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Reckless Love   Sister Barbara McMullen       “Overwhelming, undeserving, reckless love of God for me” are the lyrics to a song I heard last summer while attending Mass at a neighboring parish. Something stirred within me as I heard that song sung and it has stayed with me ever since. I’m not exactly sure why, and yet as I awakened this morning, thinking about my article for this Global Connections, these were the words once again in my mind and heart as I slowly opened my eyes. What is it God that you want said? I’ve learned over the years to pay attention to these little signs. As we begin a new year of Global Connections the Congregational Leadership Team has chosen this line from our Directional Statement as our theme: “caring for creation and the vulnerable on the periphery.” God has been revealing God’s overwhelming love, beauty and goodness from the very beginning of the natural world.  As Genesis 1:31 says: “God looked at everything God had made and found it very good.”  Through all of creation we see God’s grandeur and beauty in so many varieties of species, in the land, in the sky and the stars, and in human beings as well.  In the time just before dawn we see the dark lighten, a bit of pink peeks into the edge of the night, and soon the sky is golden with the sun’s rays and the azure sky beckons us into a new day.  This is the “book of nature” in all its finest.  The theologian and mystic, Evelyn Underhill writes:  “The very meaning of Creation is seen to be an act of worship, a devoted proclamation of the splendor, the wonder, and the beauty of God.  In this great Sanctus, all things justify their being and have their place.” And yet, as human creatures we often fail to recognize the overwhelming, undeserving, reckless love of God for us.  We fail to understand how we are all connected and that connectedness is really fundamental to our reality.  Our own ecological crises stem from this notion that we are separate from, better than, or even more important than other members of creation.  We forget that relationships are key to our very existence, and as the Synod tried to teach us, our vitality depends on our capacity for communion with the other.  In his message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, September 1, 2023, Pope Francis said:  “In order to grow as a people, we need to harmonize our own rhythms of life with those of creation, which gives us life.” ........................ To read the full text, see the attachment ...........................  

December 1, 2023   Dear Sisters and Associates,     Advent, the beginning of a new liturgical Church year, offers us the opportunity to once again look at our spiritual life and growth. For many of us it awakens us to a realization that the kingdom of God is upon us. Now. Right now. It is a time afforded us to reflect on how God comes to us, speaks to our heart, and challenges us to simply “be” in God’s love. Advent’s waiting trains us in essential patience. The virtues of hope, love, joy and peace in these four weeks remind us that we can share these gifts with a weary, hurting world. To do that we must be open to the invitations of grace God sends us. Pope Francis has emphasized often that we should not delay in seeking God, but should seize the present moment. The present, after all, is where we live and where God finds us. Recently I was reminded of the movie, The Dead Poets Society, starring the late Robin Williams as Mr. Keating.  He is an English teacher who tries to inspire a love for literature in boys of privilege.  Mr. Keating challenges his students’ indifference toward poetry with this lesson: “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute.  We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.  And the human race is filled with passion.  And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life.  But poetry, beauty, love, these are what we stay alive for.  To quote from Whitman, ‘O me!  O life!...of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless…of cities filled with the foolish; what good amid these, o me, o life?  Answer:  That you are here—that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse.’  What will your verse be?” As we travel through the four weeks of Advent, we might ask ourselves, as Mr. Keating asked his students, “What then will my verse be in this powerful play called life?”  How will I be a verse of hope, of joyful anticipation, a beacon of light in the darkness?  Will the verse of my life reflect love and peace?  Will my words, smiles, heart and presence be the one verse that will affect another’s life?  In answering the question “what is our purpose in life,” Whitman says, “that life exists, that we exist, that we are here.” As Providence women and men, I hope our verse will be a canticle of thanksgiving and praise, a litany of all the ways our Provident God has blessed us and continues to do so each day.  I wish each of you a happy and holy Advent!  I wish for the verse of your life to echo through the land and give glory for “God-with-us,” as we sing: “O Come, O Come Emmanuel. In God’s loving Providence, Sr. Barbara McMullen Congregational Leader

