Dear Fellow Dames and Chevaliers,
As we came safely to the end of the Year 2020 and we are in the New Year - 2021, our Priory and I are delighted to convey our best wishes to all Members of the Grand Priory of the Order of St. Stanislas and the Elite Club World.
The dawn of a New Year is not just a calendar event that marks the passage of time. It symbolizes transition, renewed hope, new opportunities, and limitless possibilities. A New Year brings with it the chance for rebirth, renewal as well as restoration.
This year, just ending, has tested all of us immensely – individually as well as collectively and our organization – it has tested us in ways we have never experienced before; we have experienced many tragedies, individually as well as collective. But on the other hand, it has also been one of numerous unstated personal as well as joint triumphs; for in the moment of adversity also lay the seeds of opportunity.
Dear Members, as the pandemic spread across the world, our homes transformed into protective incubation capsules for those we love. Like returning to a mother's womb, our walls became the hiding place, sheltering us from COVID-19; and we depended on this space for everything: our homes became our places of worship, they became our schools, our playgrounds, our places of work. The pandemic has without doubt stretched us and the way we orient our families and, indeed, on the way we live.
The business community was also caught up in the middle of this new normal. We have had more shutdowns in business and fewer start-ups. But I believe that this downturn will be used as an opportunity to re-imagine our business models and embrace innovations more than before. Yes, indeed, I do believe that the year 2021 is the year of re-building.
The New Year presents a unique opportunity in the life of our organization to participate in the process to re-imagine our society.
As we close 2020, I wish to say a word of thanks to our doctors, our healthcare workers, our security forces for their exemplary courage and sacrifice during the continued COVID-19 pandemic. Each of them is a hero in my eyes!
I wish everyone of us to have a blessed and indeed prosperous New Year. We will overcome the hurdles that were placed in our path in 2020 and start a new leap into the New Year, a year, I believe, will be one of the limitless new opportunities.
In 2021, I am certain that we have the courage to do what we must do, what is necessary; at the end of the year, we will look back and notice at how 2021 a most significant year in our history was.
I thank you.
Chev. Thaddäus von Lison
Grand Prior of Germany
Of the Order of St. Stanislas
