Messages from Fr General

Messages from Fr. General

Solemnity of St Alphonsus, Fr General's Message for 2026...

Homily of Fr General CSsR on Bl Maria Celeste Crostarosa's Day...

Homily on the occasion of the liturgical memorial of Blessed Mother Maria Celeste Crostarosa, nun and founder of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer (11 September)

Dear Sisters, dear Confreres and Faithful,

We are gathered here today to celebrate the liturgical memorial of Blessed Maria Celeste Crostarosa. As we well know, Maria Celeste did not have an easy life. As the text of her biography, published by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, reminds us, ‘She endured these “tribulations” with patience and great spiritual maturity, knowing that she had to share in the Paschal journey of the Lord Jesus. In 1738 she accepted the invitation to settle in Foggia, thus enabling her to establish a community in accordance with her vision of religious consecration. Thus, the following year, she founded the Conservatory of the Most Holy Saviour, aimed at the education of middle-class girls. In Foggia, the Servant of God put into practice the project that had been inspired in her, guiding her fellow sisters and numerous girls to bear daily witness to the memory of Christ the Redeemer’. ^[1]
Ten years on from her beatification, celebrated by Pope Francis on 18 June 2016, we are here, in this very place where God called her, established a covenant of love with her, and led her to live a profound friendship with Christ. Maria Celeste welcomed this love, cherished it and lived it out in the depths of her contemplative experience. But she did not keep it to herself. She knew how to communicate it in a tangible way in her daily life, in her relationships with her fellow sisters—which were lived amidst both difficulties and grace—and with all those whom the Lord placed on her path, to the point of making her own life a living memorial of the Redeemer.
The reading from the prophet Hosea (Hos 2:16b, 17b, 21–22) presents us with a very beautiful experience: ‘speaking to the heart’. Contemplation is possible only when we allow God to touch our hearts. In the Semitic world, the heart is regarded as the centre of human consciousness, the deepest part of the person, where we are truly who we are. It is there, in the depths of our being, that God speaks, entices and captivates.
When we allow ourselves to be captivated by God, we begin to contemplate the world through God’s eyes and heart. And, precisely for this reason, we too suffer when we see the world wounded by so many contradictions, injustices and sufferings. Contemplation does not distance us from reality; on the contrary, it makes us even more sensitive to it. It takes on a dimension of pathos, that is, it expresses the capacity to allow ourselves to be touched, to feel compassion, to enter into relationship and to make the other’s pain our own. For this reason, those who contemplate the world through God’s eyes and heart also become sensitive to its sufferings and contradictions. The theologian Jürgen Moltmann applies this concept to God when he speaks of divine pathos: God does not remain indifferent to human history, but, precisely because he loves, he allows himself to be moved by the world’s suffering.
The Gospel (cf. Jn 15:9–17) we have just heard proposes something radical to us: ‘This is my commandment: that you love one another, just as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (Jn 15:12–13). Perhaps this Gospel proposal may seem too demanding to us, difficult to live out in our human condition. I believe that the great challenge for us, in consecrated life, is to remain in the love of Christ, which has its source in the love of the Father. It is precisely by remaining in this love that we find the source of our vocation and that, from this source, we become a sign of God’s love for the world.
However, when we contemplate the witness of our saints and of Blessed Maria Celeste, we see that, without denying their own humanity, their passions, frailties and contradictions, they were able to remain united to the vine, which is Christ, the Redeemer. ‘If I fall into my weaknesses and miseries, you sustain me with a living trust in you; thus you extend your loving hand to me and look upon me with eyes of divine kindness, and I return to my good.’^[2] It is from this communion with Him that they received the grace to persevere on the journey and to become witnesses to the fact that holiness is a vocation for everyone. They attained holiness not because they were angels or people detached from the world, but because they were profoundly human, with their struggles and limitations, and, above all, because they carried in their hearts a deep thirst for God (cf. Ps 41–42/42–43).
The Apostle Paul (cf. Col 3:12–17) offers us practical guidance on how the love of Christ can become a living reality within us and in our relationships. This love is manifested in our ability to clothe ourselves in feelings of mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, to bear with one another and to forgive one another, just as the Lord has forgiven us.
At the heart of it all is charity, which unites us and leads to perfect unity. It is charity that enables the peace of Christ to dwell in our hearts and his Word to transform our relationships, our choices and our way of life. Thus, love ceases to be merely an ideal and becomes a concrete way of life, lived out in our daily lives, in our words and deeds, doing everything in the name of the Lord Jesus and giving thanks to God the Father.
Reflecting on what we have heard from the Word of God today, we can say that Blessed Maria Celeste embraced her consecration as a journey of profound communion with Christ, marked by contemplation, the cross and concrete love for others. She had a profound experience of God, allowing herself to be touched and transformed by his love, and she learnt to remain faithful to this love even amidst tribulations, misunderstandings and trials. Her contemplative spirituality did not distance her from reality, but made her even more sensitive to the needs and sufferings of those whom God placed on her path. Thus, the love she received from Christ became for her a concrete gift of self, expressed in care, forgiveness, communion and service. Her whole life gradually became a true, living memorial of the Redeemer – not as that of a person above the human condition, but as that of a deeply human woman, with her struggles, passions, frailties and limitations, open to the action of grace.
Dearest Sisters, I would like to conclude this homily with a short prayer by Sister Maria Celeste to the Blessed Virgin: “Dear Mother and my Lady Mary, purest lily of the Trinity, resplendent rose of heavenly sweetness, from whom was born the King of Heaven, who chose to be nourished by your milk; please nourish my soul with divine love³. Be my guide and teacher, and with your mercy protect and defend me from the snares of the devil. Awaken my heart to love and divine love. Deign to regard me as your true daughter; I take refuge in your mantle today and always. At the hour of my death, you are my hope after Jesus. I beg you, on this day and always, to guard my soul from every stain of sin. Bless me, my Mother and Lady, and I give you my heart, so that you may place it and keep it within the most pure heart of my Spouse, Jesus Christ, your beloved Son. Amen”.^[3]

