The Human Promotion of the Shalom Catholic Community, held, last month, on the 15th, A life in the spirit seminar at the CPPL V prison located in Itaitinga.
This action is part of other projects developed by the Human Promotion of the community, that advocates systematic visits. In addition to this action, the community organizes masses, accompaniments, prayer groups and awareness, to prisons and social-educational centers, thus favoring the experience with God, redemption of dignity and reintegration of those who are deprived of their liberty. After the seminar, the detainees will engage in a prayer group, that will weekly take place in the unit, where they will walk towards a spiritual path of peace.
Jeovanna Freitas, a Shalom Catholic Community missionary, responsible for the Human Promotion of the community, shared a little bit about her experience of evangelization at the prison, Check it out:
“I think that all the people who came to serve left very touched, first because the prison is a place where many people are afraid to go to and at the same time because there, we touched a really injured man and that man who if not there, would probably cause us fear in the middle of the streets. It was a very great experience with the mercy of God. We are able to touch the story of each one of them and see how those people were hurt and how these wounds led them to commit so many outrages, but at the same time you see a man who is thirsting for God. Behind that heart of stone, behind that man who had the courage to steal, to kill, to do so many things against the nature of mankind, there is also a heart that thirsts for God, a heart that has written this desire for God within themselves. What I could see was a man thirsting for God and who at the moment of prayer closed his eyes, raised his arms, cried, knelt, repented and I could see God also listening to the prayer of a man who is a sinner just as I am.”
It was very beautiful to hear them singing “today I am free, today I am free, today I am free ” and it seemed like a paradigm, because there they sang and made this discovery that true freedom is the freedom of being a child of God. One testimony that caught my attention was of a young man who said:
“It is very easy to kill, it is very easy to steal, however it is very difficult to be a Christian, to bear witness of God’s love, that is what really is difficult, but I believe that I can start over again and what I have lived here today I will never forget in my life. People outside look at us as trash, like nothing, but having you here welcoming us, praying for us, talking about God’s love for us is an experience that I will never forget.”
