On July 16 in the community of Viseu, in the parish of Rio de Loba, together with her family and friends we celebrated the missioning of our CLM Neuza Francisco. She will soon leave for our mission of Arequipa, Peru. We share with you her feelings, following this great day of celebration.

I talk about a Yes which has nothing easy about it, but means availability, a Yes which is full of commitment and love. It is a “Yes” given from the humble condition I am in, and from what I have within me. It is a Yes full of perseverance, in the certainty that “God does not choose the most able, but enables those he chooses.” (Msgr. António Couto).

This Yes that I am telling you about involves leaving everything, family, friends, and the comforts of a life that for me it had no meaning. It is an attitude of detachment, because only through it we get to experience a personal relationship with Christ, without the dependency and the securities created in the course of a lifetime. I trust in the call that he gives me to be happy here of wherever he will lead me by the hand. It is the certainty of journeying more and more within my very self, to know myself, to be able to touch others, in a relationship which is only possible with the conviction that, walk wherever you walk, God leads me by the hand.

Today I have this deep trust that Comboni walks with me in God’s dream for us and that I, too, am also one of the thousand lives for mission.

Today, He calls me once more to leave my boat at the shore and with him look for other seas. I go, I follow, but I am not going alone. I take along the prayers of all those whose paths I crossed and sowed in me small seeds of a deep love that germinated, and continues to do so, here within my heart. I go, but I do not go alone. I take with me all the hearts I met on my journey and taught me how to love more and more. I take with me all those whose life’s history intertwined with mine and helped me to get to know a merciful and compassionate God.

I hold in me the hugs given along a fruitful and fertile journey, I hold the outstretched hands that, despite the many falls, always helped me get up. I go, but I do not go alone. And, like my grandmother often used to say, I “go with God.”

At this time I am called to Peru. I feel that once more He invites me to love, to share, to be, to offer myself, to trust, so that together with the people to which I am called, we may be one. He calls me to go to the poorest and most abandoned in the outskirts of Arequipa. He calls me to be me and to let the treasure I carry within me bear fruit with others.  I embrace the mission of Arequipa, like someone embraces a dream, experienced since forever. It is a dream to which I have given myself, and continue to give myself every day. I am not talking of utopia or of something unreal, but rather of the dream of being totally connected to the reality I have embraced.

I go, not because I want to save the world, but because I, too, want to be part of the open wounds of the world, wounds made of flesh and bone people who in a faraway world carry within themselves fragments of God. I want to be with them, I want to see the face of God in humanity looking for a meaning, with my feet on the ground and my hands filled with nothing. I want to see God in the spontaneous smiles of those who do not know love, but live daily to give praise.

I walk in the confidence, commitment and joy of knowing that I am following Christ, I bring Christ and will always meet Christ. I walk and every step I take, I take it freely in the knowledge that I will always be in his merciful arms where I will take shelter at sundown, and He will be my hope who will make me get up at each new sunrise.

I leave in the name of a community, in the name of the Church, in the name of Jesus Christ, to announce the Gospel of Love. And in this deep growth in myself, in God and in others I ask you: Pray for me.

With love and gratitude,

Neuza Francisco