This year has been a time of ethnic strife, religious violence, and the rise of the rightist, populist regimes across the world. Even so, in this climate too, Mother Veronica is an inspiring model and a teacher for us today. Through her life experiences, she became tremendously attached to Christ, in whose service she differentiated herself. Her view of the world is very vivid even today, of a vast spiritual battlefield, where the forces of good are involved endlessly in a fierce war with the forces of evil. Hence, she insists not only on courage and generosity, but also on wise discernment and on living the principles of Christ, identifying with the poor and the suffering, bearing all the insults and all the wrongs and abuses. The Church today needs men and women of fidelity to Christ with apostolic mission and vision.

We, too, her followers, would do well to keep in mind her insistence that the central truths of the Gospels can be life-transforming only when they have truly affected the heart, and not just the head. Hence, today Mother Veronica encourages us to be contemplative in action.

Pope Francis has proved to be the best example of this spirituality. According to him, “Everything comes from this: from a heart that feels that it is looked on with love. Then reality is contemplated with different eyes.”

While we commemorate the bicentennial year of the birth of our Foundress, Venerable Mother Veronica of the Passion, we are called for a transformation and to seek the will of God in disturbing situations that prevail today. As we venerate her, we seek her intercession and listen to her call to be the 'keepers of the flame' lit by her and to spread it far and wide.