Münster, Christmas 2023

Dear Sisters,
to the feast of Christmas, we greet you warmly with the image of the Ladder to Heaven, which has been shining in and at the Lamberti Church tower in Münster since September 2022. The long ladder, with a length of 36 meters, adorns the church tower from the outside. The shorter one, a 12-metre-long ladder, from the inside the church, rises from the baptistery into the tower.  

This luminous ladder to heaven is the work of the artist Bill Thanner. It reminds us of the dream of Jacob in Genesis 28:10-19. Jacob dreams of a ladder to heaven on which angels ascend and descend.

We have chosen this image because it expresses the movement of God to us human beings in the incarnation. At Christmas we celebrate the love of this God who has a dream of life in abundance for us. He has descended to earth and pitched his tent among us humans. He has taken on our human form in order to meet us, to dwell among us, to be so infinitely close to us. In Jesus Christ, God became man in order to recreate us and to give us His Divine life in Him.

God's presence in Jesus Christ in the world also paves man's way to God. As Bill Thanner, the artist of the Ladder to Heaven, said: "My installation is also intended to represent man's personal path to God." And this path leads through the stages of the virtues: compassion, justice, gratitude, patience... in the encounter with our brothers and sisters.

When we look at these ladders to heaven and relate them to our lives, we can express many desires or dreams, such as:

• that we may open our hearts to God's coming, so that this Christmas we can be touched and reached by God in the various situations of our life;  
• that we prepare a way for God and learn to discover HIM in everything, so that through us people can feel God's presence and experience HIS love;
• that the personal dream of more life for humanity and all of creation may become a common dream, with regard to the Kingdom of God, in reference to the words of Dom Helder Câmara: “When somebody dreams alone, it is only a dream. When many dream together, it is the beginning of a new reality.”

Dear sisters, God's action in our lives and participation in HIS mission give us again and again the strength to continue our personal and common journey as pilgrims of Christian hope in the world and to commit ourselves to life.

May the light of Christmas shine for us and accompany us into the New Year.
Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year 2024!

Sincerely, Sr. Lydia, Sr. Maria Rita, Sr. Maria Beatriz, Sr. Christa, Sr. Prisca