In this opportunity that I have to express to God my gratitude for the experience of a year of novitiate, I praise the God of my history for the Augustinian Recollect charism, for granting this charism so important for the Church.
Every charism is for the Church and is part of its life and holiness.
I am happy to find in the Augustinian Recollect charism many answers to my concerns.
I am a restless man and I have no doubts.
In this Augustinian search for the Truth, I have lived in my process of vocational discernment the experience of encounter, intimacy and proximity with God.
The novitiate stage was a gift of God in my life.
God is the one who prepares everything and enables those whom He calls, and of that I have no doubt.
One of the greatest difficulties of our times, that is, of the human search for happiness, has not been realized many times due to the lack of listening, that is, we live immersed in the noises of this world and we do not experience in depth the silence, which for me is an essential way in the relationship between God and his creature.
I believe that silence is the right path for those who seek God, and I say this from my experience in the novitiate, a period characterized by a constant search and also of encounter for those who wish to be more intimate with Jesus, our interior Master.
One of the first words addressed to us when we arrived at the novitiate house were these: “You will not find silence if you do not seek it”.
These words of Frei Carlito Gomes remained marked in my memory and I saw that they made a lot of sense.
I am a man who desires God, so I did not give up my moments of silence, both in the chapel and in my room.
What a wonderful experience, what emotion and gratitude I have for so many moments in my novitiate where God was present.
Today’s world may not understand why a young man gives his life to God, why a young man “stays locked up in the walls of a convent”.
Perhaps they speak and question this because they have not yet experienced or had an encounter with the One who is able to quench every thirst and answer every doubt.
Throughout the classes in the novitiate, where so many friars spoke to us about our charism and about many other topics related to the Church and the Order, I perceived that the Augustinian Recollect charism fits my life.
I am a man who loves community life, prayer life and the Church.
In the Order, of which today I have a bond of which I am a part, I have no hesitation in saying that we are men who are passionate for the Truth.
In one of the classes on our charism, I observed that today’s society lives an Augustinian movement, but in an unconscious way.
The men nowadays live in a constant search, that is to say, they live in restlessness, but they do not know how to discern, for that reason they get lost when they do not make a correct discernment, thinking that the satisfaction is in the external and not in the intimate.
Our father, St. Augustine, said that Truth dwells in the interior of man and, I have no doubt, our heart is the dwelling of God.
My brothers and sisters, this world would be happy if you understood that God dwells in the innermost being.
In one of the days of classes, I dared to say: “Our charism is the water that the world needs, we can help this world to find God with our testimony of life, with our Augustinian charism”.
In the community of brothers in Monteagudo, I had the opportunity to grow humanly and spiritually.
How many examples that community left me.
I do not have words to express so much gratitude, but everything I lived in this stage with my brothers is kept in my heart.
I am not very prone to speak or express myself, but every gesture is kept in my heart.
There were many important moments in my life during this novitiate year.
I could talk about every moment, but in summary I will say that I have become a great man of God.
It is a worthwhile and essential stage in the life of a religious.
It is an incredible experience.
Thank you, God, for this opportunity, for this gift in my life, for this experience that I will carry forever in my vocational history.
Thank you, brothers of Monteagudo, for your lives in mine and for being a living presence of Our Lord in my vocational history and discernment.
Pray for me and for my brother Adrian, that we may be authentic religious committed to the Gospel.