We Have Two Options

Telling the story of what we have lived through in Venezuela these past years would fill a book of a thousand pages or more. They have been truly intense years, with news flying in from one second to the next, a great deal of bad news and some good news as well.

We all know we are going through one of the most difficult moments in our history.

I remember when my eldest son called me from Valencia to tell me that Génesis Carmona had just died, and that she had studied at his own university. I felt my heart break. We have felt the deaths of our young people as if they were our own children.

The hardest part of all this is how to live as a mother and wife in this situation. We have to summon the strength to get out of bed in the morning after crying over the previous day’s news and over the uncertainty of what will happen today; to find the courage to show a smile, despite our anguish, when we see that our husband’s anguish is even greater. We have to be available at any hour when our children come looking for us to tell us something.

I think that in the hardest moments we may go through, we have two options: either we take things with a supernatural outlook that helps us keep going, without giving up, with joy and hope, or we take things with despair and impatience, which can lead us to live in bitterness, something that could embitter the lives of those around us. We have to be very careful not to let hatred into our hearts!

Last Sunday’s Gospel was very clear. Jesus Christ tells us: “You have heard that it was said: An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth… You have heard that it was said: You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who persecute and slander you, so that you may be children of your heavenly Father… For if you love those who love you, what reward do you deserve? Do not the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing that is extraordinary? Do not the pagans do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:38–48).

I know what Christ asks of us is not at all easy, but if we pray, if we stay very close to Him and to His Most Holy Mother through prayer and the sacraments, we can do it.

Recently Cardinal F. X. Nguyen Van Thuan’s book Testimony of Hope fell into my hands. This Vietnamese cardinal spent thirteen years in prison, nine of them in total solitary confinement. He recounts that when he was placed in isolation, he was handed over to five guards. Two of them, in shifts, were always with him. Their superiors had told them: “We will replace you every two weeks with another group, so that this dangerous bishop does not ‘contaminate’ you.” Later they decided: “We won’t change them anymore, or else this bishop will contaminate all the police.” But what was Cardinal Van Thuan contaminating his jailers with? With peace and love. They could not understand how that imprisoned bishop could radiate so much joy and zest for life in the terrible circumstances he was in. That is what led many of those communist jailers to convert to Catholicism.

This book teaches that in the worst moments of our lives nothing and no one can take away our Peace, or that inner freedom of being children of God, which makes us understand that whatever happens He will never abandon us. Because if we die trying, what awaits us is nothing less than Heaven, the greatest thing a Christian dreams of reaching.

I will close by copying the dedication Nguyen Van Thuan wrote to his mother on the first page of the book. I hope it helps the many Venezuelan mothers and fathers who are here, living through these very hard times, times we must handle very carefully so that hatred and evil do not swallow us up:

Let us ask God earnestly that we may be very faithful to our Faith and to the commandment of Love, and that He give us great Hope, great Patience and great Fortitude, so that we can carry on in our Homeland at this moment in our history, and so that our hearts may never be filled with hatred. Someday Justice and Peace will shine in Venezuela.