In the year of the Amazon Synod, we wish to recover the memory and testimonial of Florentino Zabalza, Augustinian Recollect and Bishop of the Prelature of Lábrea (Amazon, Brazil) from 1971 to 1994, who left his memoirs that are now offered to all audiences, for the first time, through AgustinosRecoletos.org.
Our Communities give, it is true, a lot of work, but their leaders are also great auxiliaries, another type of missionary, in our pastoral work.
In the Prelature we are nine priests, there are enormous distances, the rivers are used as highways with scarce, slow and expensive transportation; all are difficulties to be able to attend, even moderately, to our faithful scattered in these immensities. And you have to take care of them or at least try to take care of them; that’s why we are here; they need it, they want it, they expect it from us. What to do?
For some years now, various forms of apostolate have appeared in the Church, especially where there are not enough priests: Christian Communities, Base Communities, Biblical Circles, Reflection Groups and others.
I, who am the bishop, the person primarily responsible for the Mission, cannot even say which of these forms of apostolate we have here. The only thing I can tell you is that for some years now, in more than a hundred places in the Prelature, as many groups of faithful have met every Sunday to pray, sing, read the Gospel, comment on it and, in the light of the Gospel, examine their lives, study their spiritual and material problems, and try to solve them.
We missionaries visit most of the places once a year; we sow the seed of the Word, we turn on the light of faith; we worry that the light not go out and the seed thrive? This is how I asked when drafting the Pastoral Lines when speaking precisely of the Agents. Today we have the answer. The Communities with their leaders and through their meetings are achieving this.
At the head of each Community there is a leader, chosen by the Community itself. He is in charge of distributing tasks in the meeting; he indicates who will be the reader, who will sing the songs, etc. Many times, everything will have to be done by himself, since he is the only one in the group who knows how to read and has the courage to say something in public. We have communities in which no one knows how to read; the meeting is reduced to praying, singing and talking about personal or community needs. That satisfies us, we consider it valid, useful and comforting.
The history of our Communities is simple, but it required work and sacrifices. Determined by common agreement of all the missionaries, to implant this type of work, of apostolate, we had to make our people aware, we had to found the Communities and lay good foundations for them, so that they could grow firm and secure.
I asked for a volunteer missionary for this job, and immediately the Augustinian Recollect Jesús Moraza, the youngest of the missionaries at that time, showed up. We accommodated him, more or less, a boat, he got recording material, songs, Bibles and other things, and he jumped into the river, the Purús and some of its tributaries as well.
Father Moraza spent two and a half years in this job. When he arrived at one of the parishes in his continuous travel, he would stop there for a few days to regain his strength, socialize with the missionaries, eat a little better, and repair possible defects in the boat. Then again he went navigating, preaching the message. Messenger was called his little boat.
In those intervals he told us how he was well received by everyone everywhere. He was enthusiastic and we were enthusiastic, telling of the enthusiasm with which the people received his message and the idea of the Community, and how he was leaving in many places Communities more or less organized, with their leaders and with those trained in their direction.
Fruit of the effort and work of Fr. Jesús were the majority of the Communities that we currently have. Other missionaries, in our trips by the rivers, were organizing other Communities and some were born out of holy envy of our people. Did a Community already exist somewhere? The neighboring places did not want to be less and founded or organized their own with the help of those that are already operating.
Many Communities were already founded and functioning. Would the problem of our action with our town in the interior already be resolved? No way. The Communities and their leaders had to be attended to; otherwise they would not last long; they would weaken and eventually die.
Sometimes, on trips along the rivers, we gather the leaders of the four or six neighboring places in a certain place and we spend a few days with them, encouraging them, teaching them the best way to lead the Community. Other times, we take them to the parish headquarters, for meetings of several days and, on occasions, we bring together leaders from the entire Prelature here in Lábrea for those animated and awareness-raising meetings.
For these occasions we bring from outside, if we can, technicians in the matter, leaders of Communities from other parts of Brazil, so that they transmit their knowledge and, above all, experiences. Our Sister Church, the Diocese of Vitória (Espíritu Santo, Brazil) has helped us a lot in this matter.
