EMPYTING OURSELVES AND FILLING OURSELVES WITH HIM WHO IS VERY GOOD

Dear Friends,

We are entering the heart of a new pastoral year, and we do so in the month that tradition dedicates to Mary and the Holy Rosary. This year we will live the final stage of a three-year journey of spiritual formation that the Salesian Family has been undertaking together: joyful in hope with "Awaited by His Love", steadfast in faith with "Rise Up and Go", and now active in charity with "Signs of His Love." Over the coming months, until May, we will reflect on the fact that charity is the greatest value, the one that gives value to all others. It is the distinctive mark of the Christian, the summary of his entire life, of what he believes and of what he does.

Looking at the journey that will accompany us month by month, the first steps invite us to pause and reflect on charity as a whole, beginning with this issue's theme, "the horizon of charity." Charity as the name of God, as the ideal of the Christian, and as the ultimate meaning of all things. This will be followed by two stages focused on the generative and educational dimensions of charity, as lived within the family and in the education of the young. The journey will conclude by exploring the more traditional dimensions of Christian charity: proclamation of the Gospel, fraternity, service to the poor, and the gift of one's life, culminating in a final synthesis during the month of May, which tradition dedicates in a special way to Mary.

We live in a time when the word love is often emptied of its meaning, reduced to a passing feeling or a consumer good. The Gospel points us toward a different path. At the wedding at Cana, Mary teaches us to see, listen, choose, and act. In the washing of the feet, Jesus overturns the logic of giving in order to receive and shows us that true love is selfless service. In the parable of the Last Judgment, He reminds us that we will be judged on our concrete love for the weakest and most vulnerable. It is within this same horizon that Don Bosco wished to place our Association, calling it to be a family of lay people devoted to Mary and the Eucharist, capable of bearing witness to this love more through their lives than their words: in the family, at work, and in everyday service.

It is precisely from this perspective that the connection we cherish between charity and the gift of life arises, a theme to which the Family Alphabet column is dedicated. Let us ask the Lord to sustain spouses and families who, often against the current of contemporary culture, preserve this bond with courage and hope.

It is beautiful to see how ADMA lives out this charity throughout the world. In Guatemala, a national group has gathered online every Saturday for six years now to pray the Rosary together and entrust to Mary each person's joys and sorrows: a small yet beautiful school of lived charity.

Our heartfelt thanks also go to ADMA Slovenia, which has renewed its spiritual closeness to the entire community, accompanying it with a concrete gesture of assistance in support of the Association's worldwide animation activities.

Finally, in South Korea, the beautiful witness of those who, after years of service, made their promise before Mary reminds us that this charity continually takes on new faces. They are different expressions of the same charity that we will learn to know throughout the year.

In this spirit, we invite you to unite your prayers with this month's intention for the pastoral care of mental health: that the whole Church may know how to draw close, without stigma or discrimination, to those who bear this burden.

Let us entrust this new journey to Mary Help of Christians with the words of Saint Bernard:

"Let us go out from ourselves and enter into Him who is so good... let us look upon God and breathe in Him, so as to receive the joy and consolation of the Holy Spirit."

We wish everyone a blessed journey.

Fr. Luis Eugenio Vargas Isaza, SDB

(ADMA World Spiritual Animator)

Giuseppe Tufano

(President, ADMA Valdocco)