Brazil: all the best possible
Publish date 12-07-2011
The Arsenal of Hope, in the metropolis of Sao Paulo, is not just a clean bed, a full plate and a little school. It is a thrust of evangelization which, together with the Fraternity of Hope, has as its protagonists the people received.
A COUNTRY THAT RUNS
My name is Lorenzo, I am 36 years old and have been living in Sao Paulo in Brazil, at the Arsenale della Speranza for nine years. To tell how a Sermig missionary evangelizes, I think it is important to start with goodness. Our Rule says that "The good are never strangers, anywhere in the world" and that "to be a visible sign of His goodness" we must go "with the will to fraternize with the friends we meet, without losing our identity and living fidelity to the universal mission of the Church ”.
This baggage, time and the Fraternity of Hope have helped me to understand a little of the great city where I live, its people and this country. Every time an Italian friend asks me "What is Brazil like?", It would be natural to reply: "Which Brazil are we talking about?". There are many and very different from each other ... In general it can be said that it is a country that is changing, that still thinks it is the Third World but that, especially in recent years, has set up structures and institutions that are often much more agile and capable of what we here call (idealizing them) of the First World. There is a great desire to grow, to study, to do everything possible to get on a train that, while maintaining its macro-defects, travels better and better: this is perhaps, if you can say so, the religion of Brazil of today.
The younger generations are forced to run like never before, the norm is to leave the house at five in the morning to go to school and, after class, to face two hours of traffic to get to work, eight hours that barely need to pay the faculty, the rent and maybe an evening course and, finally, the return home, late at night. Although in a different way, this situation unites the different social classes of the Paulist metropolis. Even the guests of the Arsenale go around all day looking for work and when they return in the evening they study, to complete elementary school.
Another characteristic of Brazil is that you get used to hearing about God in every corner, on television, on the radio ... There is always someone ready to evangelize you, to convince you that his God is better than another, to call you to his church. On the streets you can easily see a garage transformed into a temple, large buildings combine the name of Jesus in all sorts of ways, stickers on the windshields remind you that God is faithful ... But the point is: who, in this Brazil version of the South American tiger, has still time to think about God?
THE GROWING FOREST
When I entered the Sermig I chose to be part of a Fraternity in the Church, which seeks to adhere to Jesus with love, a love that desires to create closeness with everyone and give birth, in everyone, to the commitment to transform the reality where they live, whatever it is. Our reality and our people are the thousands of people who every day cross the door of our house, our parish community, the immense archdiocese and finally all the young people (and not) who wish to deal with the experience of the Arsenale .
Together with them, on the occasion of Benedict XVI's visit to Brazil (May 2007), we invented the Forest that Grows, a new initiative that starts from making oneself available to do good: normally these are concrete actions of solidarity, carried out in small groups, aimed at other reception realities, schools, hospitals, prisons and, more generally, citizenship. It is becoming our way of evangelizing the city with gestures. It is the school of the Arsenale of Turin - that of cleaned cubes, bricks recovered with sweat and the beauty of doing things together, free, for others ... We have only inculturated it, trying to make ourselves understood. One of the most beautiful and significant aspects is that we are doing it with the people welcomed into our home, who at the beginning of their stay have nothing else in mind but survival.
A small team works to establish contacts and organize outings: to go to a kindergarten, for example (public facilities are often dilapidated), it is a question of presenting the Arsenale and the initiative, listening to the needs, preparing the materials ( brushes, paint, gardening tools ...) and, where possible, also stimulate the preparation of a small meeting with the children. In this way, in 2008 alone, we promoted over one hundred actions, in which more than six hundred people took part.
It is a considerable effort, deliberate and constant, because the Arsenal is already a large ship in itself, but these small lifeboats, which are lowered into the sea at least twice a week, have certainly changed the face of the house and, we are safe, sown signs of hope in the city.
BE "GOOD NEWS"
If a few years ago the welcome was to give a bed, to eat and a school in the utmost dignity, the Forest that Grows today offers our guests the basis to grow as people, to reconcile a little with life and society and, why no, assimilate those attitudes that you cannot write on a resume, but that a good employer can capture instantly. This helped to consolidate an atmosphere that those who came to visit us were able to breathe.
Those arriving from Italy, Japan or the United States are left speechless: a beautiful house where not street men are welcomed, but people, and even if they themselves often consider themselves beggars or bums, we are welcoming people. Dom Luciano Mendes emphasized this when he arrived early in the morning or late at night: "How nice to come here to the Arsenale!".
People watch us pass by on the street: a dozen of us clean the streets, three or four wave the flags of peace and others distribute a small leaflet on which it says: "We are friends of the Arsenal of Hope with the desire to CHANGING THE WORLD ... We are doing all the good we can, helping shelters, collecting food, donating blood and visiting the sick and prisoners. If you want, you can meet us every Tuesday evening at our prayer and formation meeting ”. This for us is evangelizing (in a secular way and in a religious way). Many of those forced to run look at you with the air of someone who has never seen anything like this; those who stop for a moment get excited: even if it were only for a moment, it will still be the memory of a positive event, a drop of water that sooner or later will quench your thirst. Then, as always, it depends on the desire to get involved.
Finally, we convey everything in the Tuesday prayer and we disclose it with a five-minute video, well packaged: we have noticed that our guests, but not only them, need to feel like protagonists and if the image of that open space that was previously a disaster now shows a garden, it is because we are changing! These videos have become the business card to introduce us to groups of young people who come to visit us or who invite us to their communities: the language of images and music (now stronger than a thousand words) opens a channel of communication, of emotion , raises questions ...
At that point the answers (if there are any) can become proposals: the Growing Forest, which I have tried to tell you, is just one of the many paths (still a lot to explore) that we take to show that good can be and goes fact, that it is a choice of life (not only for others) and that to nourish it and nourish our life we need to have an experience of God.
by Lorenzo Nacheli
from New Project October 2008