Beloved brothers and sisters:

Having culminated the year 2007 and waiting to be able to rest after the Christmas, I cannot avoid to look behind, as anyone who wants to do a balance of what's been lived, to remember some scenes -especially those tied to the life and mission of the Order- to give thanks to God and to find reasons to continue walking, believing, waiting, loving, venerating the Emmanuel, the Verb turned flesh.

Besides the times passed in the dear community of Santa Sabina, always so rich in brotherhood as intense work, the memory of the heart remembers in a special way the numerous visits to convents and provinces realized during the year.

Attempting a tight synthesis I think about the visits -to Rome-, about our communities of the Angelicum, the Convitto Santo Tomás and the Convent of Santa Maria Mayor. Out of the City I also visited the Provinces of Baetica, The Philippines, Croatia, Austria - upper Germany.

In the middle of the intense agenda -living this Jubilar year- I have wanted to find during the diverse tours the major possible amount of monasteries. To this we must add meetings with diverse Congregations of Sisters, Lay Fraternities, groups of young people, the Order in its beautiful symphonic polychromy!

By the way I want to emphasize important meetings of the different branches of the Dominican Family in which I could take part of very diverse ways: two days of retirement preached by monk Timothy Radcliffe and sister Gabriela Zengarini to the sisters of CODALC and friars of CIDALC followed by CIDALC's Assembly (at the end of January and beginnings of February in Lima, Peru); the "International Congress of the Laymen Fraternities of the Order" (March 18 to March 24 in Pilar, Argentina); the Inter-federative Meeting of the Federations of our contemplatives in Spain" (March 26 to March 28 in Caleruega, Spain) and the "Assembly of the International Dominicans Sisters" (beginnings of May in Rome). All the richness enclosed in each of these meetings!

Finally I mention our General Chapter of Provincial Priors (from July 18 until August 8 in Bogota, Colombia). To the happiness and hope of the Order demonstrated for the participants, guests and the Dominican Colombian Family, we, unfortunately, must add the pain for the death of our brother (…) monk Dominique Renouard. I give thanks to God and to Saint Dominic for giving us this "good and faithful servant". The celebrations in Bogota, his funeral in Lyons and the burial L'Arbresle have been eloquent signs of the presence of the Revived one and Saint Dominic among us.

I write to you this message of Christmas and New Year in the holiday of Our Lady of Guadalupe from Caracas (Venezuela) where I am visiting our communities (belonging some to the Regional Vicariousness of the Province of the Rosario and others to the Provincial Vicariousness of the Province Baetica). When you read this greeting I will have happened also for Cuba to meet our brothers and sisters who live and are employed at this beautiful island of the Carib.

I didn't want to share, just like so, with you, pages of the calendar or the agenda. But it's true that in our own life Gods builds the Story of Salvation counting on us. The Preachers' Order manifests itself in its rich dynamism through its bliss and hopes, sadness and sorrow, the wish to be faithful to Saint Dominic's inspiration.

In the Relatio to the General Chapter –with the help of the General Council- I wanted somehow to present to my brothers certain aspects of the Order's life and mission. The Acts of the Chapter express -at least, from the brothers' point of view- the challenges we have in front of us... I tust in the exhaustive reading and personal and community meditation about these texts. I also hope -with everyone's effort- the practise of the Chapter's resolutions.

In this ambient of hope and bliss from Christmas, I look thankful to our brothers and sisters of the Order and attempt -from shared dialog- to guess some of their deepest questionings.

The youth is living certainly the time that we could identify as a quest for identiy. That quest is based fundamentally in one question: "Who am I?". From there appears the interest for discovering, defining and attempt to describe as accurately as possible the "dominican" thing, in its most variated expressions. Therefore, youth is demanding. It's true that sometimes their wishes can be unmeasured or even unrealistic and perhaps they're in danger of falling in some narcisism, yet their questions, their demands, ask their "older" brothers adequate answers to what we teach to them ourselves.

As the years go by, new questionings appear. There are no major problems in delivering oneself to the preaching through several ways of compromise. We don't even measure the price of this compromise. Sometimes, this dedication reaches the loss of oneself. The most urgent question seems then to touch the area of our intimacy: "Who do I want to live with?". That claim of proximity and compromise so important and critical, if it doesn't creates deep roots, could provocate isolation, resistencia, critique, some of cinism and even selfishness (to the point we think we're absolutely necessary).