Fr Rogério Gomes, C.Ss.R
Superior General

Words of Clarity from Fr General CSsR...

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Fr General CSsR Christmas Greetings 2025...

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Fr General CSsR and St Gerard Majella 2025

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Fr General CSsR sends Easter Greetings...

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Missionaries of Hope in the Footsteps of the Redeemer

YEAR DEDICATED TO MISSION

The Lord who sends us as Missionaries and Pilgrims of Hope in a wounded world

Lk 4:16-19, Mk 6:7-12, Lk 9:2-6, Ps 130:7 Const. 1-20, St. 01-020

DEAR CONFRERES, FORMANDI AND LAY PARTNERS IN OUR MISSION,

We celebrate the mystery of Christ’s Resurrection, which is presented as our true hope. The apostle Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans that ‘hope does not deceive’ (Rom 5:5). This is the firm foundation on which our faith rests: the hope that, through the death and Resurrection of Jesus, we are called to a new life, to victory over death and to the transformation of our being.
Jesus, our Hope, continues to walk among us with his wounded but glorified body, showing us, that hope is not extinguished, even in the midst of difficulties, pain and suffering. He reveals to us that true hope – that which is born of the cross – is capable of illuminating the darkest paths, of giving strength in adversity and of always pushing us forward. Certainly, this requires of us a great leap of faith.
We are celebrating the great Jubilee of Hope. Hope is not an illusion or a mere wish; it is a virtue which, even when wounded, persists, remains steadfast in its purpose and urges us onward, so that we can contemplate the horizon that opens before us. Like the Risen Christ, who precedes us on the road to eternal life, we are called to live a hope that transforms, that gives meaning to our lives and that encourages us never to give up. As Redemptorist missionaries, we are called – in the light of hope – to develop the resilience necessary to face this complex world and its difficulties: strong in faith, joyful in hope and fervent in charity, with a deep apostolic zeal (cf. Const. 20).
As Redemptorist Family, we are Missionaries and Pilgrims of this hope. We are called to announce to the world the good news of the Resurrection, to proclaim by our lives and by our witness – even with our wounded bodies – the power of a hope that never fails, never gives up and is renewed with every dawn. “Absolute hope allows us to act anew in the heart of the deepest despair. It is filled with an unshakable faith that there is meaning. It is precisely faith in the wisdom of having a direction and a stance in the face of negativity”, the Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han reminds us (Contro la società dell’angoscia: speranza e rivoluzione, (Against the Society of Anguish: Hope and Revolution), Einaudi: Torino, 2025, p. 50). As witnesses of the Redeemer, the light of the world, we follow his mission of giving meaning and orientation, helping people to discover the light of redemption that never goes out (cf. Communicanda 1/2024).
In this Easter season, let us renew our trust in the promise of Christ the Redeemer: ‘Behold, I am with you always, to the close of the age’ (Mt 28:20). May we, as his followers, always be Messengers of Hope to the world, bearing in our hearts the light that overcame darkness and the love that conquered death.
Happy and blessed Easter to you all! May the Hope of the Risen Christ guide and strengthen us in our mission, together with Mary and our Saints, Blesseds and Martyrs.

In Christ the Redeemer, our Infinite Hope,

Fr. Rogério Gomes, C.Ss.R
Superior General

Blessed Maria Celeste Crostarosa OSsR & Fr General CSsR...

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Today, the 11th September, is the Feast of the

Blessed Maria Celeste Crostarosa

the Foundress of our Nuns, the OSsR "Red Nuns".

We pray in thanksgiving for the Vocation

given to our dear Sisters throughout the world.

