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Who were you, Francisco Javier Butiñá?. I was in love with life. I enjoyed living intensely, fully. I wanted to respond to each call I received, if it was consistent with what was most essential in my being. I did not run away from life because of fear.
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Who were you, Francisco Javier Butiñá?
I was in love with life. I enjoyed living intensely, fully.
I wanted to respond to each call I received, if it was consistent with what was most essential in my being.
I went deep into all fields of learning that life afforded me.
I opened myself to beauty, to love, to friendship.
There was no urgent need that did not move me to act,
there was no pain of others that did not pain me,
there was no invention that did not attract me.
I lived because I believed in a God who is alive, good, close to me,
because I believed that my eyes, my hands, my lips were God’s ways of being present to my brothers and sisters.
They were the response that God could give to the women and men of my time.
God was calmly and gently leading me, until I found myself involved and determined on a new project:
first it was coming close to work, to a humane, dignified and Christian work,
then it was to getting into the boat with Jesus, the desire to conquer the world.
I contemplated the world of work in upheaval, in crisis, violent, without values.
I discovered the pain of poor women without a place in society.
It pained me to see that everything, even God, was being taken away from the workers.
It was then that I made myself totally available to be an instrument in God’s hands.
Deep inside me Nazareth lighted up: light, word, testimony, work and prayer, routine and beauty, flower and machine, progress and spirit, God and human person,
Everything was possible in the Taller de Nazaret.
I did not count the cost. The things of God are beyond calculation.
But no one can give herself or himself to life without giving up her or his life.
I suffered at the beginning of the foundation: a suffering that was life-giving.
I felt the pain from all the opposing forces, even from those who were good. And the pain before God.
It is difficult to understand how two projects of God could come into collission.
The soul shudders when you have to decide in favor of God against God.
It is difficult to understand what it is to die to what is new, to what is life-giving, to what is desired by God.
It is hard to see things turn out differently from what you have expected.
You have given all. You have done everything. And God no longer needs you…
This new fidelity is difficult. It is harder to dispose oneself to die. This new mission is not easy to understand.
Be faithful: to yourselves, to life, to history, to humanity, to the charism, to God.
May no one take simplicity away from you
May you be daring so as not to conform yourselves to the usual thing.
“Love Jesus much, because love is a good teacher for everything that is good.