3.2 A calm Spanish and my paths to Rome

My encounter with Bi makes me think of a certainty that I have in mind: when God notices a desire, however small, of a soul that longs to draw near  Him, He makes it possible in every way. Saint Josemaria Escriva said: "God does not deny his grace to those who do what they can." And I am a living proof of that. I arranged to meet Bi on a Monday night after work. She lived in an Opus Dei center in Butantã, in the north part of São Paulo, I worked in Mooca-at the east side and lived in the center- completely opposite gardens. Despite this, and even with the fact that I was a newcomer in São Paulo, I managed to get to the place and we talked for a long time about lots of different things. Talking with a person who is very close to God is a privilege and also an opportunity to do a quick check list of how we can improve, because these people, being close to God are, as a rule, very virtuous and virtue brings peace and joy. Bi listened to me, spoke a little about her and about the projects of the Work with the girls of my age and interests in Sao Paulo and recommended that I contacted the study center of Jacamar, a center of Opus Dei in São Paulo who attends spiritual direction and activities with several young professionals, as I was at the time. I was very excited about this possibility and, the following week, I already marked to go to know the center, after a day of work.

On my first visit to my forever beloved Jacamar, I came across a group of girls aged 12 to 

30 who were talking about volunteer projects in needy neighborhoods and cities they had 

visited and were also scheduling to go again on the July hollidays. It was a wonderful first 

impression. I have always admired the souls of great hearts and people who leave their  

own world to do good; this is something that, even in the most distant phases of God, made 

my heart melt and thank God for putting them on Earth. That night I met some of the girls 

who went to the Work and received spiritual direction there, and I also met a friend who 

would be one of my best companies in São Paulo until my last day of that experience in the 

capital.

A few weeks later I was already entangled with that wonderful group, visiting Jacamar

 periodically and taking part in some of the activities there. However, the biggest change

 was yet to take place. On a cold winter night in Sao Paulo, I visited Jacamar because

 I knew that there, as in all Opus Dei centers all over the world, there was Jesus in the 

Blessed Sacrament and to visit Him, after a stressful day of work, was like an oasis to

 my soul, even though I still did not fully understand at that time all the graces we receive

 from this wonderful norm of piety. So I got to Jacamar and went up to the first floor, 

where there were several girls getting ready to enter the chapel, and one of them said 

to me in a very excited way: "We are gonna have meditation with Father Xavier. 

Don`t you want to attend to it too? " I did not know what a meditation was with a 

priest and what exactly happened in that half hour. They explained to me that the 

priest would give a mini-talk on various topics related to the Catholic faith. I decided 

to stay for a few minutes. Honestly, after working all day long and being invited to

 listen to a priest in the middle of a cold night, when the other option was to go to

 my apartment and take a warm bath and throw me on the sofa, seemed to require 

too much of my good will to start entering the path of faith. Little did I know that by 

the end of that half hour there, I would be the one who would not want to leave.

I was struck by the wise words and the kind expression of father Xavier. I do not

 remember exactly the theme of meditation that night, but I remember well thinking that

 for some reason I had not yet discovered, God had told me to listen to him. After that 

night, I attended meditations every Wednesday night and everything God was saying 

to me through the words of father Xavier, plus the contact with such good girls,

 filled my heart with peace and joy.

It is funny to note, as a saint has already said, that when a soul begins to open and fall 

in love with God and to understand his or her Christian vocation, it changes everything

 without changing anything. I started to change: my interests, my mood, my way of 

working and relating to people up to my way of dressing. In the movie "Sabrina",

 the character of Julia Ormond undergoes a transformation that reminds me of my own. 

In the movie, the poor girl who lived with the parents that worked for a wealthy family 

goes to Paris and begins to discover the glamor of the French capital. In one scene,

 the movie shows the different shoes that the character has been wearing throughout

 this metamorphosis. If my life were a movie, I imagine that, at this stage specifically, 

I would be able to see very clearly the evolution of my different 'shoes': my prayer routine, 

my preferences regarding to my readings, interests and even friendships ... anyway,

 it was a gradual and wonderful transformation.

But the biggest change was yet to come and like any change, especially for  better, 

also required a painful rupture and I had mine too. It happened on one of the meditation 

nights.