Fr General CSsR has written a letter to the whole Redemptorist Family OSsR & CSsR - find below...

^{Prot. N.: 0000 167/2024}

^{_{Rome, September 11, 2024}}

^{_{Memorial of Blessed Celeste Crostarosa}}

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"Missionaries of hope in the footsteps of the Redeemer"

Year dedicated to Mission Formation

The Lord instructs us to revive the gift of God dwelling in us

Const. 77-90, EG; 050-085; Mt 10:5-15, Lk 9:1-6, 2 Tim 1:6

Dear Brothers, Formandi, Lay Associates of our Redemptorist mission and family, and on this special occasion, all Nuns of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer,

1. Julia Marcella Santa Crostarosa was born in Naples on October 31, 1696. She entered the Teresian monastery S. Maria dei Sette Dolori in Marigliano in the spring of 1718 and professed as a Carmelite on September 21, 1719. In October 1723, the monastery was closed, and she entered the Visitation convent of the Most Holy Conception in Scala, Salerno, in January 1724. After a few days, she began her novitiate, taking the name Sister Maria Celeste of the Holy Desert; she then renewed her vows as a Visitandine on December 28, 1726. While still a novice, on April 25, 1725, after the celebration of the Eucharist, she began to have the intuition to found a new Institute. Encouraged by her confessor and novice mistress, she wrote the rule, the centerpiece of which is the community as a living memory of the love of the Redeemer. In 1730, she met St. Alphonsus and, thanks to his help, on May 13, 1731, the Order of the Most Holy Savior was born, whose Rules were approved by Pope Benedict XIV on June 8, 1750, changing its name to the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer. On September 14, 1755, she died in Foggia, recognized by the people as the Holy Prioress.

2. Celeste's story is complex, and her life was not easy. Particularly hard were the moments of tension with Monsignor Falcoia over her defense of the original intuition in defining the community's rules. She was forced to leave Scala. However, the friendship and fraternal communion with St. Alphonsus and the other Redemptorists, beginning with St. Gerard, remained unaltered. With deep faith in God and perseverance, she succeeded, in Foggia, in implementing the original project. Her hagiography, on the website of the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, reads, "The Servant of God, from her youth, strongly experienced the call to holiness and mystical marriage with Christ, the demanding spouse, and always went in search of radicality in religious consecration, of which she proposed a reform, conceiving the life of the Nuns as a perfect imitation of the life of Christ and the religious community a living memorial of his redeeming love for all. The Eucharist, the torn heart of the Savior, and devotion to the Virgin Mary formed the permanent center of her spirituality. Immersed in prayer and contemplation of the mystery of Jesus the Redeemer, Sister Mary Celeste faced with steadfastness not only the daily spiritual struggle to strive for perfection but also a series of obstacles and misunderstandings that she encountered on her life journey."

Fr General's Message for Pentecost..

fr general cssr pentecost

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EASTER GREETINGS FROM FR GENERAL CSSR...

easter greetings 2024 general

Dear Confreres, Formandi, Lay Associates in our mission, and the whole Redemptorist Family. As General Government, we wish you all a happy Easter!

With Easter, we want to celebrate our inner renewal. The Resurrection of the Lord invites each of us to be born again and to sing a new song of hope. What new song can we sing in the face of such a challenging world, with so many social inequalities? Despite the dark horizon, the Resurrection is the light that guides us, because Christ has conquered death. We are men and women of hope! We cannot keep the doors closed out of fear. We will recognize Jesus by his greeting of peace and the traces of his passion. And when we receive his Holy Spirit, we will come out of the prison of fear and doubt to proclaim him (cf. Jn 20:19-29).

In the strength of the Risen Christ, we join in prayer with our confreres and the people of West Africa, the Middle East, Mozambique, South Africa, Ukraine, Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba and other places where there are wars, terrorist attacks, conflicts and violence. In spite of this suffering and pain, we are

“Missionaries of Hope in the footsteps of the Redeemer”.

This hope, which flows from their humanity and kenosis, sustains each confrere in these places and helps them to encourage the people who are also suffering.

May the Risen Christ, Redeemer of the world, transform the hearts of human beings in order to build a peaceful society.

HAPPY EASTER OF THE RESURRECTION TO ALL OF YOU!

Fr. Rogerio Gomes, CSsR
Superior General

CSsR 291st Birthday/Anniversary...

Blessed Kaspar Stanggassinger CSsR...

Dear Confreres, Formandi, Lay Associates of our Mission, Oblates, and Redemptorist Family!

Greetings to all!

We are celebrating the feast of Blessed Gaspar Stangassinger… Gaspar entered the Congregation with the intention of preaching the Gospel to the most abandoned. Instead, his superiors assigned him to train future missionaries.

Besides teaching, he always gave pastoral assistance in the churches of the neighboring villages, especially by preaching. Although very busy, he was always available, especially to the students, who saw him more as a friend than as a superior.

