HOPE 2025: Reflection by Mila Diaz Solano, OP

by Mila Diaz Solano, OP

Dominican Sister of Springfield, Illinois

Shared during the Opening Liturgy on June 4 at HOPE 2025. Originally written and proclaimed in Spanish. Translated to English using DeepL. To read the original in Spanish, please click here.

FIRST READING | ISAIAH 61: 1-3a, 6a, 8b-9

RESPONSORIAL PSALM | PSALM 23

SECOND READING | ROMANS 5: 1-5

GOSPEL | JOHN 20: 11-18

Sisters, today's Gospel presents Mary of Magdala, the friend of Jesus, as our companion. As we contemplate this story, we can make our own her evolution from mourning to acclamation and feel challenged with three special invitations.

Like her, many of us find ourselves facing real tombs. In recent years we often find ourselves burying our sisters, great icons of wisdom, mentors, pillars of our vocation and of our congregations. We cannot deny that we are visited by weeping when we let them go.

Like Mary, we also face the existential tombs of the uncertain, the unknown and the unclear. New challenges and expectations present themselves to us as religious, and we have to let go of the secure, a way of being and being in the world and perhaps ways that attracted many of us to religious life.

Our weeping, like Mary's, is also due to the situation of death and violence that surrounds us. We mourn with and for the migrants rejected in the land who hoped to find life; we mourn with and for the people crucified and buried daily in wars; and, we mourn with and for women, girls, and the LGTBQ+ population, victims of trafficking, and marginalization. We mourn with our mother earth for the spaces where creation is violated and attacked.

But the cry of our sister Mary is unique and powerful. We can almost hear in her mourning, the words of the psalmist, "You are my shepherd, Lord. I shall not want. You lead me beside still waters…  If I walk through darkness… I fear no evil, for You are with me… You are my shepherd, Lord." We can imagine her whispering "that is why I am here, facing the tomb, the reality of death." Within herself, Mary is searching for meaning there in the midst of chaos, the reality of death and meaninglessness. And it is this search; it is this contemplation of reality with questions that allows her to experience the Risen One.

And here is our first invitation, sisters. We can mourn our sisters, we must mourn them; we can mourn the Consecrated Life we knew when we entered, we must mourn it. But we are invited to mourn not with nostalgia, hoping that everything will go back to the way it was before. We are invited to search for meaning and for new signs of the presence of our beloved, like Mary, in the midst of meaninglessness. We are invited not to evade but to enter into the chaos with the certainty that even in the silence, the Master sustains us. We must open our eyes to see the signs of the Good Shepherd.

The encounter with the angels is another sign of Mary's persistent search for meaning. In her dialogue with them we sense her desire to know where she can find her Master. She expresses her readiness to go for him wherever he may be.  Sisters, are we, like her, also in active search for the meaning of our Consecrated Life? Are we, like her, open to dialogue about the new face of our vowed life? Are we interested in being part of this search process at the inter-congregational level? We do not know if from now on we will come together by charismatic families, by geographical areas, or if we will live our call in the midst of the diversity of ecclesial charisms.  Mary launches us through her experience of searching the second invitation: to name our uncertain reality, to do it in community and to search for meaning with others. It is then a matter of intentionally making a synodal experience. Our elderly sisters, our associates, our companions on the road and especially those on the peripheries of existence can be those angels with whom we must rediscover the Master. Mary enters into dialogue with Jesus without knowing it was him. Sometimes the voice of God comes from among those we least expect.

Mary hears her name. And it is at that moment that the sheep is able to recognize the voice of her Shepherd, her good Shepherd. Her world is shaken and turned upside down. Now she recognizes him in her new way of being present, she sees him, she recognizes him...she has found him! And like Peter, James and John at the moment of the transfiguration, he wants to stay there, holding him. But Jesus asks her not to cling to an exclusive relationship: "Do not remain, Mary, ecstatic that you have found me! If you have seen me, if you have experienced me, it is to go and announce this good news to my brothers and sisters.”

Sisters, I am sure that in these days together we will experience this resurrection together. The Spirit will allow us to discover in our dialogues the signs of the face of Consecrated Life that is already visible: intercongregational, intercultural, diverse. Our experiences of celebration, of connection, of sharing, will make our lives take a turn from what we are used to on a daily basis. The third invitation that this gospel invites us is that we should not only be ecstatic when we meet the Master.

The poor are waiting for us, the brokenhearted, the captives, the people imprisoned in physical and existential jails are part of our Galilee. The words of the prophet Isaiah challenge us today to make the ecstasy of this encounter propel us to the proclamation of the Good News. Isaiah inspired the missionary action of Jesus and probably that of Mary of Magdala. He challenged them to the proclamation of hope, liberation, peace and joy that happened in their own existence. Let us allow ourselves to be inhabited by the spirit of the Risen One, sisters of Hope-Esperanza! Let us do this process with our sister Mary. May we go out from today announcing the Good News in the streets for the life of the world!