Testimony
The day Christ met me among the poor
I entered Obra Lumen on April 9, 2010. I came following friends, to the Khesed Group, on Friday nights. In the courtyard of Colégio Christus, among the Khesed, the Sacred Heart, and the Seeds of Light, without noticing, I began to fall in love with God. It was not a decision. It was a Face that let itself, little by little, be sought.
Years of grace came. At the Despertar Fides retreat, in the midst of Benedict XVI’s Year of Faith, I received a motto that never left me: Ad fidem, ad finem.
Around 2013, I was called to serve as an altar server at a Mass in the Filius Dei Chapel. It was there that I fell in love with the service of the altar. From then on, the Sacred Liturgy took hold of me: for years I served in Obra Lumen’s Liturgy Ministry — as ceremonarius and master of ceremonies —, came to coordinate it and to form new altar servers. And, on one special occasion, I had the grace of serving beside Father Paulo Ricardo, at a Consagra-Te — a memory I keep with gratitude.
At the same time, I sought the reasons of what I believed. I learned to think the faith with Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, Chesterton and Newman; and, among the pastors of my time, Dom Henrique Soares — the Lion of Palmares — and Father Paulo Ricardo himself helped to form my Catholic gaze. But it was Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, who most deeply taught my intelligence to seek the truth without ever separating it from beauty, from charity, and from love for the Church. None of this was false; none of this was in vain.
Midway on that road, on May 13, 2012, I gave myself entirely to Jesus through the hands of Mary, in the method of Saint Louis de Montfort. Not as one who takes out insurance, but as one who senses that, trusted to himself alone, he would be lost. It is the deepest reading I make of my own story: even when I did not understand what God was doing in me, I had already been entrusted to Him by His Mother. She did not merely keep me from leaving the road — she led me within it.
And yet there were masks. Truly good things — the liturgy, study, the defense of the faith in EmGuarda and in apologetics — can, in a heart like mine, become a mirror for vanity. The problem was never them. It was me, able to turn even what is holy into food for pride. I was seeking to understand Christ. I still needed to let Christ look at me.
The gaze came from where I was not looking. Edwin, the founder of the Obra and my friend, called me; he entrusted me to Portela. One night, at Obra Rainha dos Anjos, after Adoration, we went out. We went to Oitão Preto — one of the largest favelas in Fortaleza — to bring broth and bread to those sleeping on the street.
I held out bread to a man. He took my hand. He looked into my eyes. He smiled. And said only:
“Thank you so much for doing this for me.”
In that instant, my eyes were opened.
It was Him. Emanuel — God with us — who was already there, waiting only for me to recognize Him.
I returned to the car in silence, and then in tears — I sent Edwin an audio, unable to speak properly. My Christian life did not begin there. But something was, at last, disarmed. Christ did not destroy what I had received — the liturgy, theology, the consecration, life in the Church. He illumined. He purified. He reordered.
And He gave me eyes for the unity I could not see. The Christ adored in the Eucharist is the same who held my hand in Oitão Preto. The Christ studied in the books is the same who looked at me in that face. The truth the intellect contemplates is the Person the heart recognizes. They were not two roads — altar and street, doctrine and charity. There was one Lord; it was my eyes that were missing.
Since then, it is the poverty of that Child in the manger that saves me. And the Emanuel I recognized on the street did not stay on the street: He crossed the years.
At the end of my wedding, a priest who knew nothing of my history in Obra Lumen said, as one who simply blesses:
“May the poor find a place in your home.”
It sounded like a confirmation — almost providential — of what had begun years before, on a sidewalk in Oitão Preto. The Christ I recognized in the poor did not ask for an emotion. He asked for a home. And He keeps entering: into marriage, into the Church, into service, into hospitality toward those who wait at the door. The encounter does not end in me. It returns me to my brothers.
— testimony of Elias Andrade