José Manuel Horcajo: "That 'God doesn't exist because there are poor people' is a typical rich man's argument".Dining room and social shelter in VallecasA parish in the "Nazareth style".The Madrid neighborhood of Canillejas still has a certain appearance of an autonomous village within the Spanish capital. In the middle of this neighborhood stands the parish of Santa María la BlancaThe church is not very large, dating from the fifteenth century and still retains two wooden ceilings decorated with Mudejar tradition loop decoration. A physical example of the history that remains between buildings of three or four heights and above all, a mixture of accents, races and cultures that have been settling in this area of Madrid in recent decades.
A few meters from the parish is the San José soup kitchen. Its simple façade is crowned with a slogan: "Amar siempre más" (Love always more), which explains everything behind a project that goes beyond a soup kitchen or a charity bazaar.
"Amar siempre más" is the "umbrella" project that brings together under it a series of initiatives that address three key aspects of people: the family, the social and the spiritual spheres.
The "three legs
What today is "Amar siempre más" was born in a "disorganized" way in Vallecas, a popular neighborhood of Madrid where unemployment, social vulnerability and emigration are frequent realities.
The pastor of St. Raymond Nonnatus, one of the parishes in the area, José Manuel Horcajoarrived in that parish almost two decades ago and started more than 40 initiatives of all kinds: courses for mothers, care for pregnant women with few resources, school support, catechesis... Eventually, the Episcopal vicar of that area of Madrid asked the priest to "put in order" all those initiatives, to prevent them from getting lost and to organize their growth.
Horcajo began to think about how to give unity to all this and, with the help of the Holy Spirit, he came to the conclusion that everything could be summarized in three areas: social (material help), family help and spiritual help. All three were equally important and necessary to each other.
Sister Sara, who has been helping this priest for years, explains it this way: "The poor come to the parish with a material need. At the same time, we also discover a family poverty, because the family is broken or dragging big wounds, people do not get ahead and the most important thing, the greatest poverty is not having God. That is why we say that a poor person goes in and a saint comes out, because the whole project addresses these three levels of the person".
Poor serving other poor
The originality of the project is that "it is the poor who evangelize other poor people". For this reason, the beneficiaries are also volunteers in this project and are in charge of running the soup kitchens that are already distributed in different areas of Madrid and that depend directly on their parishes and parish priests.
This is the case of Aquilina, who is currently the director of the Canillejas dining hall, and was a beneficiary of the project when she arrived in Spain, or Elita, who alone, pregnant and homeless, went to the San Ramón Nonato dining hall and the mothers' shelters and now coordinates the dining hall in Villaverde.
"The poor come with a need and are taught to be responsible," explains Sister Maria Sara. "It's not about giving them this or that because we feel sorry for them. They have to get involved, that's why the volunteerism of the beneficiaries is very important. They have to be committed to volunteering and that helps them a lot.
Sister recalls one of the hundreds of cases in which these people find their salvation and their own identity thanks to giving themselves to others like them: "A woman came to the dining room to ask for help. I made her see that she had to help, at least for an hour, and she didn't want to. She put up resistance. I explained to her that this was the essence of the project. She left, but the next day she came in and asked, 'Well, what do I have to do?' We told her she could come in and help in the kitchen and, as she had worked in a restaurant, she cooked beautifully. The diners applauded her. For her it meant going out of herself and she began to attend the whole project, because when they enter the project they are asked to be volunteers, to live together to heal the wounds at the family level, to make a spiritual retreat and to belong to a group: mothers, young people... so that they are not without a 'family'. This girl made the Tabor retreat, the Cana fellowship, and started going to her group... She changed completely, from being lost, she has moved forward and is working outside Spain as a cook. Like her, there are a lot of stories".
Sister Sara's summary contains the quintessence of "Loving always more": "They have to learn to trust in God, in themselves and get ahead. The goal is that those who have entered poor, be saints and live trusting in God and loving their family".
Currently, there are seven parishes in Madrid that have taken on the "Amar siempre más" project: the Epifanía del Señor parish in Carabanchel, Nuestra Señora de Aránzazu in the Tetuán neighborhood, the parishes of Santa Inés and San Andrés Apóstol in Villaverde, Santo Domingo de Guzmán and Jesús y María in the Aluche neighborhood and, in addition, they are helping in the parish of Santa María de África, also in Carabanchel.
Canillejas, the first
Thus "Amar siempre más" was born in Vallecas and, little by little, the different areas were developed and consolidated.
The very motto "Amar siempre más" (Love always more) encapsulates one of the characteristics of this initiative: not to be satisfied and to keep growing because all people love, your family and your parish will always be there and there are many people to help.
