Moyses Louro de Azevedo Filho, 55 years old, was born in Fortaleza, Brazil, on the 4th of November. He is the founder and general moderator of Shalom Catholic Community, established in 1982. The community is spread all over Brazil and 15 other countries.
His parents always wanted to have a boy but instead they had 5 girls. At age 44, his mother finally had a boy whom she consecrated to God. He says that as a child he was annoyed with his mother’s friends saying that he would be a priest although he never liked the idea.
At age 15, Moyses was studying in a Catholic School when one of his friends invited him to participate in a youth meeting organized by the Archdiocese of Fortaleza. He quickly declined as he wasn’t into church activities and had no interest in such things. For him, God was someone distant and the Church wasn’t a place for someone young. The Church was a place for old people, highly traditional. Weekends were made for fun and party, as he used to think. But his friend insisted and that weekend changed his life. It was then that he had a personal and strong experience with Jesus Christ. What seemed to be only an idea became a real person, someone “cool” as teenagers used to say. At that meeting he experienced that God is alive, that He is a real person and He reached his life. Moyses found out that he was loved by God and in a very personal way and that filled his life with meaning. This discovery changed his life, his values, his way of thinking and his actions.
He continued to live as a normal young man but things were different as he started to seek true happiness and joy not in alcohol, drugs, people or pleasure. There was a deep yearning in his heart for true peace and he found it in Jesus Christ. When asked about becoming a priest he says “There is a verse in the Gospel where John the Baptist says ‘A man is not able to receive anything, if it may not have been given him from the heaven’. God didn’t call me to be a priest. He called me to consecrate myself to Him. I am a celibate. I have dated, I got engaged, I heard His call and said ‘yes’ (…) I wanted to freely give what I have freely received. I have found a higher love, a divine love. If human love is capable of transforming one’s life, how much more can divine love do as it surpasses our senses and knowledge? We cannot keep that to ourselves. ”
A strong desire was in Moyses’ heart to talk about God, the truth, Jesus Christ and His love to other young people like him. “But how?” was his inner question. In 1980, Pope John Paul II came to Brazil. The central occasion of his visit was the opening of the Eucharistic Congress in Fortaleza, on the 9th of July. Moyses was then asked by Cardinal Aloisio Lorscheider, then Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Fortaleza, to represent all young people and offer a gift to the Holy Father during the offertory part of Mass. And he was asked to choose the gift. Caught by surprise, Moyses asked himself “what can a 20 year old kid give to the Pope?” After praying more about it he decided: “I will offer my life and my youth to evangelize!” So he wrote a letter to seal his commitment. About that special moment he says: “I was speechless! I walked towards him; I knelt and gave him the letter without saying a word. However two things were very intense to me: the pope’s eyes as he looked at me when he touched my face and brought me closer to him and the second moment was when he blessed me. I felt as if there was a special grace upon me at that moment, a grace that I didn’t understand at the moment. It wasn’t just the pope there, looking at me, giving his blessing but it was Christ and His Church too.
After that, he kept praying and had an inspiration, as he explains “I use to see many young people passing by me throughout the day. Most of them, distant from the Church, wouldn’t accept an invitation to go to Mass but they would certainly go to a snack-bar to eat something. So then came the inspiration: a snack bar to evangelize, why not? The young people would come and there we would be able to bear witness, to have an open chat and tell about what happened in our lives. Then we would offer the menu and there they would find biblical names. They would say things like ‘Agape sandwich? But what is agape?’ And we would be able to say that it is God’s love. That would open the conversation”.
He never imagine what would have come out of this inspiration. Exactly two years after that first meeting with the Pope, Moyses and other friends, all involved in the same inspiration, were inaugurating the snack bar. The place was full and even the Archbishop Cardinal was there. The house had the snack bar in the main area and at the back there was a small chapel with the Blessed Sacrament. The place was called Shalom Catholic Evangelization Centre.
The Centre attracted not only the young people but their friends, families and soon many people begun to experience God’s love and became more and more involved in the evangelization work of Shalom. God was tailoring a new charisma in the heart of the Church and that became clearer as some people felt the desire for a deeper commitment and to share a communal life. Moyses was advised to write the Community’s first ‘rules’, a draft of what would later become its Statutes and the Founder’s writings. Today, Shalom Community is part of the new movements and communities in the Catholic Church and has Pontifical recognition by the Holy See. The Community also received definitive approval of its Statutes. It is formed by men and women of all ages, married couples, singles, deacons, priests and celibates. It is present in many countries such as Brazil, Chile, Peru, Uruguay, French Guyana, USA, Canada, France, Italy, Switzerland, England, Hungary, Madagascar, Israel, Netherlands and others.
When asked if he was ever afraid to follow the road the Lord had planned for him or ever thought about going back his answer is “Our fears come and go but this love is stronger! To give up? Never! Not because I am a nobleman, but because it would be foolish. What God does to us is greater, is infinitely better. It is like that verse in the Gospel ‘to whom shall we go, Lord? You alone have the words of eternal life!’ So in my soul and in my heart what I thirst is eternity, eternal life. I thirst that endless joy that every men seeks in this life and that is what we must ask the Lord every day: Lord put in my soul this unconditional thirst for You! This conscience that only in You I have life in all its fullness!”
*extracted from many talks and interviews given by Moyses Azevedo