September 29, 2023   Dear Sisters and Associates,     Today we celebrate the 172nd anniversary of our Foundation Day! Celebrations are those wonderful times when we celebrate the moments of life that bring with them a sense of what it means to be our truer and deeper selves. Today we celebrate the great moments of the faith of two holy people, Bishop Ketteler and Mother Marie, who have given us a legacy of light, trust, and hope.  Through their lives they have taken us deeper into what Providence means and given us the sacred task of making Providence visible in the world of our day.  What we do today, how we live today is built on the foundation they gave us.  Together their lives, down through the centuries, have formed and shaped us.  They are the voices we hear in our hearts.  They tie us to our past, but they also free us to find a newer, better future because of the wisdom we have learned from them. The prophet Isaiah tells us: “Remember not the former things nor consider the things of old.  Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”  Today we have many opportunities to embark on new and challenging adventures.  As we know, Providence sometimes takes us in surprising and unexpected directions.  The good thing is that we don’t travel this journey alone.  Together we can grow in our understanding of each other, learn more about interculturality, participate in the challenges that come through our Laudato Si Commission to care for our common home, and share our resources among the congregation. As you read this letter, the Congregational Leadership Team, the Provincials and Mission Director are meeting in Lima, Peru for our annual Board meeting.  On September 29 we are dedicating the new building in Peru and celebrating with our Peruvian Sisters another Foundation Day celebration!  How appropriate that we are there at the beginning of a new venture for them.  Who knows what Providence has in store for their future and ours, too! With the wisdom of Bishop Ketteler, Mother Marie, and our first pioneering Sisters supporting us, we can see these moments of life with new eyes.  That vision for the new will reveal itself slowly, perhaps, but it will surely spring forth.  When those moments come, they will astound us, transform us, and shout out to us and all that Providence is the very foundation of our lives, here and now, and forever. Happy Foundation Day! Sr. Barbara Sr. Barbara McMullen Congregational Leader

“Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18: 20)   Sister Rosa Eunsoon Kim     On the days when the verse of Matthew 18:20 is proclaimed at Mass, it is common in Korea to sing the following hymn, “Where two or three are gathered together, there is the Lord.  We gather here to share love and hope. Come, O Lord, bless us, and we will spread your joy to the whole world.”  The song, indeed, is asking to bless us who believe that we can get through the harsh realities and an uncertain future as the Lord is with us. With that, it gets me thinking that the verse tells us what should be our attitude towards our efforts to live out the 24th Congregational Directional Statement.  I can’t help but add that God’s blessing alone doesn’t work without our efforts, as all of us know, for it is collaboration between God’s blessing and our efforts to accomplish the Statement.  In other words, I would like to emphasize that we are responsible for half of the result whatever it turns out to be.  There is a term called “Critical Mass.”  The term relates to the smallest amount of fissionable material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction and now it is used for the monthly event being held in over 300 cities around the world.  Critical Mass-like bike tours with hundreds of participants took place in Stockholm, Sweden in the early 1970s.  Since it began as bike tours similar to the type of Critical Mass on September, 1992, in San Francisco, however, it is said that the term has been used as “the minimum number of people needed to initiate some actions.” I think, therefore, that the verse itself, “Where two or three are gathered together, there am I in the midst of them” and the meaning of Critical Mass seem to have something in common.  In this sense, I feel that even if we, “as a congregation,” have only two or three members taking steps to accomplish the Chapter Directional Statement, and continually carrying it out, it will work.  It also reminds me of the verse from the bible, “Though your beginning was small, your future will flourish indeed.” (Job 8,7). Let us take a hard look at ourselves moving toward transformation as a congregation at this critical juncture in our history.  And let us humbly ask God to be with us as we ourselves reflect, as a member of the critical mass, what we who have gathered together in the congregation in the name of Jesus have accomplished and what we could do further. Asking the blessing for the congregation and for ourselves, I would like to share with you once again the 24th Congregational Chapter Directional Statement. “Impelled by the spirit of Jesus Christ, who is Providence incarnate, and faithful to our charism and mission, we, the sisters of Divine Providence, commit ourselves to:  actualizing intercultural living based on a growing understanding of each other through creative ways, particularly technology; caring for creation and the vulnerable on the periphery; sharing our resources transparently and collaboratively.” ................................. To read the full text, see the attachment.......................   image: www.google.com

