world, in our particular case through our mission of hospitality, delivering our lives fully to the service of the Kingdom of God, especially as the service of the poor, the sick and the needy in the manner of our founder, Saint John of God. We are called to exercise “The prophecy of hospitality as openness and acceptance of the other, the stranger, the foreigner, the one from a different religion, race or culture. It is an essential element of human coexistence in the face of intolerance, exclusion or the lack of dialogue” (Identity and Mission..., 37).

In this Provincial Chapter year, we must once again put every effort into our spiritual encounter with Christ, with our Brothers and with all those who suffer. We must reach out and welcome them all, and show God’s love for them, thereby contributing to the mission of the Church and creating brotherhood on the basis of hospitality. This will be the best way of guaranteeing the future of our Order: remaining faithful to the charism and the mission of the Brothers of Saint John of God.

Let us joyfully live the gift of the vocation which God has given us and which he renews every day. Let us celebrate it joyfully, and let us pray especially this year that the Provincial Chapters of our Order will be an event of brotherhood and hospitality, boldness and hope, vitality and prophecy for the Church and for the Order. Let us also renew our commitment to Our Lord on the Feast of the Presentation on 2 February, presenting ourselves to Him and offering Him all we are and all we have.

United in Our Lord and Saint John of God, I send you my fraternal and hospitaller best wishes.

Brother Jesús Etayo

Superior General