Joy invades my heart to be able to testify a little about what my life has been, especially in a year where our motto is “With Jesus in communion and prayer, we transform the nation.”
Let me say: Thank you Lord! Because I met you and I let you into my life.
Before this happened, I can say that my life had no meaning, it was like a ship adrift, without a horizon. I lived insecure, afraid, sad, confused. At that moment, I understood that there were only three things I had to fight for: first, work; second, family and third, God. As you can see, my order of priorities was distorted, God occupied third place in my life. After knowing him the order changed. Firstly, God and secondly my family, I stayed with those two.
I quit work to dedicate more time to my family and the new mission that the Lord put in my hands. Now I have the title of lawyer hanging on a wall, but I have another engraved in my heart that says: “I have known God and He alone is enough.”
God in his infinite mercy, fixed his gaze on me. It all began in 1987, when a friend invited us to live a retreat (Conjugal Love Retreat), I immediately said no, making thousands of excuses that were of no use, because God had already chosen me.
MY NEW LIFE
While on the retreat, I began to understand so many things that I didn’t know, about myself, my partner and above all about God. I remember saying to my husband Rhadamés, How many mistakes we made! We have lost 10 years! But upon discovering so many things that I was unaware of, I decided to put into practice everything I learned there, I continued looking for help and joined the Family Ministry with my husband. I managed to achieve something I wanted, to help other couples who, for reasons similar to ours, were going through the vicissitudes that we had experienced.
We managed to coordinate nine groups of couples in different communities, then they chose us to coordinate Family Pastoral Care at the Diocese level.
Something very curious that happened to us was that the more couples we accompanied, our relationship became stronger and stronger. Today we have been married for 45 years.
In 1992, they invited us to live the experience of the Cursillo in Christianity, here I made no excuse, nor did my husband, we accepted with great joy. He lived at No. 219 and I lived at No. 220 from April 23 to 26, in the Padre Fantino house in Santo Cerro, La Vega.
CHRISTIANITY COURSE
When I met the Lord and decided to follow Him, love Him and serve Him, He gave me more and more, the course was an example of that. They were three wonderful days, an unparalleled experience, I said: Wow! This movement is the mother of all the movements, meetings and retreats that I had experienced to date.
In those three days, I felt happy and amazed to see that what I was experiencing was only the work of the Holy Spirit, because humanly it is impossible to organize a method or a means that allows you to know so many things in such a short time.
I observed the order, the seriousness, the spirituality, the knowledge, the concatenation of one roll with the other, the joy, the service, the dedication and the availability of the servers.
All of this made me fall in love with the Christianity Cursillo Movement. They invited me to participate in the Leaders School and I accepted. I continued to prepare myself to serve others as they did to me in those three days.
In the time I have been at school, I have coordinated, together with a group of brothers, the Secretariat and the Christianity Cursillo Movement, in two periods at the level of the Diocese of La Vega, I have served as rector or as rollista in more than 60 courses.
With the 32 years that I have been at the school, I continue with the same enthusiasm as when I entered, willing to continue serving in whatever I am needed, aware that everything is the work of the Holy Spirit, and that I have never neglected the Tripod (Prayer, Study and Action).
Prayer: My feet do not touch the ground in the morning without first doing the Holy Rosary and my morning prayers.
Study: Every day I read a chapter from one of the books of the Bible. In addition, other means such as talks, sermons, reflections, books that strengthen me on this path of faith.
Action: I take advantage of every opportunity to talk about the Big Brother (Christ), and if it doesn’t come my way, I look for it.
I have achieved it because I can do all things through CHRIST who strengthens me (Philippians 4, 13)
And because…
CHRIST and I, overwhelming majority!
María Nereyda Abreu Marmolejos
Diocese of La Vega, Dominican Republic