Founders’ Day Letter 2023 Bishop William Emmanuel von Ketteler—July 13 Mother Marie de la Roche—August 1   Dear Sisters and Associates,   As I began to write this letter, I pondered the question: “What really makes a good founder?” In thinking about many successful companies today, immediately I thought of vision, passion, a sense of purpose. Stories of successful founders seem to begin with some inciting incident, a mission of sorts—wanting to change the world, make it better for others, answer a need. The power of the founder’s story transforms principles, values, and need into action. It becomes the thread running through the story and then compels others to join, to want to support it, and to find ways to sustain it. That’s exactly the story of our founders, Bishop Ketteler and Mother Marie. They had a vision, they saw a need, they wanted to respond to the signs of their times with a presence, a compassion, a sense of purpose that down through the years compelled others to join them.  Thus our story began and continues to this present day.  So in this letter I want to share some “threads” from our founders that continue to weave through our own story.  Bishop Ketteler said: “If we could only glimpse into the inner substance and spirit of the situations that come up in our lives, situations that often seem so insignificant and accidental, we might often recognize the all-loving will of God, his boundless mercy, hidden and concealed under these inconspicuous forms…Now I am beginning to get an overview of the work that God has entrusted to me within my calling.” I would venture to say that each of us has looked into situations in our lives and tried to see God’s purpose in them for ourselves.  The God of Providence beckons us, just like Bishop Ketteler and Mother Marie, to listen, to be attentive, to seek out the poor, the sick, the unloved, because that is where the very face of God is in our world.  That is how we continue the story …the living of our charism of trust, of openness to the possibilities to which this world, this time, this hour is calling us.  It is the courageous and risk-taking spirit of Bishop Ketteler and Mother Marie’s compassionate and loving heart alive within us and in our Congregation that compels us forward.  Perhaps a lesser known but powerful quote of Mother Marie’s is: “It was our Provident God who cast fire into my soul, the fire that burns, elevates and gives the strength to overcome.”  We know some of what she had to overcome in her life.  Converting to Catholicism she knew would wreak havoc in her family, but she did.  Becoming a woman religious and being asked to lead a small group of German peasant women couldn’t have been easy, but she did.  Dealing with Fr. Autsch’s abuse of power and being deposed so unjustly had to have hurt deeply, but she complied.   It took a great amount of strength and trust in Providence to endure these things, but she did.  Today it is that fire in her spirit alive in us that will help us give our very best efforts to whatever we are asked to do.  It is her “thread” woven through our lives that will give us courage to work for justice, speak truth to power, and treat others with dignity, respect, and love.  As Sister Joan Albaugh wrote in the Volume 2 Book of Hours, today we strive “to discern her spirit in its very essentials, and make it our own.” I end this reflection on founders, Sisters and Associates, with a prayer for each of us and our Congregation: Provident God, we are mindful of the spirit of our Founders, Bishop Ketteler and Mother Marie de la Roche.  Give us their courage, the courage of our first Sisters, and the continued strength of every generation of Sisters that have followed them.  Open our hearts and memories to the creativity of our early Sisters as they used all that they possessed to make God’s Providence visible. “Impelled by the Spirit of Jesus Christ” and believing that Providence and each other have been and continue to be the gift we share with God’s people, we place ourselves in Your hands.  With Jesus as our companion, assist us in our efforts to celebrate and proclaim who we are, where we come from, and where we still hope to go.  Amen.   May the God of Providence and Possibilities continue to guide us! Sr. Barbara McMullen Congregational Leader   Sources:  Adaptations from these two volumes Book of Hours—Vol. 1:  A Celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Our Founders Book of Hours—Vol. 2:  A Celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the Birth of Our Co-Founder  

