"Rooms by the Sea" by Edward Hopper. Via Flickr

"I Was Forgiven by a Gaze"

After meeting Communion and Liberation, Ingrid experiences a series of encounters that lead her to say, "the negative things that happen to me are insignificant compared to the greatness I have found."

I had the opportunity to meet the Movement through Laura, a Memor Domini who came to Esquipulas as a volunteer in an institute for orphaned children where I worked in the past. We became friends and when she had finished her work there, she asked for my address. Two months later, she sent me a copy of the Italian magazine Tracce. I began to translate the whole magazine to see what it said. She found a way to put me in contact with Charlie, the responsible for the CL community in El Salvador. He, his wife, his son, and another friend came to visit me in my city. They gave me Huellas (the Spanish edition) and they invited me to the Spiritual Exercises. When I arrived, it seemed as if they all knew me and were waiting for me. That same year, I participated in the CL community vacation, I met Honduran friends, and I tried to follow all the events the Movement proposed to us here in Esquipulas. That year, Charlie wrote me saying there was a possibility of participating in the CLU exercises in Colombia. I said yes. I had never imagined getting on a plane, going somewhere so far from my country, and meeting university students from the Movement. When I got to Bogotá, a family was waiting to take me to dinner.

I knew that from that moment, something great was going to happen to me. After the exercises started, I ran into the phrase, “He was looked upon and then he could see.” I completely saw myself in that phrase, because I, too, was looked upon in this way: Jesus looked at me and chose me for something great. Fr. Julián de la Morena told us that we fall in love with Christ the same way we fall in love with a person. Always thinking about Him, wanting to see Him, and being amazed when He is near, are signs of being in love. To my surprise, I was asked to give a witness. As I was speaking, I realized that the negative things that happen to me are insignificant compared to the greatness I have found. I had always thought that I couldn’t help anyone with my life because I had never considered myself a good person. But I was looked upon and forgiven by a gaze that no one can take away from me.

Ingrid, Esquipulas, Guatemala