As Saint Dominic's disciples, our older brothers and sisters can many times look to the future with a certain fear. It isn't necessary to be married so the wish of being fecund –the fertility- takes from the deepest of the heart a vital question: “To who do I leave all of this?” (Those things that we acquired with not little sacrifice), “To who do I deliver my life?” (Who will inherit all of this?). Lots of brothers and sisters during the visits tell me their stories, bringing to the heart's memory times of many novitiates, of unreserved, intense apostolic work, of impressive deeds and institutions. The shortage of vocations in some places, or even seeing that where youth finds another ways (where there are vocations) provocates serious and deep questions. The wish to be fecund can then be transformed into selfcentering, anger, pungency, infertility.

The Gospel is not a mere collection of answers from a Wise man to the questions of his disciples. Sometimes, on the contrary, we found in Jesus' lips, the one and true Master, disconcerting questions... that demand from us a vital answer.

Some of them touch or present the same issues that I've described very briefly above: the issue of identity (who we are?); the question about intimacy (who we want to live with?); the matter about the future of our legacy (to who do we leave our lives?).

So, in Cesarea of Filipo, Jesus ask the apostols "But what about you? Who do you say I am?" (Matthew 16:15). An existential doubt that needs of the support of his own to discover his own identity? We know it's not about that. However, Simon Peter's answer: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:16) it does holds our own and deepest identity... identity built above faith.

At the end of the speech of the Bread of Life in the sinagoge of Cafarnaun many of their disciples went away from him and stopped accompaning him. Jesus asked then to the Twelve: Al final del discurso del Pan de Vida en la sinagoga de Cafarnaún muchos de sus discípulos se alejaron de él y dejaron de acompañarlo. Jesús preguntó entonces a los Doce: “You do not want to leave too, do you?”. Again, Simon Peter's answered him: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:67-68). When the great question that manifests the most profound wish for intimacy appears... it's the Master itself who -with the same question- helps us to respond from our hope.

Next to the shore of the Tiberiades sea, where years earlier the Lord had summoned some of his people, the Revived one asked three times to Simon, son of John, the fisherman… “Do you truly love me more than these?(…) Do you truly love me?(…) Do you love me?” (John 21:15-17). The sucessive answers are almost immediate. The last one, however, provokes a sad response, yes, but of complete deliver, holding only in the Master: “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you” (Juan 21:17). It's the question which answer touches the root of all human fertility: love.

Jesus seems not respond directly with the moral forms we'd wish to the most profound matters of each age of life... Nevertheless, it does it through other questions that do not pretend nothing more that to create a deeper, personal vital response.

I say “personal” not only to refer to the person of each one of us (as they touch our very identity, intimacy and fertility), but also because all three responses point directly to Jesus' person and "contain" His presence (not just a group of affirmations or reasons).

The beginning of the Advent has arrived with a new message from Benedict XVI. A renewed answer from Simon Peter, through his successor: the Spe Salvi encyclical. In it, again the deepest questionings and desire to respond about the guarantee (substance) of the awaited assets, the full certainty of unseen realities, "for what" and "for who" we wait! (Hebrews 11:1).

It doesn't matter the age, stage of life or the questionings rising from each one of our hearts. In the Advent time and Christmas time we're invited to raise our heads and look forward...

My brothers and sisters in Saint Dominic, because "we are all brothers"! (Cf. Matthew 23:8): To the questions regarding our true identity, our deepest wish of intimacy and our wish to be fecund throughout time, we don't find other responses without saying Jesus' name (Phillipians 2:10)… the name that Joseph put to his son, according to the words of the Angel (Matthew 1:24).

Jesus –subject and object of our preaching- invites us from the crib's poverty and the humble home of Nazareth, on way to Jerusalem and from the cross, revived at the edge of the see and in the mount of the Ascension; finally from the Cenacle filled of his Spirit effusion to our triple confession: of Faith (You are the Messiah), of Hope (You have the words of eternal life) and of Love (You know that I love you).

So as Dominic, we'll be confirmed by Peter and Paul in our apostolic vocation with the Gospel and the peregrine's stick and with a very precise commandment: "Go and preach".

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a 2008 filled with true, good, beautiful things... Things of God!

Fraternally, in María of Guadalupe “Mother of the beautiful love, of fear, of science and of holy hope” (Ecclesiastes 34:18; from the liturgy of Guadalupe's holiday)

Fr. Carlos A. Azpiroz Costa OP
Master of the Order

At the Convent Fr. Bartolomé de las Casas, Los Magallanes de Catia, Caracas, December 12nd, 2007.