Trinity Sunday, 2023   Dear Sisters and Associates,     Whenever I think about the Trinity, it feels like I’m involved in a mathematical problem from the old “Progress in Arithmetic” book. Math, like the Trinity, was often a mystery to me. God bless my math teachers and their patience with me over the years. Give me an essay to write, but keep me away from figuring out anything about the thought problems in that book! There are two things I remember learning about the Trinity in a theology class taught by Fr. Anthony Padavano at Seattle University.   First, the Trinity is a great mystery about God, and perhaps understanding this mystery is less important than asking why this mystery is so important to our faith.   What does it mean to us that God is three in one?  This point was addressed in a quote from the philosopher Martin Buber who wrote: “In the beginning was relationship.”  Fr. Padavano went on to say that the single word “relationship” is at the heart of what the Trinity means and that early church theologians described the Trinity as a dynamic dance of love between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It is a mystery that discloses something very simple about God – that God, in the very depths of his being, is relationship.  God is love.  There is nothing more simple or basic than love.  And love doesn’t exist in isolation.  God is not an isolated, contained being.  God’s nature is to be communal.   The one being of God is the interrelationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  And God wants to be in relationship with us!  We are meant to be a community of love. Because God is relationship, love is not an optional extra for believers, and certainly not for us as people of Providence.  Today we also celebrate Divine Providence Sunday.  As Sisters and Associates of Divine Providence, this feast has local and global expectations for each of us.  The Trinity demands of us real relationship, availability, responsibility, care, compassion, and a heart of love that permeates all that we are and all that we do.  Providence invites us to be a loving and life-enhancing gift to those God puts in our path.  To stand with them in their pain, weep with them in their grief, rejoice with them in their good news, stand up with them against oppressive systems, shine the light of justice on those who misuse power, speak out about our groaning earth, and speak for those whose voices are silenced.  Aren’t these the very things we wrote about in our Congregational Chapter Directional Statement?  In John’s Gospel, we hear about the magnitude of God’s love: that God so loved the world that God became one of us to save us from sin and death.  We are so loved that God, as the Creator, made us in His own image.  God loves us so much that God the Son became one of us and died for us to conquer sin and death.  God loves us so much that God the Holy Spirit remains with us to help us to become holy, as God is holy.  All of this speaks of the loving relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:  God as Trinity, lives in a community of love, three persons, one God.      No image, no metaphor, no experience can exhaust the meaning of God.  God is three and God is one.  God is all and in all.  God is not alone.  God is love.  Maybe the math equation, 1+1+1=1, isn’t so difficult to understand after all!  On this feast of the Holy Trinity and Divine Providence Sunday, may we rejoice at the gift of life and love that has been so freely offered us.   In God’s loving Providence, Sr. Barbara Sister Barbara McMullen Congregational Leader

SYNODALITY, PARTICIPATION, COMMUNION   Sister Mary Francis Fletcher   For several years we have all been reading about, and some have been engaged in, the Church’s synodal process, established by Pope Francis in preparation for the Synod on Synodality. As I have pondered all that Pope Francis is trying to do for the Church, I have felt that his call to enter fully into the synodal journey is also key to our future. In his talks and writings, Pope Francis calls us to pastoral conversion, which lives out the model of Church as the “People of God.” It flows from Vatican II, from Lumen Gentium, which, since then, has been the major focus of many other Church documents and teachings. Reading the descriptions of “pastoral conversion,” I believe it is exactly what we also have been seeking and working toward within our community.  The 2007 conference of CELAM, the Latin American Bishops Conference, described “pastoral conversion” as “an attitude of openness, dialogue and availability to promote co-responsibility and effective participation...”  Pastoral conversion calls all believers to participate collaboratively in discernment, planning, decision-making and implementation, united as one in serving the Mission of Jesus. What could greater synodality, pastoral conversion, mean for us now?  Are we called to the same co-responsibility, to openness and dialogue, to involvement in discernment and decision-making, within the community and in our ministries among God’s people?  What have we already done?  What is God asking today?  