There is hope! “He is carrying all things” (Hebrews, 1:3)

 

 

To all the Members of the Hospitaller Family of Saint John of God

 

My dear Brothers, Co-workers, Volunteers, friends and guests in the Centres of the Order:

 

This year, more insistently than ever, I am sending you my Christmas greetings and best wishes for health and peace for to all of you with a heartfelt call to Hope, which is based on God's decision to become man in order to give life to all, beginning with the weakest and most vulnerable. So my sincere good wishes are for everyone!

 

The Word of God for the Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lord is a treasure house. I would like to take this text from the Letter to the Hebrews we read at Mass on Christmas Sunday: "In these days, he has spoken to us through the Son,… and He is carrying all things by the Word of his virtue” (Heb 1:1,3). This is a word that fills us with hope in the midst of the world we live in today, probably our only hope, but certainly the most credible and unquestionable hope.

 

The Christmas message this year, especially to our world, is that THERE IS HOPE, despite what we see and experience. This is not the time to dwell on and recount the sufferings and the growing conflicts and wars that are besieging us and inflicting so much pain and so many victims. They are almost always the fruit of human greed, of the unjust thirst for riches. It is the way a few people view themselves as "the masters of the others" and the owners of the earth's resources. It is their contempt for others in order to achieve their spurious and unjust purposes, especially when they seek to do so by force... Causing so many victims and so much pain! In recent years, and in these last few months, we have been seeing it growing steadily. We are not learning anything from the past, and even though we know the lessons of history, we continue to repeat the same mistakes in the digital era, the era of innovation and knowledge that we supposedly never knew before. In this environment it is difficult to speak of hope, and this is most certainly the case for those most directly involved in all this.

 

However, there is hope. Christmas means hope. It is not about covenants made between people, which are easily broken by our ambitions. It is about the great covenant that God has chosen to make. The most advantageous covenant ever, because it is God who has pledged that whatever may happen, He will carry all things and all human life. He did so by taking flesh, by taking human form as a Child, Jesus, and by being born in a manger, demonstrating His decision to become poor among the poor, who are the ones He cherishes most.

 

They are all very simple and fragile acts and events when faced with destructive power and ambition, such as Jesus encountered in His time. But it is the Word, and the most solid and powerful pledge of all, which will never be broken, will never end, and will endure until love, forgiveness and reconciliation, justice and true freedom finally triumph.

 

It was the birth of the Child Jesus in Bethlehem that brings us the only real hope for the world and for every man and woman. This is why Christmas is a time for celebrating, a time of joy and rejoicing, in spite of whatever we are living through in the world. It is for everyone to celebrate, including the sick and the lonely. The coming of Jesus is an anthem of hope for everyone. No one is forgotten.

 

However, while destruction is certainly the most common noise we are hearing in today's world, we must also acknowledge the many gestures, signs and acts that are already telling us about the coming of this hope, that announce or remind us of the permanence of Christmas, beyond the period that today’s new merchants in the new temples of profit-making and deception sometimes seek to steal from us: the acts of forgiveness and the true love of a mother and a father with their children, the decision by many young people to travel to remote places to accompany people in states of poverty, the many people who quietly help others with small gestures or sometimes with great deeds. So many missionaries, religious, priests and lay people who are working away like so many ants to bring peace, education, health and care to the poor and needy...

 

The same can be said of the many acts of hospitality that the Brothers, Co-workers and Volunteers of the Order are performing every day in every part of the world, caring, healing, accompanying, and giving the best of themselves. There are so many examples that we could cite! I am mindful once again of our Houses in places close to or actually caught up in wars, even placing their lives on the line. There, and in all the acts that produce and renew God's love, it is always Christmas, and it is there, in all simplicity, that we stand firm and proclaim that – despite everything – THERE IS HOPE FOR OUR WORLD! 

 

I join my best wishes to those of all the Brothers and Co-workers at the General Curia for a very Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year 2024 to the whole Saint John of God Family and to all the guests in our Centres and their loved ones! It will be a year in which we shall be celebrating the General Chapter, and so I ask you all, from the start of this year, to keep this intention in mind in your prayers.

 

To all the Brothers and Co-workers who will be working over these days serving the guests in our Centres, especially on Christmas Day, I offer my heartfelt thanks and gratitude. Over these coming days you will be the visible face of the Hospitality of Saint John of God and of the sure and steadfast Hope that the birth of the Son of God brings to our world.

 

 

Hno. Jesús Etayo

Superior General