For this purpose we have a Community Center in Lábrea with capacity for 40 or 50 people. In it they receive instruction, eat and sleep, and everything, room, travel, food during the time they stay here or spend between coming and returning, everything is at the expense of the Prelature.
On occasions, when the leader is the head of the family, the one who works and earns a living for it, we pay him up to a daily salary, so that his family do not suffer needs.
I cannot help but make a brief parenthesis here and refer to the comments, not always favorable, that are made here, there and everywhere, about our “mania” for asking and about the destination we give to the alms that are given to us. There is one of the destinations and purpose of alms. If not by asking, I don’t know how we could do these and many other things, carry out this and other projects.
With one of the many alms requested for our ministry, we bought about fifty recorders that were distributed in as many Communities. From the Centers, on tapes, we send them a message, the songs they are learning. As the recorders were not enough for all the Communities, some lend them to others, so that the majority can benefit from them.
From the parish centers also, at the beginning of the year and for all of it, we send the leaders a guide with the way to “celebrate” their weekly meeting. Each leader is free to adhere to or depart from it, but most adhere to our formula, because they are not capable of imagining anything different.
Our concern with our people is not only spiritual; we are not satisfied only with their praying; we seek, because we believe that it falls within our priestly duty, to care for them and also try to solve their problems of a material nature; and we are trying and achieving this through the Communities.
We have convinced them so that after finishing the spiritual part of their meeting, they chat, talk, discuss personal and Community problems and try, among themselves, to solve them.
Thus, there have been many places where the Community has managed to get them to set up a school or send them a teacher where they already had premises that they had built themselves. In the cities, the Communities have obtained electricity, water and other benefits for their neighbourhoods. Very nice cases have occurred in the spiritual and social fields.
In one of the Communities, a daughter and niece of the leader had not spoken to each other for a long time. One day the leader, after making their behavior ugly and making them see the bad example they were giving within the Community, he ordered them to pray the Our Father. When they came to those words to forgive us our offenses just as we forgive those who have offended us, he ordered them to stop and counterclaim the case. Result? At that moment the enmity between the two ended.
In another place, the leader spoke at a Sunday meeting about the situation of a local family, whose father, very ill, had not been able to work for several days and the family was experiencing real needs. He commented: if your brother is hungry, feed him. Result: several men committed themselves, some one day and others another day, to go fishing for that family and to work on their plantations so that they would not be lost.
I am sure that these people are so good and charitable that, even without the existence of the Community, there would have been someone who, knowing about the case, would help that needy family; but through the Community they found the evangelical and Christian obligation and motivation to do so.
The third and last case is in the purely human sphere. A sawmill owner, here in Lábrea, with the large amount of wood that he piled up during the winter, blocked the passage of the canoes in a certain part of the river and the people, instead of reaching their houses with the canoes and their loads, had to to abandon those and carry these to their homes.
They talked to the owner of the sawmill, and nothing. They talked to the police, and nothing. One day, more than a dozen men armed with chainsaws and axes cut into pieces the trunks that were in the way, the river swept them away and the passage was free. That same day, the leader of the Community and two or three others were called by the police. Suspecting what it was, they went to all those who had been cutting the logs and some more as well, up to about forty men. When the police chief said that there were three summoned and that the others should return to their homes, the entire group said they knew what it was about and that all of them had either been working or had agreed with the fact; that if some were to be punished, all should be.
Given the group’s attitude, the police could do nothing, no one was arrested or punished; The passage was free and the owner of the sawmill took great care to cover it up again. Good. That resolution to defend their rights in this way was taken in the Community. This is how our Communities are and how they work.
Even if the number of missionaries increases, something that is not even hinted at in the distant horizons, due to the way of life of our people, we will have enough of them, and the Communities will always be the way or the path to be able to reach everyone or those entrusted to our pastoral action. We hope that they will increase and improve so that, through them, our work can be more effective.
We have placed our greatest hope for positive spiritual results in the number and proper functioning of our Communities. Ask the Lord that if it is his will, he increase those that we have planted and watered and are taking care of, so that He may be better known every day, so that he can be more and better served in this Prelature of Labrea that was entrusted to me.
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