After that day, my spiritual life took a wonderful turn. Until then, although I was already 

progressing and getting closer to God, I still had a 'thread' that was holding  me and would 

not let me fly. This thread was the lack of the state of grace. This is a concept that is both 

difficult and extremely easy to understand. Each baptized on the day of his baptism 

receives the infusion of the Holy Spirit into the soul - the life of grace - and we only 

lose it by mortal sin. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "grace" is 

the gratuitous gift that God gives us of His life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul,

 to heal it of sin and sanctify it. It is, continues the Catechism, "a participation in the life

 of God, a new and supernatural life". Trading in a practical way: it's the most wonderful 

thing we can have. It guides all our actions, thoughts, affections, and we proceed to act, 

notwithstanding our sins and miseries, in the same divine way as Our Lord acted. My soul 

was far from this torrent of graces long ago, and it had affected my whole walk until then. 

However, after that night everything changed and for much better ...

Father Xavier and I began having long and deep conversations, all on Wednesdays and 

on other days of the week too, for my soul was thirsty and there were still several 

concepts of the Catholic faith that I still did not understand and the main of them were

 the concepts related to purity and chastity. They seemed to me too demanding and 

even paradoxical for a Church that wanted to join faithful in the twenty-first century.

 In my mind the same questions always came back: why does God want us to live

 chastity in a world that tells us and lives so differently? Despite so many dogmas 

and seemingly paradoxical concepts of the Church, chastity was mandatory in the

 twenty-first century, for me, it was the greatest of them. It was as if a part of me still said, 

"how to believe in a Church that claims to be perfect and eternal, which claims to

 contain the deposit of faith and universal commandments if it has a teaching that

 is impossible to live?"

Peter Seewald, one of my favorite spiritual authors, talks about this in his book "My God - 

why I came back to God." He says: "One of my brothers, a passionate atheist, thinks there

 are too many paradoxes in Christianity. He is entirely right. A Messiah on a donkey. A 

Savior who can not save himself and does not come down from the cross ... 

which God is this that does not turn to the powerful, but to the sick and sinful? An 

Omnipotent One who lets himself be humbled, who out of compassion for his creature 

assumes all its pain and, and in His love, kneels down to wash his feet ... "

The irony is that it was precisely this part of the faith that brought me to the understanding. 

One Wednesday, after leaving the bank, I went to meditation as always and then it was my 

turn to speak to the priest. As usual, we began to talk and suddenly Father Xavier told me: 

"Elisa, would you like to make a general confession?" I thought, "What will that be?" Then

 he explained to me that it was nothing but a normal confession, but a little deeper. It is 

impressive the special grace that the priests have (that’s why I always pray for them all). 

Father Xavier, of course, had realized that there were some sins in the back of my soul and 

that it would be good to talk about them in confession. So I started. My conversation /

 confession that usually lasted around 20 minutes, that day lasted almost an hour and I 

washed the confessional floor with my tears. One of the most sensational aspects of 

sacramental confession is that regardless of what we confess, if we have a sincerely 

contrite and repentant heart, God always forgives us. Just as Jesus told the adulterous 

woman that  was about to be stoned: "Has no one condemned you? For I also do not 

condemn you, "He again tells us the same things in the confession, and at the end of each 

one, we feel much peace. That was what happened to me that night: an immense peace 

flooded my soul. No wonder the priest's last words are these: "Go in peace" !!

As soon as I got out of there I went straight home and I thought, "Wonderful! I am back to 

the loving arms of the Father. "

That night, Father Xavier and I talked about various aspects of the Christian life, but it was 

certainly chastity that was the theme that took our time. Until then, every time someone 

came to tell me that I should live a chaste life, I thought only of chastity as a separate 

virtue, and to tell the truth I did not even consider it such a big virtue. The biggest problem, 

however, is that I tried to reason on this subject, compartmentalizing it, and this is 

impossible to get to understand it. One only understands chastity when one understands 

what love is and this was the theme that began to take my time, from then on Finally, there 

was an aspect of chastity that made me reluctant to embrace it completely: how to explain 

to people I knew and who knew how I had lived until then that from that moment on God 

had given me abundant lights that  it was necessary to change radically my life in this 

aspect and, with that, to face the ridicule and even the discredit of near and dear people? 

And the answer came again from my friend Bi. She told me: "Elisa, there will certainly be a 

change and some people may not understand or even not approve. But if they do, you tell 

them: if you prove to me that by living your life I will be happier, I automatically change my 

choice. " This never happened.