“Remember all the way that Yahweh your God has made you walk..."Remembering, going through the heart again what we have experienced, is necessary to be able to give thanks. And, how much gratitude there is in 25 years!
We are celebrating my 25 years of consecrated life, but what am I really celebrating? Today I don't celebrate how cool I am or that I'm still here after all this time. Today I celebrate that God lives in me; Today I celebrate and we celebrate the faithfulness of God in my life and in the lives of each and every one of you. This is what is truly valuable. Although sometimes we do not realize such greatness, God is always faithful to us.
In these 25 years there has been a lot of life taken and given, many hopes, a lot of life shared, a lot of growth, hugs, memories, meetings, projects, work, dedication, failures, disappointments, loneliness, healing of wounds, sudden turns and dizzying experiences. Life itself, with realities for which we do not prepare nor for which it is socially convenient to prepare. En este tiempo he aprendido que también es necesario prepararnos para saber vivir lo bueno y el triunfo porque no vale solo con experimentarlo y ya está, pues el éxito tiene la trampa de hacernos creer que es eterno o que no merecemos menos. For its part, failure, difficulties, illness and death, contrary to what it seems, are what really teach us to live with a capital letter, because it focuses us on what is truly essential in life, not on its clothes and appearance. In this sense, I thank you, Lord, for the gift of being able to accompany my father in his last years. It has been the race of my life: a very hard experience, but truly valuable, loving and exciting. Thank you, Lord.
In the second letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul said: “we carry this treasure in clay vessels.” And the treasure that we are, the infinite mystery that we carry inside, as we live, we wrap it in layers and more layers and more layers to be able to live in society, so that our fragility is not noticed, so that it is not noticed that we are clay and that we can be damaged and, when we want to remember, we are lost and far from the treasure and mystery that we are. And the most precious thing and the greatest gift is to discover that God lives in our fragility; This is our greatest treasure. As we gradually remove our layers, we discover that we are a Mystery inhabited in clay vessels. And this is exactly what makes us put ourselves in our place and this is humility. Humility to walk barefoot in our lives and in the lives of others, slowly and silently because we are on sacred ground. God wants us like this, just how we are and how we are today and always made of clay but a clay with roots.
And to talk about roots is to continue talking about gratitude, because we are not here by personal initiative but by the mysterious plan of God who thought of us before the creation of the world. And he thought of us in a moment, in a place and in a family. Today I want to keep my roots in mind, but I also want yours to be present, since we are all a meeting of interwoven roots.
THANK YOU Lord for my family roots. Thank you for my parents, from whom my life came. They are my great treasure, an example of kindness and courage, struggle and acceptance of life as it comes, without expecting or making a problem of anything and an example of greatness due to their simplicity. THANK YOU for choosing them for me. THANK YOU dad and THANK YOU mom.
THANK YOU Lord for your presence in my life since I was so little... On those sleepless nights when you made my heart burn with your smiling and loving gaze; full of tenderness. Without a doubt they marked my life with fire, much more than everything I have been able to experience since. This is the reason why I am here today.
I take this opportunity to make a special mention of the sacred mystery that is children. They have incredible experiences, beyond what we adults can imagine; They are burning stories and laying fundamental pillars that will mark their lives forever. Let us value and care for the greatness of the little ones. “To those who are like children belongs the Kingdom of heaven”, “let the children come to me”. What greatness they were for Jesus!
Thank you Lord for my roots in the Institute of Daughters of Christ the King. This family in which I have found sisters and friends with whom to share and grow the vocation that you gave me. I thank you Lord for the sensitivity that characterizes us, for our way of seeing life and people, for how we are open and available to help each other as sisters, for the greatness of the mission that you trust in our small hands. Thank you also for the commitment we make, as an institutional family, to move forward and adapt to all times and the commitment to caring for our elders, starting with the family itself.
Jesus said in the Gospel: "Look at the birds of the air, they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns; and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than them?"
Supported by this evangelical text, I want to thank you, Lord, for the lives of our elders, those who no longer sow or reap because they have already given everything, they teach us what is truly valuable: the mystery of life in each person. They have given their lives day by day so that our today is better than what they themselves had. Just like we enjoyed it today, it was because of them. In this gratitude I include our older sisters, true pillars of our present in the Institute, who began our history being very few, without resources and with a lot of effort and physical work, supported by faith and the greatness of the vocation; That's how our elders are.
It is increasingly clear to me that, only by recognizing, honoring, caring for and dignifying our roots, will we be able to discover to what extent God blesses us today.
Thank you Lord for my roots in the Institute with my five beautiful twin girls, with whom I spent wonderful years that leave me speechless and that I carry engraved in my heart. Thank you for the gift you are for me, even sharing some different paths, we always enrich ourselves. I ask you for them, always the best.
THANK YOU for my community, which has accompanied me during these seven years of caring for my father until the end of his life, with attention and affection, providing everything he needed and supplying everything he did not have. THANK YOU, Ana and thank you sisters, from the bottom of my heart.
GRACIAS por mis amigos, los que acompañan mi vida cada día y a los que también tengo el privilegio de acompañar. “He who has a friend has a treasure” (Sir. 6,14-17), that is very clear to me and also that they are a gift and a blessing from you, Lord. Thank you for giving me friends who are family to me.
THANK YOU Lord for Juan Carlos, this silent friend who is an expert in welcoming and being, a being of quality and warmth, a being present in a society of rush and time against the clock, a being in the tough and the ripe, a being available and generous where what always counts is sharing who we are. Thank you, Juan Carlos.
THANK YOU for everything that 25 years have given, but, without a doubt, You, Lord, are the most valuable. With you everything makes sense to me. Even what seems negative at first, You transform it into an experience loaded with tools and resources that I later need to face the new things that come to me in life. I can only thank you for taking so much care of me, for having received what I am from you, through so many people you have put in my path. Thank you for continuing to give me the best people in the world, who are here today making this wonderful moment possible (I feel that those who are missing are united from the heart).
THANK YOU Lord and THANK YOU to each and every one from the bottom of my heart.
Hna. Pilar Vargas Medina. Grenade
