Dear Fr. Josè,

A few weeks ago, we met with the friends of the Fraternity of our city after a few months' break due to everyone's busy schedules. Many things have changed in these months - someone changed their job, someone moved out of town - so the desire my husband and I organized this meeting with was to make a point. We asked our friends, and ourselves in the first place: do we really want to do the Fraternity together? Or is it just another item on our already too busy schedules? Honestly and freely: we'll do it only if we really want to.

I already knew what would happen. A friend would have said that the Fraternity is beautiful but he has no time, and another would have praised the help the Fraternity is in her life, and then she would have disappeared.

And yet, it was precisely these two friends who struck me.
He - who is alone with three kids - told us that, in these months, he looked at his local parish as a place where his kids could be accompanied and grow in a familiar and Catholic environment; and yet, he told us, "I look at you, wretched as you are, childless as you all are, but who love my children as I wish they were always loved; and I think there is no other place I myself would want to grow in, and I would want my kids to grow in."
And she - who has always been involved in a Bible study group founded by a couple of dearest friends, which she has most often chosen over the School of Community - told me and everyone that in these months, without the Fraternity, she has been suffocating. "In that group there are my friends, yes; but this is not enough for me. It's not enough for me to be together, to talk about Jesus and Christian feelings if this has nothing to say to the concreteness of my life. I need someone who helps me look at my life! Otherwise, I just drown and suffocate, I can't breathe. I have never breathed in these months, until you invited me to come back here. To come back home."

That lunch left me in silence. I have consciously waited to write you this, to see if any fruit would follow. And it did. In these weeks, the friendship among us and with these friends, especially with her, has grown even more; the companionship has become even more attentive and affectionate, the faithfulness among us, to the Church and to the movement has grown even stronger. And we are also witnessing to a growing care in the relationship with the other friends of the community and of the Diocese.
If I think that "I already knew what would happen!"

I look at all this, and I realize how true it is that we are taken care of, loved and accompanied. Thank you, Fr. Josè, for being a father to us in this beautiful road.

With greatest affection,

Myriam Colombo, St. Louis, MO