Inspiration, prospect, passion, shared dreams. A General Chapter is always “Kairos”, a renewed grace of God to help us discern the newness of that “new wine” that the Holy Spirit is preparing for us.
A precious opportunity, a new page that opens up in the history of our Congregation to creatively re-launch a spiritual revival, feeling more and more as a Church, called to live a new season of evangelical consistency, together with the laity, young people, in our communities, open to other Religious Congregations.

In the world, changes follow one another at a fast pace; yet there is a deep thirst for interior revitalization, capable of making us rediscover the savour and hope of a more
human life, founded on the faith and on the humanity of the Gospel.
We cannot continue our repetitive ways and let fatigue prevail. We will not find a humanizing interiority in books, in innovative pastoral plans or strategies or in the most current theologies.

Our interiority desires what the Lord’s grace gives through the liberation of the heart. We must return to listening to the heart. Heart as synonymous with conscience,
interiority, an interior place where God dwells, where the Holy Spirit moves and acts in us. (cf. Rom 5: 5)

On 19th November 1792, Don Luigi Libera wrote to Maddalena: “It would be of great glory to the Lord and of great advantage to the soul if you lived in the midst of this century with the heart of an enclosed nun”.

What does this mean today?
It means living each day trying to make God’s heart beat even through Canossian spirituality: a lifestyle that takes shape within the Spirit of Jesus’ humanity, remaining within our time, weaving relations of co-responsibility.

Throughout history, many daring and courageous Canossians have felt the strength of that inner fire. New hearts are needed which, moved by Magdalene’s “it means more”, wish to reconfigure themselves “by loving God with all their heart and their neighbour as themselves, imitating the life of our Lord Jesus Christ”. (UR, p.6)

Preparation for the General Chapter invites us to have this daring faith, to change our hearts so that the Canossian mission maybe relevant in our world where the cries of the poor, of young people without education and evangelization, become ever stronger.

May the Lord, who has done great things in St. Magdalene, St. Giuseppina Bakhita, M. Fernanda Riva, and in many other Canossian “saints next door”, grant us a faith capable of discerning interior callings and enter into the preparation of XVII General Chapter for the good of the Church and the world.