have been away from the missions already for many years doing other pastoral tasks assigned to me by my Superiors. But, at this time, as on every Christmas season, my mind and heart return to the far-away Brazil where I have celebrated this feast, with its so many intimate moods, surrounded by people simple and humble as Joseph, Mary and Baby Jesus, with the shepherds, in the Manger of Bethlehem.
I now recall one particular Christmas which happened during my twenty years of missionary life among the poor of the Amazon in Brazil.
Night had descended on the ‘bairro’ of the Guama’, in the outskirts of the city of Belem. In the streets you could feel the air of festivity, from people hurrying to and fro, to children playing soccer with their rag-balls, loud-speakers projecting music from the dance halls, mingled with competing appeals from the evangelical minister who threatened the ire of God upon those who’d let themselves be corrupted by mundane feasts and drinking sprees.
In the midst of so much vitality and gayety, and trusting only in the force of the Gospel and of the discreet witness of my presence, I was headed home. Having said Mass in a small wooden chapel in the interior of the ‘barrio,’ I was returning to the main chapel attached to our house where I lived with two seminarians.
Every time I met Dona Dora in the street carrying Emanuela, she would remind her baby, “Pede a bencao do Padre…” (Ask the Father’s blessing. He helped you to be born).
I was tired and my mind and prayer were taken with what I had been able to do that Sunday. My thoughts were interrupted by a man who touched me and in a whisper asked: “Father, please, come to bless my wife, she is suffering much from childbirth but the baby does not want to be born.”
Honestly, at that moment, I had the urge to say I was too tired and wanted to go home and have a bit to eat. On a second thought, though, I accepted tyo follow that father-to-be worried about his wife and their baby.
Balancing myself over a tree trunk that, thrown over an open sewage-drain, connected the dirt road to the shanty, I found myself in one-room dwelling divided in two by an old canvas. Behind this divider, on the floor, and assisted by the ‘parteira’ (midwife), lay the woman meaning with the pains of birth. They explained the difficulties they were having, and asked me to join them in praying for Mary to help the baby be born healthy.
Willingly, I knelt next to them and, placing one hand over the swollen belly, held up the other as we prayed the Hail Mary. Maybe the time had come, maybe Mary had listened to us, the fact is that at the end of the prayer Emanuela suddenly slipped on the newspaper spread of the floor, giving her first cry ‘in this valley of tears.’
The happiness for the birth of Emanuela shone on the faces of the three adults present, and I in my heart joined them in giving thanks to the Lord and to Our Lady for the mysterious gift of life, received with so much love by that family overwhelmed by poverty.
My join was complete when, a few days later, on Christmas day, I baptized Emanuela as she became part of our Christian community. During the two more years that I served in the ‘bairro’ of the Guama’, every time I met Dona Dora in the street carrying Emanuela, she would remind her baby, “Pede a bencao do Padre…” (Ask the Father’s blessing. He helped you to be born).
I must tell you that that birth in the shanty of Dona Dora that year helped me to live more intensely the Birth of the Emmanuel, God-with-us…
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)