Recently, I underwent back surgery. My Superior told me that during Holy Week 2018 I could stay in Caracas, and from our house, serve a very poor area, Turgua, about 50 minutes by car. We planned it “to have more peaceful missions.”
From Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday, I went and returned every day to Turgua. The first three days, the work was so intense that from 8 am to 8 pm I could only have a simple snack (which, yes, was from Segovia chorizo, that my parents had sent me and that I kept “for special occasions”… it tasted divine!). I visited several sick people, literally in the jungle, to give them the Eucharist and the Anointing of the Sick. Confessions for several hours straight. Two, three Masses every day, in very poor and hidden communities in the mountains. But… how joyfully and eagerly they awaited the arrival of the priest, because he brought them Christ!
In their material poverty, they showed an immense spiritual richness. I wish I had that treasure for myself, or for the people I deal with daily in Caracas. It’s true, they were happy with some material detail… I would bring them—whenever I could—some cookies, a flash (those frozen tubes of different colors and flavors), on Sunday I gave them some chocolates (brought by a lady from the United States), and… they jumped with joy, children, adults, and elderly! (Even the elderly rummaged through the chocolates, took one, and then swapped it for another they liked more… like little girls, because “it had been years since they ate a chocolate”).
But their thirst for God was palpable, their love for God, their desire to accompany Jesus Crucified—His Nazarene—and the Blessed Virgin Mary. I will tell only one case that impressed me a lot: María Ángeles walks every day for an hour (from 2 to 3 pm), under an unforgiving sun, with a 9-year-old girl, another 7-year-old girl, and a 9-month-old in her arms… to go to Mass! Every day. Do you know how old María Ángeles is? She is only 12 years old! She is the older sister who cares for the other three because her mother is in Caracas and only gives her two days off. Every day, an hour going, another hour returning, with a baby in her arms and two little ones to care for… to receive Jesus Christ in her heart. I thought about the people in the city, who every Sunday have 4 or 5 Mass options, just minutes from their homes by car… and many times they don’t go “because they are tired” or “because they don’t feel like it,” or they never visit Christ in the Eucharist “because it’s too far.” And I thought about myself, so close to Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, in my own home. A slap of faith, a good one… Increase, Lord, my faith in the Eucharist! That I truly believe that You are there, waiting for me, to embrace me! That I visit You more often! That I receive You every day with true faith, with deep joy!
