Shopping centers are structures in the hearts of the cities, which offer various types of services: from beauty to clothing, from gyms to health clinics, from language schools to notary offices, in which hundreds of people circulate every day. We could say that these are small, condensed cities. Thus, it would not be strange if passers-by also found a chapel there, just as those who walk through the city streets find a church, a place of prayer and encounter with God.
In some malls, the Shalom Community has permanent evangelization activities. It is about going out to meet, to provide an experience with God, opportunely and inopportunely.
The experience lived in the Shopping Via Brasil mall, located in Rio de Janeiro, near the Complexo da Maré – one of the largest and most densely populated complexes of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil – is a proof of how the human heart yearns for a happiness that cannot be bought, liquidation-proof.
The pioneering space dedicated to evangelization in Shopping Via Brasil has a chapel and a space dedicated to young people called, in honor of St. John Paul II, Lolek. There are weekly prayer groups, Eucharistic celebrations, couples groups and even Life in the Holy Spirit Seminars. It has all the prerogatives of the centers of evangelization found in other places in the city.
Paula Monte, missionary of the Shalom Catholic Community, testifies “I feel fulfilled in serving here, it is very rewarding when young people have an experience with God”.
Father Rômulo dos Anjos, local responsible for the mission in Rio de Janeiro, also says that in the mall “all the activities that the community proposes always have a very positive return. We recognize that we have already done something, but we can still do much more. Here we experience sharing, life on the way out, and sacramental experience”.
Alexandre Messias, responsible for the youth secretariat of the Vicar General sector and responsible for the actions in the mall, pointed out the grace of being in this place. “There are countless testimonies of people who say they would never enter a church, come to the mall, and here they have an experience of God. In the ‘Lolek’ space there is always a missionary willing to explain the questioning of young people about the phrase printed on the wall ‘Love has explained everything to me’ by Saint John Paul II,” says the young man.
Camila, consecrated member of the Covenant Community, and missionary in Shalom Rio, stressed the opportunity we have to announce the experience of God and the amazement of people to see a chapel in the mall.
Another experience of evangelization in the mall is found in the mission of Salvador. In the capital of Bahia, the missionaries hold kerygmatic worship evenings in the small and beautiful chapel, in addition to a weekly prayer group dedicated to young people.
Undoubtedly, these spaces dedicated to evangelization are initiatives that embody the desire expressed in the synod, where it was noted that the transformations in the large urban areas are, today, a privileged place for the new evangelization. It is part of the commitment signaled in Evangelii Gaudium to “imagine spaces of prayer and communion with innovative characteristics, more attractive and meaningful for urban populations (n.73)”.