RACHEL WEEPS FOR HER CHILDREN

With these words of Bible I would like to start this new sharing to honor, embrace and, in some way, reverence the pain of so many families, mothers, grandmothers, sisters, brothers who cry the absence of beloved one, of all the “Rachel” who live uncertainty from the day of their disappearance and who endured months, or even years, waiting without consolation; families who never again experience peace, who continue fragmented, wounded, filled with blame, fear, impotence.

In May of 2019 we became an instrument so that light might arrive to the home of Mary (we will call her that to protect her identity), a mother of three daughters, of which two had been kidnapped by this web of death six years before.

This mother, every 26^th day of month, were coming to police station for 24 hours to ask for justice for her daughters. Not even one minute she stopped looking for them or demanding that they might be found. Maybe for some persons she became “a disturbance”, for others “a crazy woman”, for many others “a careless mother” (How it had happened that they had stolen two daughters of hers? What kind of mother is that?). She heard judgments in every part for six years, but nothing happened. One destroyed family. Her elder daughter, a little one 12 years old, who was let without her two little sisters, fund refuge from her blame and loneliness only in drugs. Who will repair this harm and wound of the whole family?

Even so, she never stopped looking for them, never gave up, never crossed out from her heart of a mother her obligation and desire to find them. It is a mother who never gets weary of fighting when she knows that her daughters are in danger.

A call, in May of 2019, gave back hope, and her life and her family was filled with new light. There was an possibility that her daughters might still be alive, she should come to recognize them. Still not knowing if it was true or not, there was the first call in six years with some possibility, and in her heart there was space only for hope.

TESTIMONY (re-encounter of the mother with her daughters)

After confirming that the two girls were the disappeared daughter of Mrs. Mary, we proceeded to facilitate the encounter. So tender the image: cries and tears and kisses and unending embraces. You wouldn’t believe that. Without words, just one time after other they looked at each other and cried. This mother and her daughter couldn’t understand what had happened, they were only repeating that it was a miracle.

This mother asked me to tell you that her life wouldn’t be enough to give thanks to you, that you were the proof that God truly existed. When said that the Angel had made it possible, she wanted to know her. We explained that it wasn’t possible, and she said that the first nun she would meet she would embrace and help for the rest of her life, because God has gave back to her her daughters alive. God listened to her.

God exists, this mother was repeating. “You are the proof that God exists”, she was responding. The happiness came back to this home; the certainty that there is God who wouldn’t abandon them will be the irremovable seal for the rest of their lives. And it comes to my mind, and I invite you to reflect on it, too, if we are really conscious of what we irradiate or what we mean as Christians for those around us, for the Church, for humanity.

“Our deeds will speak for themselves and will reflect what we are and to whom we belong”. Our mouth can repeat speeches, and we can be very learned in theories and bibliographies, but our deeds will make manifested what we truly bear in our hearts. By our deeds, by what we witness and reflect, many may discover that maybe there is God who exists, who listens, who accompanies, who consoles.

Humanity needs God! It needs to rediscover the true face of God-Father/Mother, loving, merciful and close! And for this, it needs us, people who freely and generously will become an docile instrument in His hands. This work is His and He wants us to be a part of it. He needs us here, close to His people, close to those who suffer, where “it seems like the poor don’t count”. To create communion, restore, beautify, listen and respond, all our charismatic and missionary impulse, at the service of life that cries, broken by impotence and injustice. They need God, they need us, as light, even the smallest, that God exists and hasn’t abandoned them. Sometimes night can be so cruel and, without that light, desperation becomes unbearable.

I invite you to read the following testimony and allow it to resound in your heart:

(a mother cries hopeless embracing her child)

Tell her to this Angel and her hosts, thank you, because she did what until now noone else has done for me: give me back what I most desired. Only an angel could have done it. Only God would be able. When they called me to give me the news, I couldn’t believe it, I thought they were pulling badly my leg.

But when I saw him enter through this door, my legs gave up and my heart cried: “He is alive! He is alive! They gave him back to me!”

There is nothing worst than uncertainty, desperation; it’s like cancer eating you form inside out. Uncertainty if he is alive or dead, near or far, if he will come back or no.

Angel, you know very well what you have done, because who gives his own life knows very well the price. My whole life, and thousands lives if I had, would be only to give you thanks for all this love. Thanks to you and to all those who together with you are giving us back our children, some of them already adults.

In our barrio there are still 13 disappeared, it’s the land of noone, the poor have no value, to the poor nobody listens, to the poor nobody gives justice. The families in this barrio we claim the life of Joseph (disappeared 9 years ago), the triplets (disappeared for 7 years), Joseph (disappeared for 6 years), four Mary (disappeared for 3 years) and Mary (disappeared 3 month ago)

Because there are many lives still waiting, because there are 40 thousands and more victims, because there are 40 thousands families broken… I say YES, because the Church has consecrated me for them, to give my life, to waste it for the Kingdom and in favor of the truth, freedom and justice.

I want to be this light that announces to the world that God is present, fighting elbow with elbow and with his strong arm in favor of his people. I want to bo this light of hope that sustains in the middle of horrible pain of those who still await, those who know that they are heard.

And to the family I wat to tell you that maybe we are not many, but we are more than few; we are a small group of people dispersed through the world who want to keep fighting to make it also a happiness for all of you. That’s the promise.

Marcela Alejandra Macagno CMT