In his preaching, he invited everyone to have recourse to the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist in times of need and distress.

On 26 September 1899, at the age of 28, he made his Passover to the Lord, due to illness. On this day I would like to remember and thank all Formators of the Congregation. Forming people and Redemptorist missionaries is a hard and beautiful task, an important mission that the Congregation asks of each one of you. Courage in this mission!

Personal formation, Redemptorist spirituality with its solid foundations, dialogue, listening, and discernment are important for this. Discernment is a very important word, both in formation and in our missionary and pastoral work.

On this day of Blessed Gaspar, I exhort each confrere in his different missionary works and the formandi to intensify their ongoing formation.

Ongoing formation is for life.

Letter to the Formandi from Fr General CSsR...

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Pentecost 2023 and Fr General CSsR...

fr generalpagani

Fr General CSsR, Fr Rogério Gomes,

sends greetings to all the members of the Redemptorist Family around the world.

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Fr General's Homily to the Major Superiors CSsR...

general alphonsus

Dear Confreres,

Today we are here in this place where the body of our founder Saint Alfonso is buried. To celebrate the end of our week of meetings, studies, and fraternity, in this holy place, we are invited to return to our origins. We are here to learn from Alphonsus how to walk through these difficult times. A man of the Enlightenment, he experienced the criticism of Christianity by the men of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire and Diderot. He fought against Jansenism and sought a balance between rigorism and laxism. He experienced the historical and ecclesial tensions of his time and saw the newly founded Congregation almost disappear. How does St. Alphonsus inspire us today? How or in what way does he encourage us now? And does he speak to our hearts to respond to the signs of our times?
Alphonsus inspires us not to fear the times in which we live, because we are not alone. The Lord who called us walks with us, he shows us the way, he becomes light when everything is dark, and he makes our hearts burn when we are discouraged. The harvest is great, and we cannot be discouraged, even if we are few (cf. Mt 9:38). Alphonsus believed in the project of redemption and persevered to the end. He totally consecrated his life to this project. The failure of our Redemptorist life begins when we cease to consecrate our personal and community life to redemption and there, we cease to offer ourselves and be redemptive.

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Fr General's Christmas Message 2022...

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Anniversary of the Foundation of the Congregation 9th Nov...

Fr General, Rogerio Gomes CSsR writes to us

for the Anniversary of the

Foundation of the Congregation,

9th November.

Entire homily of Superior General,November 2...

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(Rome)
HOMILY OF THE P. ROGERIO GOMES CSsR

FOR THE CELEBRATION OF THE DEPARTED FAITHFUL

Dear Brothers, dear Brothers and Sisters present at this celebration,

Yesterday we celebrated the solemnity of all the saints—that is, the men and women who, like all of us, throughout their personal history, have guided their lives by the ways of God and love of others. They are lights that guide us on our personal and community path to holiness, never forgetting our humanity. The saints were men and women who allowed the fragments of their fragility and their virtues to be assembled with the divine cement to form a beautiful work of art, the mosaic of holiness. The beauty and splendor of God show that the first path to holiness is consciousness of our fragments, without considering us useless on this earth. Our fragments can always be works of art of profound beauty.

In continuation of yesterday's celebration, today we celebrate the faithful departed.. The experience of finality is part of everything that exists, except God. We humanly define this experience as death. The threshold between life and death is very thin. We live with death every day and forget that it makes us live: we feed on beings, animals and plants, that are "dead". We live every day with death: from natural death to that caused by man himself to his brothers and sisters: death caused by disease, war, famine, migration, abortion, euthanasia, injustice he. In the face of death, our experience may be of pain, of abandonment, or of profound indifference. Death is the shadow that accompanies us every day, which we fear because we don’t know it and because it is, humanly speaking, our experience of nothingness. This takes on new meaning through faith, the light that shows us something beyond the darkness of the grave.

As we listen to today's Gospel (Mt 25,31-46), we can ask ourselves: What does this have to do with celebrating the faithful who are dead? Should we not talk of the resurrection more than those who practiced righteousness and those who did not? Leaving aside the beauty and depth of the texts that tell us about the resurrection, life, and eternity, Matthew's text touches on something fundamental. Experiencing the Kingdom of God goes through history and the personal relationships we have with our neighbor and our love for Him. "All that they did for one of these younger brothers of mine, they did for me" (Mt 25,40). Therefore, resurrection is when we present ourselves naked before the Lord of Time and History and bring Him only our hands full of the good we have done in this world. It is when we totally agree with God and live in Him alone. He is our eternal life! As Job reminds us: “I know that my redeemer lives and that, at the end, he will rise from the dust!” After this skin of mine is plucked off without my flesh I will see God. I myself will see him, my eyes will behold him, and no one else” (Job 19, 25-27).