This November, the mission of Shalom Catholic Community in the Polish capital, Warsaw, celebrates a year of activities. As a result of the 2016 World Youth Day (WYD) in Poland, the Shalom mission is marked by the strong presence of the Warsaw youth.
Today, five missionaries of the Community of Life carry out various activities of evangelization while learning the language and culture of St. John Paul II. In an interview with comshalom (SH), Isnayde Barreto, who is the responsible for the mission, shares the graces and challenges of the first year officially in Warsaw.
SH: It tells a little how the Community arrived in Warsaw, the capital of Poland.
Isnayde: Certainly, besides the mission of Warsaw being a dream of the heart of God, of course, it can be said that it is also one of the fruits of the 2016 World Youth Day (WYD) held in Poland and, consequently, fruit of the desire of the hearts of young Poles.
Telling a little history, it happened that in the period before WYD, known as “pre-journey” and held in the capital of Poland, Warsaw, the Shalom Community was present in the city with its missionary pilgrims and youth of the Work. And before they actually departed for the event in Krakow, they were able to have strong experiences there with the young people and families of Warsaw, creating bonds of friendship and communion, at the same time contributing to our spirituality of the Charism in Unity, and also presenting our way of praying and joy of witnessing to the Risen Christ.
All this generated a movement that started from the Polish youths themselves asking for the presence of the Community also in Warsaw (we were already in Krakow since 2015) and after the normal processes of a foundation, in communion with the Local Church, also aided by young people and people of the city, was officially announced the foundation of Warsaw in 2017. Then the missionaries were discerned.
SH: How is the process of adaptation? What are the graces and challenges of that time?
Isnayde: Each one lives a different time, but, thanks to God, we find in each other and especially in the lives of young people and in the demands that have arisen in the mission, a lever that throws us even more in this process. We live a path that is not very natural in a foundation… The natural process would be to dedicate ourselves to studies, but for the way in which we were invited to be here, this showed us another way of experiencing learning and inculturation: being with them and, through training, evangelizing people with them, even if we are still at the beginning of the mission.
The challenge is the language’s own difficulty – Polish, in fact, is a difficult language! And the grace? The young people! I could not think to respond to this question any other way. At the outset, the demands were a challenge for us, as we worry about how we could respond to all this without mastery of the language, but over time, we see that it was a source of many graces, as this was throwing us even more into the urgency to learn to respond and evangelize. All this, every step, every response, with the support of our young people.
SH: What works do the community currently do?
Isnayde: Each day, we prove the generosity of God, his urgency to evangelize this city and this people. With three months of mission, the same young people who asked the community for this city, welcomed us and spontaneously started a prayer group in our home, without worrying about knowing their language or not, but only expressed the desire to experience the Charism through us, something they had long been waiting for.
And so our first prayer group began in English, Portuguese and Polish. This group that began with 7 young people today contains 12 young people who were attracted to those who had been there for some time and also through other actions such as the cafeteria and charismatic prayer. This prayer was entrusted to us by our parish priest, in communion with a permanent deacon, every Sunday after Mass in the chapel. At that moment, we pray for each person present individually.
And yet, six months ago, we began a work, in communion with our responsible priests, of organizing and running a diner located in the basement of the Church. This action has been a fishing net, where we have lived our way to evangelization. And finally, this year we also started to walk a vocational path with 5 young people, the same ones who had known us since WYD. It is a great grace to begin this mission from the young, with the young and through a cafeteria, for this is how our Community began 36 years ago. We see all this as a great sign of God’s will and desire for this mission.
SH: How is the relationship with young people?
Isnayde: Very good! As I have already described, we are especially honored by God because they, the young people, are the protagonists in the mission. They are already in charge of many things – cafeteria, prayer group (some of them already coordinate community prayers and organize moments of fraternal coexistence). They are also very present in our communal house, morning of prayer, fraternal coexistence, community prayers, festive and celebratory dates for community, in short, it is with them that we are conducting this mission. In addition to this, we were able to send two of our young people to Fortaleza in the Leadership School this year, which brought even more graces to the youth of this mission.
