My name is Nicoletta. I am a lay missionary living in Ghana for the past twenty years in the service of the Word shared in communities, taught in the halls of a State University and encountered in the marginalised. I was, however, born in Rovereto (Italy), where the Congregatio Jesu has a long-standing presence. Through them, I was able to meet Mary Ward, a prophetic woman who was able to show us women the paths of proclamation and presence, unthinkable in the 16th century in which she lived, and difficult to realise even today. Looking to her, I believe that Women’s Consecrated Life is called, today more than ever, to return to its root, to abandon structures and works that have weighed down its pace and often diverted its path, in order to return to what is essential: Christ. Living for Him, with Him and in Him inevitably transforms one into a sign of contradiction, just as it happened to Jesus and Mary Ward.
The world needs small evangelical communities because they challenge the idols of economic, political, cultural, and ethnic power. Such communities are marginalised, persecuted and often crucified, but they continue boldly to proclaim the poor blessed, to proclaim a Messiah who entered in solidarity with the defeated by identifying with them. The world needs communities capable of renouncing all forms of power, capable of embracing the logic of humility, preferring dialogue to injunction, the risk of openness to death by asphyxiation.
In a world divided by conflict, fear and loneliness, IBVM and CJ’s becoming “one” testifies to the power of communion: God makes himself encounterable in a community built in love, justice and peace. My wish, then, is that you never will embrace the logic of power and the virus of division to be as Mary Ward dreamed you would be: a foretaste of the Kingdom, an extension of Jesus’ humanity in history, a sign of hope in a wounded world.
Thank you for what you are: a GIFT!
