{"id":326644,"date":"2014-09-01T03:00:07","date_gmt":"2014-09-01T01:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/living-the-gospel-overcoming-distrust\/"},"modified":"2024-05-16T14:57:56","modified_gmt":"2024-05-16T12:57:56","slug":"living-the-gospel-overcoming-distrust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/living-the-gospel-overcoming-distrust\/","title":{"rendered":"Living the Gospel: overcoming distrust"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20140831-a\"“I work as a guard in a Church in Montevideo,<\/strong> and sometime ago, upon opening the door every morning I would always find a boy dressed in rags, who would enter the church with the typical beverage we drink here. My first reaction was one of suspicion and distrust<\/b>, due to his appearance. I thought: \u201cI hope he is not here to steal!\u201d After some time, however, I remembered the Word of Life <\/a>… so I started to greet him and speak to him. He told me that he was homeless. <\/b>One morning, seeing that he was all neat and dressed with new clothes, I asked him if he had found a place to stay. \u201cNo,\u201d he answered, \u201cI wash myself in the square with soap the Ministry for Social Development distributes. I don\u2019t like to be dirty.\u201d Then he recounted that he was a Catholic and went to Church \u201dto speak with God.\u201d He had received his First Communion as a child. So I said, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you come to Mass and then speak to the priest.\u201d From then on he started attending Mass every day. Since I had gained a bit of weight, I had many clothes that no longer fitted me<\/b>. “Perhaps they would fit him\u201d I thought. So I filled a bag and brought it to him. \u201cOh no, that’s too much!\u201dhe exclaimed on seeing the bag. \u201cI need so little, since I live on the streets.\u201d From then on<\/strong> also other people of the community started to help him, convinced that every man is \u201cChrist in person.<\/span><\/a>\u201d It was then that this man, who was now a friend, managed to find a good job (he works really hard) and rent a room.” <\/p>\n

J. B. (Montevideo – Uruguay)<\/p>\n

\u00abA few days ago, on my way to the market, <\/strong>I saw a woman rummaging through the garbage bins and selecting the things inside. I stopped for a moment to look at her. She then said \u201cThe rich people throw away so much\u2026 but these things are still useful.\u201d She simultaneously showed me a pan, saying: \u201cThis is made of good material.\u201d \u201cYou\u2019re right!\u201d \u2013 I answered, really surprised at what she had found. It was a good pan, you could see that it had been used, but it\u2019s one of those things that last forever. So we continued our conversation. <\/strong>\u201c… this could serve to make pudding, and that other thing to drain\u2026\u201d and we went on and on. She then showed me<\/strong> a holy picture of Our Lady which she had found in the garbage, together with a statue of Our Lady of the Valley, one of those tiny and really old lead statues of Our Lady. \u00a0\u201cDo you know what this means for me?\u201d \u2013 I said \u2013 \u201cIt means Our Lady is with you.\u201d \u00a0\u201cYes!\u201d she said. \u201cGod and Our Lady are always with me. They are always by my side.\u201d Then on seeing that among the objects, there were plants that I liked, she shared them with me and asked me to choose a branch, and still another\u2026 On arriving home I put them in water so they would germinate and be transplanted. In my heart I prayed<\/b>: \u00a0\u201cThank you Jesus for allowing me to meet you out in the streets. Thank you for coming to see me. Please do not tire of looking for me, if I do not search for You in the outskirts of life.\u201d T.S. (Cordoba – Argentina<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two meetings in the \u201doutskirts of life\u201d of Latin America. The effort to see Christ in those who need help makes you overcome distrust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}