How does synodality, full participation in offering our gifts and insights, lead us to communion, to be the presence of Jesus, for our world today? Looking back, I could see the ways we lived synodality within our community, especially at times of rapid change, at times which required everyone’s participation in seeing the need and determining the future.  I don’t want to stop with that though.  I want to call us now to a new level of engagement, deeper synodality, stronger co-responsibility, for our future and for the Mission of Jesus? Before Vatican II, our governance structures were organized in such a way that the community’s leaders, at each level, were primarily responsible for the discernment, direction and decision-making in the congregation.  This former style of governance freed the Sisters for service of others through the ministries to which each one was assigned, freed each one to witness God’s care through her relationships and service, in community and in ministry.  This way of structuring ourselves was the norm for the first 120 years or so of our congregation’s life as women of Providence.  It was appropriate for those times.  And as with the Church, by the 1960’s new ways of living and serving were required because the world for decades had been learning, developing and evolving while little change had taken place within the Church or in religious communities.  The signs of the times called for “aggiornamento,” to allow the winds of the Spirit to blow through and bring us into a new era. Following the Second Vatican Council and its new interpretations, in 1968, our leaders held an extraordinary Chapter to begin to explore and address the Council’s call to us and to all religious communities.  In 1970 an ordinary Chapter followed in which the Sisters sought to reorient our congregation’s life and structures, to begin experimentation and study, all based on those new understandings.  In these two “change” Chapters, the delegates took to heart the new theology and ecclesiology, the new teachings and challenges which came from Vatican II.  In the more than fifty years which have followed, we have deepened spiritually, grown intellectually, matured psychologically and been strengthened in many other ways.  Our spirit, charism and mission remained the same as it had been in the beginning, though our expression of these evolved with each new era.  Over these years, we have grown tremendously in recognizing our baptismal call, our equality as disciples of Christ, and our appreciation for the spiritual gifts of grace given to each of us.  More conscious of our personal and communal charisms, we have offered ourselves within and beyond our community for the emerging needs of our times, our cultures and our universe. During these years, we imagined more horizontal and circular types of leadership.  We broadened the ways each member could be engaged in dialogue, discernment and decision-making.  Through opportunities for education, ongoing spiritual growth, greater sharing of information and increased participation in meetings and conversations, we have been able to participate in processes of setting our congregation’s direction and co-creating our world anew.  During the 1970’s, from the study of our history and charism, from returning to original sources of our founding and a greater knowledge of our founders, we worked collaboratively to write new Constitutions and a General Directory.  In the years which followed, participation by more delegates and strong Chapter commitments emerging from prayer and reflection, listening and sharing, focused us ever-forward.  Our Chapter statements were on justice, internationality, the signs of the times, ministry to the poor, leadership, charism and our spirituality of Providence.  In 1990 we heard a call for “a total and radical refounding” through adapting “the expression of our charism and mission to the circumstances of contemporary society.”  That Chapter direction called us to “change, risk-taking, radical personal and communal conversion, a renewed vision that shapes a future of hope … based on the gospel and tradition given to us by Bishop Ketteler and Mother Marie.” It also included a commitment to a “participatory style of governance… built on the shared responsibility of all members.”  Every new statement and Chapter mandate flowed from stronger desires and deeper calls to grow spiritually, to develop and strengthen our communal living and our witness of Providence, to respond to the needs of others in Mission. Our 2022 Chapter Statement, emphasizes many of the same values and goals.  It’s like a spiral.  We have worked at these ideals over and over; we have made many efforts to grow, learn, deepen, to be the women God calls us to be, personally and communally.  Yet there is always more to be done:  to try again, to listen more contemplatively, to speak more honestly, to act more courageously, to be more fully involved, for the sake of our lived witness of Jesus’ Mission.  And the world in which we live, as it changes, calls us to new perspectives, to tap new resources, to see new ways to offer our gifts to meet the ever-emerging needs. Our awareness has shifted now, so that it is not internationality that needs to grow, but interculturality.  