Promoters of the revolution of tenderness of the Child Jesus.

A few days ago, I had the grace of being able to make a spiritual retreat. You, dear women of WUCWO, were always present in my prayers; I prayed for your intentions and gave thanks for your gifts and riches. I was able to do so in a retreat house a few kilometres north of Rome, run by an international community of religious sisters. These sisters, coming from different continents, with their different languages, reminded me of the diversity of faces and cultures that characterise our meetings: assemblies, Board meetings, regional conferences, live-streamed formation meetings.

I would like to tell you that I offered to our Father God the life of your organisations on the paten of the altar every day and I renewed my desire to serve WUCWO, by the hand of Mary, our Mother. In her divine Providence, we are weaving together a plot that will contribute to intensify the maternal face of the Church for today's world. Today, our path to holiness passes through making present the tenderness of God as a light in the midst of darkness, that gives warmth, heals, gathers, and gives life.

“I would stress too – said the Pope - that the “genius of woman” is seen in feminine styles of holiness, which are an essential means of reflecting God’s holiness in this world. Indeed, in times when women tended to be most ignored or overlooked, the Holy Spirit raised up saints whose attractiveness produced new spiritual vigour and important reforms in the Church. [...] I think too of all those unknown or forgotten women who, each in her own way, sustained and transformed families and communities by the power of their witness” (GE, 12).

In this month of December, when we will celebrate a new Christmas, allow me to call your organisations and members to be promoters of the revolution of tenderness that the Child Jesus is coming to bring us. I am convinced that the 8 million women belonging to all WUCWO organisations are called by the Holy Spirit to manifest that tenderness that revolutionises with the Gospel, that transforms our families and communities with the power of our testimony and that cooperates in the conversion of our countries and regions.

A group of women from the Latin American and Caribbean region, with whom we recently held the first online seminar on institutional communication, decided to work together to promote an Advent Campaign through social networks, entitled: The Faces of God's Tenderness. I invite you to collaborate in this campaign, sending to the secretariat, during the first week of this month, photos of actions of your organisations that show the face of God's tenderness. From the following week, you will be able to find in our networks a selection of the photos sent for this Advent Campaign that you will be able to share in your own social networks, websites, magazines, brochures, posters, Christmas cards, etc.

This spreading, through the Advent Campaign, of the actions of our organisations manifesting the tenderness of God with us, of Emmanuel, will not only expand the perfume of Bethlehem in our environment - which has often forgotten the authentic meaning of Christmas - but will also strengthen the commitment of each one of our organisations, throughout the planet, to carry forward the revolution of tenderness. We are projecting a kind of fabric with threads of different colours that intertwine to form a single face: that of the tenderness of the Child God.

My wish for this Christmas 2019 is that each one of us will walk towards the manger and meet the open arms of the Child who is waiting for us to renew his personal covenant. He will give full meaning to Jeremiah's prophecy: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you came to birth I consecrated you" (Jer 1:5). At his feet, let us raise our gaze, let us set our eyes on his and he will give us his tenderness, that which always fills us with joy and which we must feed with our actions. Like Mary, let us embrace that Little Child who wishes to transform our heart to impel us to the revolution of tenderness. Merry and Holy Christmas!

Message by the President General

María Lía Zervino, Servidora