This year we will be celebrating the feast of St. Augustine in unusual circumstances. The day commemorating our father's St. Augustine’s entry into heaven will be celebrated in a subdued way in accordance with the directives that are intended to ensure that we take good care of one another during this pandemic. If a lot of things can in some way or other be limited, certainly God’s love and graces, with which St. Augustine was blessed, remain limitless! Perhaps for yet another time, we are being given an opportunity to go beyond what has become our daily routine of activities or external celebrations, and for us to deeply reflect if a moment like this could propose something for our own selves.

It is perhaps an invitation for us to look deeply into our heart so that there, in our interior, we discover truly who we are as St. Augustine himself reflected in his Confessions: “My hear is the pace where I am what I am”. (Confessions X, 3,4). Therefore, from this emerges the invitation: “Go back deeply into your heart to see what are your thoughts about God. Because there is God’s image. Christ lives in you and you are being renewed according to God’s image. Recognise the author from that same image.” (Trat. John 18,10). This is a very beautiful invitation which I feel I should propose to you at this moment in time with a further invitation that with this attitude we seek to use this opportunity for renewal by each and every one of us. How good it would be if all of us finds some quiet time for himself to search for and find God who lives in him verily and in all sincerity. This is an invitation for me to recognise all that is good in me, but also a challenge to accept my shortcomings and to take the opportunity of meeting Jesus and to allow him to change me.

In a wider sense this cannot be done on my own but in a spirit of community with all those that the Lord, in some way or other, arranges for me to meet both in the inner circle in which I find myself and also beyond that. At a time when we are challenged by the need to keep a physical distance from one another, the invitation is for us to reflect on spiritual communion that goes even beyond any distance. I refer to communion that is not restricted by the fact that we live under the same roof, or by choices brought upon us by present circumstances, - even if these are for us a value of great importance - but a communion that emanates from God. This I can do only if my relationship with others is built on an authentic spiritual experience and a serene openness to all that God expects from me during my lifetime. This was the experience of our Patron St. Augustine when he persisted in seeking God whilst he adapted his own wishes to what God asked of him in particular moments.

I augur heartily that this time will help us continue on our walk of renewal together as persons, as citizens, as baptised persons, as consecrated persons, as a family, as a Church… Above all let us continue to nourish reciprocal respect, to be sensitive in our relations with one another, in being mindful of the needs of others and in our commitment to the mission which each and every one of us has been called to live up to our response whereby we gave up ourselves totally to that call. May St. Augustine accompany us and inspire us throughout this walk.

Fr. Leslie Gatt osa

Prior Provincial