We want to do more to appreciate and value the cultures, histories, life experiences, and particular ways of each Sister and each country from which she comes.  We want to know one another more fully, to understand each other through the holistic lens of culture, as well as through our generational and individual diversity.  The Chapter Mandate of 2022 calls us to this commitment; true unity and communion requires us to go beyond ourselves toward others.  As we begin to make new opportunities available for learning and sharing together, it is very important for each Sister to accept these invitations.  Shared efforts can enrich all of us in greater communion with one another.  We hope to become more open to others and better prepared to offer ourselves and our service of unmet needs.  Our efforts will only be as successful as the openness and willingness of each one of us, to take part, to engage in the available opportunities, to show up, and to give time and effort to the deeper conversations.  In 1985, we recognized our participation as “co-creators with our God, by showing the face of Providence to our world and by building a future based on Christian hope.”  We heard the challenge from Mother Marie and our first Sisters “to confront creatively the problems and issues of our times.”  We acknowledged our desire for every member to see herself as “integral” to community governance and, in the Chapters which followed, many times, delegates emphasized the need for new models of governance, for new structures which would allow greater shared responsibility based on the principles of subsidiarity, accountability, consensus and collegial decision-making.  Now we have a 2022 decision to “recommend potential governance structures to fit the congregation’s present needs and future reality.”  We cannot fulfill our chapter goals and decisions without strong synodality, without the presence and participation of each Sister to the level of her capability, without the engagement of every one of us.  Genuine encounters with each other enrich us as we listen and learn, as we discern the movement of God’s Spirit among us, and as we reach decisions which require us to be mutually accountable to and for one another.  Listening intently, sharing fully, and entrusting each other with our insights, brings us into deeper understandings of one another and helps us to experience God’s desires for our shared future.  These experiences give us the courage to take risks together, to do something new, to allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit, and they draw us as one into deep communion, united in Christ, for the sake of Mission Synodality has been part of our growth and development, our desire and effort for many decades.  We know our world is evolving ever faster.  It’s often hard to keep up, to understand what is happening and the why of it.  Participation with one another helps us to see that while much has changed, we are grounded in the truth that our God of Providence loves us, that the Spirit of God guides us, and that we are called to “live as Jesus did, always striving to do God’s will.”  These ways of assuming responsibility together, for our future, bring us to true communion, as one in the community of Divine Providence, as one in the Body of Christ.  Join us in this journey of synodality, participation and communion! ..................To read the full text, see the attachment.................   image: www.google.com  

Easter 2023 Dear Sisters and Associates,     Here we are at the end of our Lenten journey.  I hope that you have had time to reflect upon your inner landscape and had many encounters with the Holy One.  As we begin this Holy Week, I hope that your heart’s landscape received many invitations of grace that now prepare you to celebrate the Risen Jesus on the great feast of Easter.  In the readings for Tuesday of Holy Week we hear Isaiah (49:6 ) call us “to be a light to the nations.” That reminded me of a story I heard at a retreat once.  I do not know who the author is, but here is the story.  “What does it really mean to be light?  One of the most wonderfully crafted understandings shared by the people of Jesus’ time had to do with sight.  It was thought that, at the very center of every person, in the middle of the body, was an actual fire.  This fire burned in the heart.  Of course, fire always casts a light, and the light from the fire in one’s heart filled a person’s chest, worked its way up the neck, and went into the head.  Eventually this light came out of the body through the eyes, illuminating the world, and in such a way, a person became able to see.  All light, however, was not the same:  the quality of the light that came through the eyes took its nature from the quality of the heart in which the fire burned.  For the Jewish person, to be in touch with the fire in one’s heart meant to be in touch with one’s relationship with Yahweh, and so the more God was the center of your life, the stronger your fire burned.  The brighter the light that was cast from your eyes, the better you could see the world, and the better others could see the world because of the light that came from you.  