On Sunday, October 4, the Sisters from the communities of the María Rosa Molas Province participated in the webinar “Returning to Jesus and Returning to the Word,” organized by the Province Formation Team and led by Sr. Marta García, nsc, from the Province of Europe.
The gathering was an invitation to return to what is essential: Jesus and the Word as the source of life, healing, and the renewal of our relationships. From the beginning of the reflection, a fundamental conviction was highlighted: without relationships, we die as persons. Caring for people cannot be reduced to meeting needs or sustaining works; we are called to recover a way of relating that allows life to flourish once again.
Returning to Jesus to rediscover a new way of relating
Jesus introduces a new style of relationship. Therefore, returning to Him also means reviewing how we relate to God, to our Sisters, and to the people we accompany. The reflection invited us to recognize the risk of falling into assistentialism, which responds to needs but can forget the bond and the person.
In this sense, it was recalled that what remains in the memory of those who have shared life with us is not so much the works we have accomplished, but the way we have related to them.
The invitation was to create true ecosystems of sisterhood, spaces where listening, presence, care, and communion can sustain life. A challenging question was also raised: have we preferred to sustain works or to sustain life? And another, particularly meaningful for religious life: whose presence have we stopped noticing because we were too focused on management and efficiency?
Returning to the Word means returning to the origin
The Word was not presented simply as a text we must know, but as a voice we are invited to listen to, allowing us to encounter the One who continues to speak into our lives.
Returning to Jesus and returning to the Word therefore means returning to the origin and rediscovering what gives meaning to our vocation from our charismatic DNA. The experience of God does not close us in on ourselves, but sends us toward others. Those who drink from the source can themselves become a source for others.
From this perspective, to console is to give breath again, to help life return. Consoling means drawing near, listening, caring, encouraging, and helping a person recover life and dignity.
A charism born from relationship
The reflection also made it possible to rediscover the profound relational dimension of the charism of Saint María Rosa Molas. From its origins, the mission of Consolation has been linked to caring for life and recognizing the concrete face of each person.
The invitation was never to lose the presence of God or the presence of our brothers and sisters. In a world marked by loneliness, including within religious life, we are called to be women capable of inhabiting reality, drawing close to those who experience abandonment, and creating spaces where people can feel welcomed and accompanied.
Along this path, the woman who poured out the perfume before Jesus became a particularly meaningful image. She does not act driven by urgency or to solve an immediate need. She responds from an excess of love. Her gesture creates a space of encounter and self-giving.
Today, too, we are called to be “women of dawn,” women capable of sustaining hope, holding fast to the promise, and opening paths of life where it seems to be lacking.
The webinar concluded with an invitation to return to what is essential: returning to Jesus and returning to the Word in order to recover life, heal our relationships, and continue creating spaces of communion, sisterhood, and Consolation.