Hajja Salesjana April-June 2022

My dear friends, readers of the Salesian Bulletin around the world, As I write these lines to you, the media worldwide are giving, minute by minute, almost instantaneous news of the terrible war that is taking place in Ukraine. I am convinced that the vast majority of the Russian people do not want to do harm to anyone. Indeed, I think that most of us agree in describing what is happening in that land blessed by God as being terrible, unimaginable, and unbelievable in the 21st century, calling it total madness and a true genocide. The thought of how we would feel if we were living that reality must, I suppose, fill us with sadness and shake us. The sad reality is that, yet again, evil makes noise, destroys things and people, brings death, skews human lives, breaks families apart, etc. The good—so much good and solidarity—that we are witnessing even while rockets and long-range projectiles fall, is all done silently. This good tries to mitigate the pain, wipe the tears and provide human warmth. The human heart is capable of this, too. In situations such as these, we see the worst of human nature and the greatest beauty of the human heart simultaneously. We are witnesses to a living Gethsemane and Calvary. Let us hope also to see the Resurrection of this country and its people. This very thing happened during that first “Holy Week” —with those who betrayed Jesus and in His pain, death sentence, silence, and radical loneliness. “Were it not for His Mother and the Beloved Disciple, He would have been totally abandoned.” However, God had the last Word: the Resurrection, the “Other-Life.” I do not know what this Easter Season will bring with the war in Ukraine. I am writing in advance, and things change from day-to-day. I trust that peace will come with reasonableness, pressure from almost all nations, and the strength of human solidarity, and faith and prayer. BETWEEN PAIN AND HOPE We are witnesses to a living Gethsemane and Calvary. Let us hope also to see the 'Resurrection' of this country and its people. THE MESSAGE OF THE RECTOR MAJOR Don Ángel Fernández Artime 14 April - Ġunju 2022 hajja