For Jesus, then, it was a matter of quality—that light cast from his disciples’ eyes had the quality of God-light—it had come from a pure heart.” So, if we are to “be a light to the nations,” we need to be sure that the fire burning in our hearts is God-light.  If we are going to be a light for the nations, then we must work to push back the darkness of war, violence, hatred, racism, betrayal, hurt.  If we are going to be a light we must hunger and thirst for justice, proclaim the Gospel of life and charity, and let forgiveness rise up within us.  This is the “heart fire” that leads us to Resurrection—to Christ, our Light.  This is the “heart fire” of mission and charism for us as bearers of Providence.  In a reading titled: The Signs by Colleen Gibson, SSJ she says: “Hope does not erase reality, negate uncertainty.  Hope feels your pulse and tells you, you are still alive, that the sun will rise, that Christ is risen, and so must you.  Rise to the call of new life, not just for you but for all.  …This is our moment to live, to shine, to hope and to know that no matter what happens,…our hope will call us onward to stand together face to face and heart to heart, and together, our lives will be the signs of a new hope dawning for one and for all.” May God fill your hearts with such a deep fire that your light will be the visible face of Providence in a world in need of compassion and love.  May that light be transformative for us, both individually, and as a congregation so that we walk boldly and courageously into our future.  Happy Easter from your Congregational Leadership Team!  Christ is Risen, Alleluia! With love and blessings, Sr. Barbara McMullen Congregational Leader

INTERCULTURALITY, A WAY OF WITNESSING PROVIDENCE TO A BROKEN WORLD   Sister Maria Youngmi Kim   Our congregation, up until today since its foundation, has developed as an international religious institute, striving to live out our charism of “trust in and openness to the Providence of God” throughout its history. We have done our best to respond to the needs of the times following the footsteps of Bishop Ketteler, our founder, as reflected in the congregational Mission Statement and the Chapter Directional Statement. As interculturality has been specifically one of the major topics of the congregation for several years, at the Chapter in 2022 we decided to achieve intercultural growth among us by deepening cultural understanding through conversations and to fulfill our mission by establishing intercultural living communities. How can we grow interculturally and furthermore to accomplish our mission as an intercultural congregation? We have tried to have a basic understanding of interculturality and stressed intercultural living, but in reality many of us are still unfamiliar with the concept of interculturality. Most of us think it is nothing to do with us. As four international commissions are formed according to the decision of the Chapter, and three of them are closely related to interculturality, I have spent more time in reflecting on interculturality. Now I have an awareness that we should explore intercultural living and mission as Sisters of Divine Providence. That is, interculturality itself is not the goal but only one of the means (or the most efficient means) to carry out our mission, based on our spirit and charism at present as well as in the years to come. mutual respect and understanding.  We are not the same even though we are born in the same ethnic group in the same country.  Even our siblings are different.  Then how different are those who belong to different cultures?  As we have different cultural backgrounds – we are from Germany, North America, Peru, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, and Korea, we are intrinsically diverse and different.  Nevertheless, we pursue oneness as we belong to one religious congregation.  We have continued our mission for more than 170 years since we share the common legacy of the same founders, founding spirit, and charism.  We have strived to make God’s Providence visible based on these commonalities.  What kind of efforts should we make in order to exalt God’s Providence in this rapidly changing and challenging world? And how can we transmit our legacy to the coming generations?  What witness can we give to a broken and conflicted world where we are easily influenced and closely interconnected?  As described in the Mission Statement, we should “be God’s loving face to all creation” united in Providence and live like Jesus, who is Providence Incarnate.  Jesus did not exclude anyone.  He was open to everyone and embraced even strangers, sinners and pagans at his table.  I think one of the ways of resembling Jesus is to try intercultural living and mission. In order to appreciate difference and to embrace all, we should gather together around the table as Jesus did with his followers. When we begin conversations and come to know one another, we can find something common or different in us.  