Dear Parents,
Blessed Easter! I pray that you and your families have enjoyed a grace-filled Easter holiday.
While Easter is always a time of great celebration, the past ten Easters have brought me the additional joy of thanking God for granting the gift of faith to my father who was baptized and received into the Church at Easter ten years ago. My father's baptism was really quite remarkable, since he was a convinced agnostic for most of his life, except for a period of about five years during which he became a devout Buddhist. Some of you may be thinking: I bet Sister's vocation helped to bring about her father's conversion. Actually, my vocation had the opposite effect: God's call to me to embrace the consecrated life and enter the community of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia was very difficult for my parents and did nothing to improve their relationship with God.
So, it was a most unexpected surprise when, after years of trying to convince me to leave the convent and showing no sign of any progress in their faith, my parents sent a letter to me - a short letter which contained a piece of brief but astonishing news: Dad has been taking catechism classes; he will be baptized this Easter. No explanation for his conversion was given in the letter and, to this day, my father cannot quite articulate how he became convinced of God's existence or, more importantly, how he came to realize that he wanted God in his life.
Yes, God is full of surprises. In his Easter homily, Pope Francis describes Christ's Resurrection as "God's surprise for his faithful people." The Pope notes that this "surprise" came precisely at the moment when everything seemed hopeless, when "the grave seem[ed] to have the final word, where death seem[ed] the only way out." He goes on to tell us that the "surprise" of Jesus' Resurrection teaches us that, in our lives also, when things seem quite hopeless, it is then that "God suddenly breaks in, upsets all the rules and offers new possibilities. God once more comes to meet us, to create and consolidate a new age, the age of mercy."
During this Easter season, I pray that God showers His surprises on you and your families - surprises to help you to persevere through difficulties and challenges, surprises to bring healing to the areas of your life that are wounded, surprises to assure you of God's deep love for you. Let us follow Pope Francis' advice: "Let us allow ourselves to be surprised by...the newness that Christ alone can give. May we allow his tenderness and his love to guide our steps."
With prayers,
Sister Mary Jacinta, O.P.
Principal
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