Every July 9 is special for the Shalom Catholic Community, because it was on this date that two milestones for the charism took place: the offering of a young man’s life at the feet of Saint John Paul II and the inauguration of a Cafeteria to evangelize. 42 years have passed since the latter event.
Over the course of more than four decades, the understanding of the charism among those who first embraced it has matured, its roots have taken hold in the soil of the Church and the vocation has spread throughout around the world.
Check out the message of our founder, Moysés Azevedo, for the Community’s 42nd anniversary:
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Total offer
“The offer of life is not a slogan. The offer of life is not simply something that should infect and thrill us in an instant… it is a central mystery of Christ’s life and of our Vocation!”, Listen Magazine 2023.
According to Moysés Azevedo, for this new era, the divine invitation is for the community to return to the origins of the offer of life and to cast its nets with a view to evangelizing the peoples.
Here are 4 characteristics of this new cycle of total supply, according to Moysés Azevedo, at Listen Magazine:
Pascal
“Our origins are in the offering of Christ. And what is Christ’s offering? It is an Easter offering, a mystery of the Cross and Resurrection. So we will live our offering of life within this mystery of the Cross and Resurrection.”
Spousal
“It’s an offer made out of love. Look! It’s not a sacrifice for sacrifice’s sake. It’s not an offering for the sake of offering. It’s an offering permeated with the total gift of self, full of love, full of spousality, full of passion, full of a desire to unite oneself entirely to the other.”
Lives given
“Offering myself as a people frees me from the terrible selfishness that puts me at the center of everything. Beyond the ‘I’, there is a ‘we’. Our ‘I’ is there, but within a whole, a great Trinitarian, ecclesial and Shalom ‘we’.”
Free and happy
“Our offering is free and happy. Do you remember?…One day you came before the Altar of the Lord and said: ‘I, so-and-so, of my own free will’. Every day, as soon as I open my eyes, I must freely renew and fill with meaning and love everything that – on that day called today – I am going to live the offering of my life.”
A people on the move
The Community is currently present in 166 dioceses in Brazil and in 32 other countries around the world. There are already around 25.000 members of Obra Shalom, including those who take part in our weekly prayer groups and other evangelizing and formative activities.
Today, there are 1.568 members of the Life Community, who are those who assume the central core of the evangelizing mission of the Community, investing all their life, abilities, time, goods and future in an unconditional following of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
The Covenant Community, on the other hand, is made up of 10.623 members who receive the call to offer their lives to Christ in the midst of family and professional activities, assuming the commitment to live them according to the spirit of the Shalom charism.