Coming soon, on July 26, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of my Priestly Ordination (which I celebrate on July 10), I have a special program at 9:00 p.m., which will coincide with the last of MORAL DE CADA DÍA. I would not like to fail to share some letters that I have received, talking about the Radio and the good it does for so many people. Names do not appear out of caution. Hope you like.
About what I experienced in the discovery of the living and eternal God
Good afternoon Fr. Antonio María,
I think the best way to start telling you what happened to me and what I experienced is to put it in context.
This occurred from December 2018 and 2019.
We live in the province of —— (Canada). Xxxxxx, my husband, is a French teacher in Catholic schools. That year we moved to the province of ——- which is at the other end of Canada. My husband wanted to work in the schools there. So we moved, but without selling ——-‘s house. We arrived in the city of ——— in the summer and everything was going well until the school year started for my husband… Starting in October or November (I don’t remember very well), xxxxxx went into a pretty strong crisis. The work system in the schools in ——is totally different from what my husband was used to in ——. He had a lot of problems with the school principal and also with the primary school students who came from quite broken families. Anyway, in short, he waited for the Christmas holidays to arrive to see if he would relax a little… I noticed it was quite bad and when he got home, he immediately left again. He told me that he had to go to church and be there. I did not understand anything. Although we always went to mass on Sundays, I did it to accompany him and go as a family, but for me it was like just another activity.
In short, things were getting worse because my husband had a terrible time every time he left for school and he came devastated telling me about the humiliations that his principal put him through and then the interviews with the children’s parents that were almost impossible to maintain a communication with them.
December came, and xxxxxx told me that he was going on a retreat and that he needed to get out of town. That’s when I almost collapsed because I tried to convince him to spend Christmas at home with us. In the end he left. I didn’t hear from him over Christmas and he returned in January. In February, a few days after my birthday, he left again and I didn’t hear from him until April when he started writing to me and finally on May 1st he wrote to tell me to go back home, to ——–.
For me, those months that I spent alone with the children who, at that time, were three and four years old, were the most wonderful and joyful that I have had in my life, despite all the suffering I had of not understanding anything, why had my husband abandoned us in such a drastic way?
I found myself in a situation of total abandonment. The only person who knew what had happened was my mother-in-law who lived in ——-. I never told my relatives in Spain anything because we were all angry with each other… well, a disaster. Thank God, now I have a better relationship with them, but nothing to brag about… In December I began to frequent the parish more. My mother-in-law encouraged me to pray for xxxxxxx, but to me it was like she was speaking to me in Chinese.
Even so, I started going to the parish. It made me extremely lazy, because I didn’t want to go out anywhere. I went out just enough, shopping, taking the children to school, picking them up and returning home. Besides, the winter of ——- didn’t help at all. There temperatures drop to -40º. I was leaving the porch with the stroller and had to walk very carefully because everything was frozen. And even though they clean the streets… that was terrible.
Well, even so I began to go to the Eucharist more often. Then I remembered that xxxxxxx always listened to Radio María in French. So I started listening to it on my cell phone. I began to notice that I needed to go to the Eucharist every day. Every day I left my daughter at the school bus stop and from there I walked to the parish with my son in the stroller and connected to Radio María España. I used to walk thirty minutes every day to the church at -40, -30º. There were days when I made it to the bus, which saved me about fifteen minutes of walking, but sometimes I didn’t make it, depending on whether or not there were delays on the girl’s school bus.
I began to have a relationship with the parishioners of the parish and with the deacon’s wife who led prayer groups and also gave Bible study one day a week.
Thus, I began to like the business of going to Mass and along the way I was listening to the compendium of the Catechism that at that time was Father Raúl Muelas. I don’t know how, but I couldn’t miss a single episode of the compendium. I was hearing things I had never heard in my life and I loved it. It was something so new and what they said on the radio felt so true, that I couldn’t miss a minute of the program. What’s more, I had two phones, so if I arrived at the parish and the program was not over, I would leave the stroller in the hall with the old phone recording the compendium program while I was at Mass. And as I left Mass, I listened to the part I had missed.
