How I Met the Home
Maria Fuentes Castal
How did I meet the home?...I would rather say that the Home met me. Let me explain! My father had been a great friend of Mamie since he was a child. He would spend all the free time he had in her home. She was at his wedding and when I was born, Mamie gave me a medal as a gift...And so, before I was even conscious of it, I already had a relationship with the seed buried and offered, whose fruit borne would be the Home. The Home was in my life even before it itself was born. How lucky I am, right?!
I only had to wait a little until I grew and I was sent to the camps. I still remember. We would be at home and my father would tell us, the two eldest, that he had been thinking of sending us to some camps in Cervera de Pisuerga (Spain). We were going to sleep in the mountains, in tents in the countryside...flashlights, hats, boots, camping supplies, hikes, going to the river, bugs....Grrreat! What joy it always gave us, seeing as we loved adventures!
Of course, I loved it. I enjoyed everything and nothing was difficult for me...At home we were used to living “overcoming ourselves” and sharing everything in tight conditions; and I think that, without realisin git themselves, my parents had been showing us how to overcome difficulties and incomodities with a sense of humor...And so, at the camp, I felt right at home! And it really helped me on the human level ( I would return home more orderly, with a spirit of service, more patient...within my limited possibilities) as well as on the spiritual. I still remember that the Rosary that we prayed as a family just seemed so boring!...But when I returned from camp, every day I would go in my room awhile alone to pray a mystery to Our Lady. Of course, I had my trick...I would only pray half of each prayer, since no one answered me...
I also met Father Rafael who, in spite of his elevated tone of speaking that would frighten me at times, won all my affection and admiration as a little girl. When four years later he moved to Santander, all of us who had attended camps during these years came together and he asked us if we wanted to become members of the Home. The truth is, I do not remember exactly what I thought the Home was, or of the missions, or anything..., But I felt irresistibly attracted by the environment, the spirit, which I lived every year in the camp. And so, on December 27, 1988, the three oldest of my siblings including myself and a friend, made our first commitments as apprentices.
Only two months later, my father died. Before, he had entrusted us to the care of Fr. Rafael, who in a special way became our father doubly. And it was no easy task for himself and Mamie who, every Friday, would receive us into their home to have meetings...and we were always fighting.
There are a million details and anecdotes that could be told about these times, so many things that I received and yet in the moment they occured, I was unable to perceive them. But now, looking back, I am able to see the hand of Our Blessed Mother so clearly in my family and in my life, acting above all through this “lively bunch” that were starting this humble plant of the Church that is the Home.
So much patience! So much love! So much hard work on everyone’s part! Thank you, thank you, a thousand thank you’s.
In the camp of the following year, I made the commitment of expert for the first time. I had placed an image of Our Blessed Mother as the Sweet Name of Mary in the center and all the girls of the camp were around it, in the shape of a giant rosary. When we finished praying, we knelt down to make our commitments and Our Blessed Mother granted me the grace of speaking very strongly in my heart. She told me that I thought that I was in the Home because I had a good time, when in reality it was she who had brought me and chosen me so that I might belong to her Home... Wow! I could not stop crying all afternoon and all night. From that day I was filled with joy, because here I had found “something”...a way of being and living that I had never seen anywhere else, that filled the longings that I had had in my heart since I was little, and that many times had thought could never be fulfilled.
Well, I will not go on anymore. If I were going to tell everything, I would have to dedicate an entire magazine to myself alone.
Little by little, Our Blessed Mother continued working and in 1991, in what was my third Spiritual Exercises, which had up until then been with the Groups of Prayer of the Heart of Jesus and not yet organized by the Home, the Lord from the tabernacle spoke to me so clearly that He had chosen me to be totally His and was asking me if I accepted Him. As I am not completely inept, I told Him yes. I didn’t understand very well what religious life was, but I knew that it meant belonging totally to God... and just thinking about it made me die of joy: “I am God’s!”.
And here I am, Servant Sister of the Home of the Mother. I entered with my sister on August 22, 1992 and...what else do you want to know?! Every day I am happier knowing that I am loved and chosen by Our Blessed Mother...this is where I find my confidence, my peace, my strength, and my joy.
©HM Magazine No.125 - July/August 2005