Then we can continue to strengthen our commonalities – our shared spirit and charism – and improve our understanding of others who are different from us, resulting in embracing others with appreciation and respect. One benefit Covid-19 brought to us is enabling us to meet virtually beyond time and distance.  Why don’t we meet more frequently “through creative ways, particularly technology”?  The more frequently we meet, I believe, the warmer we welcome each other beyond the language barriers. Hopefully many of you Sisters will want to join in these conversations!  In ancient days, people tried to “build a tower with its top in the sky and so make a name for themselves and the Lord made them confused with their language and scattered them all over the earth” (c.f. Genesis 11, 4. 7-8).  Now, however, it is time for us to be reunited in God, according to His will as Jesus prayed, “Holy Father, may they be one just as we are.”(Jn 17, 11) Let us be Providence women/persons who give witness to the world that we can be one by appreciating those who are different from us with understanding and respect coming from our loving hearts. ........................ To read the full text, see the attachment................   image: www.google.com    

Lent 2023   Dear Sisters and Associates,     It hardly seems possible that Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are upon us!   As I begin this letter, I am looking out the window of my office here at the Generalate and at the landscape before me.  I began to think about our inner landscape and ponder how we might ready our heart’s landscape for the invitations of grace that may come our way during this Lenten season. God invites us to drop any defenses that we may hold up between ourselves and God.  What might be the shackles around us, within us, keeping us from a free landscape?  God offers an entire lifetime of loving us unconditionally, no matter what we have done or think we have hidden from God.  The landscapes we live in shape us.  The landscape of our community has shaped each one of us.  In community we’ve each had transformative experiences…perhaps in the chapel, out for a walk, sitting in vigil beside a Sister’s bed as she makes the journey homeward to God…in our own prayer space.  No doubt we have had moments of encountering the Holy One.  That encounter shapes our dreams and desires and points us in a holy direction.  Our mission and charism shape our response as well.  Our Provident God is loving, insistent, and gently prodding us to come, to listen, to open our heart’s landscape so that we may be embraced as God’s Beloved, for that is who we are.  So what is necessary to ready the landscape?  God asks for cooperation, acceptance, surrender.  God invites us, listens to our questions, graces our responses, and awaits our free, loving, yes.  God asks us to give our mind and heart to the human needs of all people.  Our Provident God invites us to live lives deeply grounded in the life and teachings of Jesus, to let go of fear and uncertainty and to live in the freedom of a true daughter or son of Providence.  But how often do we turn back?  Can we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus and follow as He leads?  Can we accept God’s grace that is essential to help make it possible to “not turn back?” Jesus did not turn back; in fact, he readied his own landscape as his life unfolded.  He was grounded in love.  It called him to be authentic, to be true to his message and his witness of the immense compassion of God and the strength of God’s relationship with us.  In the Scriptures we hear how Jesus emptied himself, humbled himself, became obedient, even to the point of death.  He accepted death, which was really the result of all those untruths, judgments and fears.  Yet Jesus remained faithful in love and truth.  It’s difficult to imagine the level of trust Jesus had in his Father.  But we can heed the lesson of Jesus’ trust, of his patient suffering for the sake of salvation, ours and others.  Jesus calls us to follow him to the cross, and through the cross, as we journey to witness God’s power in Jesus and in us who believe.  We know how Jesus’ story ends.  We have the gift of time and history to know it.  We cannot yet know the end of the story of our faithfulness, our own authenticity, our own sharing in the suffering of Jesus and the saving of others.  Time and history will tell that story long after we are gone.  But Sisters and Associates, we can most assuredly trust the end of the story and hope in God’s Providential presence, mercy, compassion and salvation in each of our lives.  For the sake of our wounded world, the suffering in Ukraine, the mass shootings, and in other landscapes across the globe, we must ready our landscape to be a healing presence wherever we are.  The late Pope Benedict XVI said:  “We are needed, we are willed, we are loved.”  That is true for each of us!  During this Lenten season, let us unshackle whatever might be binding us and keeping our landscape dry and barren.  Let our Lenten landscape become lush and green and free.  May each of us find our true inner landscape and fall into the heart of God. With love and blessings, Sr. Barbara McMullen Congregational Leader