And so I was listening to more programs. The Catechism explained by Monsignor Munilla was and is another of my favorites and then I started listening to his.
I cannot put an exact date on when I began to experience this pleasure of going to Mass and listening to the programs. I mean, I know it was from December onwards, when I spent Christmas completely alone with the kids. It was something that was happening little by little and that was becoming more intense. It was like my heart, my soul, was slowly becoming soaked in all the things of God.
Starting in February, I started going to perpetual adoration at another parish, not far from the one I used to go to Mass. I also didn’t know what that was, Perpetual Adoration, but they invited me to go and there I began to be in front of the Lord. And I also began to learn to pray the Rosary through Radio Maria. The first days that I went to adoration it seemed very boring to be in front of it, I think that I was still not aware that the Lord was present there (just as when I went to Mass, I did not know that the Lord was in the Host, but I It felt very good to be there and listen to the readings of the day). What I noticed and what happened is that every time the moment of Consecration in the Eucharist arrived, I would start crying. I couldn’t help it. It was a mix between joy and sadness. And in Perpetual Adoration there came a time when the same thing happened to me. At first, when I went and got bored, I stopped going for a couple of days, but that only lasted a few days because I immediately became “hooked” with Adoration and couldn’t stop going for a single day. What I began to experience in Adoration was the presence of the Virgin. Inside the Adoration chapel there was a life-size statue of Mary. Well, the times that I sat in the chapel and began to meditate on the mysteries of the Rosary with the radio, I felt that Mary was at my side. And I don’t know how to explain this. It was as if she was telling me, but without hearing anything, that she was there with me, accompanying me every second. And every time I left Adoration, it was as if they had given me a “shot” of tremendous joy and all of this without knowing any news about xxxxxxx, or where he was, or anything at all.
I have read in his blog that the 2019 spiritual exercises that he gave on Radio María were the most fruitful. When I read it, my hair stood on end because for me they were also the first things I had done in my life and the most profound. It was as if I lived them intensely in my heart. Also, I was able to follow them calmly with peace while the children were sleeping.
I have never prayed so much, non-stop, as in 2019. I came home with the children and started praying. I bought a statue of Mary, Saint Joseph and the Child and a Crucifix and set it up at home as a prayer corner. The days we couldn’t go to Mass, because there were strong blizzards, I stayed at home praying. I would get up at night to pray and I noticed that I did it without any effort. We sent my husband voice messages on WhatsApp with the children, praying the Lord’s Prayer, although he never answered, every day, at night, we said goodbye to him.
I don’t remember when I confessed (until that moment I had only confessed, as far as I can remember, twice: the first, before making my First Communion and the second, before getting married), but I remember that It was one of the days that I was going to go to the Adoration chapel. The parish, which is called Corpus Christi, was enormous and at the entrance, on the right hand side, there is a giant Christ, on the cross. Of all the times I went to that parish I had never noticed Him. I always passed by and went directly to the chapel. Well that day, I don’t know why, I stood in front of the giant crucifix and looked up. It was seeing the face of Christ and I started to cry, seeing the sweetness with which he looked at me and that was when I understood that He had given me life and that he was giving his life every day for me. Crazy things from youth came to mind, when I was seventeen years old. It was as if a lot of things from my past suddenly came to my mind, but the one that weighed on me the most was when I was seventeen, nothing I can forget about. Until that moment, it was as if I had been under total amnesia and suddenly He brought my entire past into view. The next day, I went to confession. That day I remember that Fr. Michael asked me if I did know the Rosary prayer. So, as penance, he told me to pray and meditate well on the Rosary. He encouraged me and told me that today was a holiday and that he had to make me happy. To be honest, I was happy, but I didn’t stop crying throughout the confession. I was confessing all week and now more calmly. And so it went, every week, he confessed to me, to this day, I usually confess every week.
