Experience of Emeterio
Castañeda (
Before
my priestly ordination, I came in contact with the Focolare Movement. New
realities illuminated me: to see Jesus in others…; “You did it to me” (Mt 25).
But what made me understand the Church and my vocation in a new way was above
all the discovery of Jesus’ words: “Where two or three are united in my name, I
am there in their midst.”
For
the past three years I have been the pastor of Bolívar, on the
When
I arrived in Bolívar, in order to get to know “my parishioners,” I
organized long missionary trips that lasted as long as three weeks. In some
places I found ruined chapels, children and young people who had never been
baptized, adults who had formed families without the sacrament of matrimony.
The cry I heard everywhere was: “Why have you forsaken us?” But in spite of
many years without the visit of a priest, their faith had not died out.
My first announcement, not only with
words but also with small gestures, was: “No, you have not been forgotten; God
loves you immensely; and where two or three are united in the name of Jesus and
they love one another, he is present there; and when one suffers, he is even
more present, because we all participate in his suffering on the cross.
Wherever we went, we had to form catechists and organize “a Christian
community” in which the presence of a priest would not be indispensable, but in
which everyone would be a witness to our faith, living Church, even if the
walls of the chapels were ruined. In other words, Church that is community.
With this new spirit of the Church as communion,
last year we formed a team to bring ahead a course for catechists. So it was
not only “one person” presenting interesting themes, but above all, the witness
of our doing things in unity. This course was a formation event, but
especially, a true family experience for our whole parish.
We were surprised by the fact that the
sects are diminishing now and the youth are returning to the Church because
they find that it has a new countenance: a Church-Family, a Church-Communion.