Today, Sunday, December 28, 2025, on the liturgical feast of the Holy Family, the Second Extraordinary Chapter of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Infant Jesus begins. In the morning, all the sisters arrived at the Barbara Micarelli Spirituality Center in Santa Maria degli Angeli. Unfortunately, the general councilor Sr. Mabel Rojas, visiting the family for the sudden death of her father, and Sr. Lilia Agnese Contini for health reasons are absent. In place of Sr. Lilia Agnese, Sr. Chiara Gemma Ibba was called to partecipate.
In the afternoon, we had an initial presentation in which each sister was invited to share what she felt was her “gift” to bring to the others in order to live these days fully and accompany each other in entering into the “here and now” of the Chapter. We then listened to the presentation by Fr. Alfredo Rava, OFM Cap. His talk called on the assembly to welcome the Chapter as a time of the Spirit and of discernment in which to allow ourselves to be guided by the interior attitude of Simeon as described in the Gospel of Luke (Lk 2:26-28). Simeon, moved by the Spirit, urges us to ask ourselves some questions: What motivates our days? With what wisdom do our eyes look at the past, the present, and the future? Are we able to embrace the essential of our life, which is Jesus, in our daily lives?
With these questions in our hearts and in this biblical perspective, the Chapter is a favorable time in which we are invited to make room for the new and to cherish what really matters: our vocation as women consecrated to following Christ, in communion with the Church and at the service of God’s people.
The afternoon culminated in the Eucharistic celebration presided over by Fr. Luciano De Giusti, OFM, in our Chapel of St. Anthony Retreat. The sisters from neighboring fraternities joined in the celebration, making the gift of being a family alive and visible. In his homily, Fr. Luciano compared the figures of Joseph and Herod as two opposite ways of living fatherhood. Generating life is a gift and a choice that St. Francis and Mother Maria Giuseppa also experienced every day, loving above all the fragility of their families. Sr. Maria Giuseppa wrote that her will was “to consecrate herself to the good of the poor, the orphans, and the abandoned”, and it is a powerful testimony for us to recognize that these words became her very portrait: at the end of her life, she was the poor, the abandoned. This can only be the most beautiful wish: to make our life a journey in which we become what we have always desired.
At the end of the Mass, the Superior General, Sister Lorella Veri, reads the official declaration of the opening of the Second Extraordinary General Chapter of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Infant Jesus, and together we ask for the help of the Holy Spirit so that we may seek the good of the Institute, the Church, and humanity.