For me, Holy Week that year was so special that I have it burned into my heart, in my soul. It was everything, from the day the baptismal renewal was carried out that I felt that same day, when the priest was sprinkling everyone with palm branches, that the drop that fell on my forehead (and that was very far away). from the priest) I felt like I was born again. I understood that in the Host the Lord is alive and present. Furthermore, as I listened to the catechism programs, I remember that M. Munilla was explaining the meaning of the Eucharist in those days. For me, those explanations were as if he understood everything at a stroke.
I remember that in the celebration of the Last Supper, Father Michael, when he lifted up the Lord, there in a huge Host, I stared while he kept his arms up with the Lord. Well, at that moment, I saw the Lord drawn, in a transparent way, his silhouette, but I saw it, or I thought I saw it, very clearly. I remember that there were many spotlights illuminating the entire temple and I even rubbed my eyes and looked away. And after rubbing my eyes and looking back at the Host, the figure of the Lord was still there. That lasted as long as Fr. Michael was with his arms up. I tell you this as something that I could see with my own eyes, but it could have been a product of my imagination or psychology, I don’t know. And, since we are now reading Saint John of the Cross (she refers to the classes we have online, where she is enrolled), we must be very careful with these things, which I will tell you, but without any desire to cling to it. What I cling to is the Faith of the Church, its doctrine and the Holy Scriptures. I wanted to live that moment with humility and discretion. In fact, I only told this to xxxxxx and now to you.
Since then, I haven’t stopped wanting to know more and more. It’s really that I completely fell for the Lord that there was a time when the fact of not knowing anything about xxxxxxxx didn’t bother me either. Yes, I was worried, but I was really happy to have met Jesus alive.
I didn’t know if we were going to get back together as a family, if he was going to separate from me. I completely abandoned myself to the Lord. I had never prayed for anyone and it was as if every time I prayed the Rosary, in addition to praying for xxxxxxxx, I prayed for everyone, for all the people I met, for the homeless, for the prisoners, for prostitutes, for the children, the sick etc. He made a list with the names of the parishioners he knew, the names of the priests of the parish and those of Radio María, and thus he prayed. He would take out the list and name them. I lost 10 kilos but, the truth is, I didn’t even realize how thin I had become… I ate, but not much, I only prepared food for the children and then because it couldn’t fit me…
I lived the Pope’s Via Crucis, but as something that completely filled me with love. It was also a very special moment.
And the miracle was when on the first day of May, xxxxxxx told me that we would return home together. That month I remember that I was bringing flowers to the Virgin every day. Then, after listening to you, in previous programs, not long ago… I started laughing, because you remembered that it is very good to bring flowers to church, but then you also have to remember to pick them up… Well, I don’t I noticed that detail…
Another thing that I understood that the Lord was calling me is to be part of a Christian community. I didn’t know any pastoral movement or anything. For me it was all new. But when I returned to — I remembered a friend of mine, who told me, years ago, about her community; But of course, in those days I didn’t pay much attention to it. As soon as I returned home I contacted her and told her that I wanted to enter a community and that was when I began to attend the catechesis of the Camino.
Well, this is what I can tell you, what my experience was like and my return to the Church. Since then, I have not stopped learning more and more. I love the doctrine of the Church, the Holy Scriptures. In short, I am completely in love with the Lord and I try to transmit it to my children and my family and to the entire world… but this is something that overwhelms me so much that one cannot keep it quiet.
I tried to be brief, I hope you like it didn’t seem too long. I don’t know if I have explained well why I have been writing as my memories came to me.
Well, that’s how it is and that’s how I send it to you. I really enjoyed sharing this with you.
A big hug, always praying for you. Peace.
(Needless to say, I have asked her permission to share it with everyone. God does what he wants to who he wants, he just needs us to say: YES).