The leap to Canillejas, although it was "natural" due to the good results of the project in the neighboring neighborhood, was not easy. The "ways of doing" of the parish were stagnant, but there was a certain distrust on the part of parishioners and Caritas volunteers, due to the irruption of such a project.
José, who recalls the reluctance to "open another resource like the soup kitchen, when there were already other similar things in the area, but they were politicized and, moreover, they did not bring people closer to the parish or to God. But he jumped into the pool and asked "Amar siempre más" to coordinate the soup kitchen project. Sister Sara went there to start it up.
What struck the Canillejas parish priest most about the "Amar siempre más" project is "the fact that it is a complete pastoral project. In the parishes the needs of many people are attended to, but sometimes we just give them one thing and that's it. People had no sense of family. People who come from outside lose their family, they are very lonely, it is difficult for them to keep their faith because they have other 'urgencies' such as housing or food, without a sense of belonging... In the end, faith weakens a lot. We needed something that would unite the two things, with which we could take care of people's material and spiritual and family needs.
In the case of Canillejas, for example, "it happened to us as it did to many other parishes, that we have the Caritas premises, but it is a remote place. There were people from Caritas who did not know which parish they belonged to. We started to integrate it with the rest of the parish and it became three areas, three zones in the same place. Maybe the families come in through Caritas, they are welcomed into a project and the children go to catechesis or the other way around, a child comes to catechesis, we get to know their families and discover a need that is taken care of by Caritas. Now everything is unified".
Aquilina: "We are a family".
Aquilina smiles all the time. "Even when she said that they tried to rob her, she smiled!", says the parish priest, Don José, amused. This Peruvian arrived in Spain, with her son, to leave behind certain family difficulties. "I arrived with absolutely nothing," she recalls. She landed in the parish of St. Raymond Nonnatus where "they welcomed me like a family".
"We are a family," she says confidently, "I lacked that family love and when I saw that these people, strangers, welcomed me like that, I began to participate in the groups."
One of the managers, who was taking care of the Canillejas dining room, invited Aquilina to go with her so that she could learn how to run the dining rooms. Aquilina agreed to accompany her, but she was terrified at the idea of being in charge of something like this. She was a shy and quiet woman. "How am I going to carry out something like this, how am I going to talk to the people who arrive," Aquilina said, but she overcame this resistance with prayer: "I prayed a lot, asking God for strength to do this job well and to be able to communicate with the people. I asked God to touch the heart of each person who was going to come to the dining room, to come with an open heart and to support the dining room".
Little by little, she started to implement the different projects of each "leg" and to ask other beneficiaries, such as Pamela or Yesenia Jasmine to help her. It was not only material help. The three areas (family, spiritual and material) are always present and, in Aquilina's case, God got into her heart through the retreats, prayer and the retreats. And it changed her: "Before, for anything, I would explode, but now God has transformed me. If something happens, what I do is pray for those people and I am calm and happy.
Aquilina coordinates the "Amar siempre más" project in Canillejas, which also has a foster home. She is happy about it. "See how great God is that, from so far away, He has brought me here to serve Him and other people! I like to serve people, to make them happy. I learned that from my father. If someone came to the house, he would invite them to something, even if it was just a glass of water or a little food. He would tell me: 'If a grandmother or an elderly person comes, give them something, because in that person, God may be coming to your house to see you.
Michael: "God works through us".
"I define 'Love always more' with that passage from Matthew 'I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to see me [...]. Every time you did it to one of these, my least brothers, you did it to me'", Miguel emphasizes.
This gospel passage encapsulates all the areas of the project in which this young Salvadoran collaborates and which he got to know thanks to his neighbors, Yesenia and her daughters. Although in his country he had collaborated in the worship ministry in his parish through the choir, when he arrived in Spain he neglected his spiritual life.
Through his neighbors, Miguel learned about "Amar siempre más" and attended a Tabor retreat. He was able to go in spite of work difficulties because he works at night, "but God is so good that on the same day he started his vacation, a Tabor retreat began that afternoon and I was able to go for three days".
God got into his soul again and his task is now focused on the pastoral work of the project. "We all have a spiritual need. Sometimes it is so great that we are not aware of it," he stresses, "and God speaks through us. I see it every day. On a pilgrimage, I gave my testimony and, afterwards, a person came up to me and said: 'I felt that God was speaking to me through you'. Another time, on a Tabor retreat, I went to the kindergarten for a while and while I was taking care of the children and playing with them, I asked them to write a letter to God. I remember they asked 'for my dad' or 'for my mom', but also 'to be a better altar boy' or one that impressed me very much 'I ask you not to let the devil get into me'".
That letter gave him food for thought, because "it is so important not to neglect the spiritual issue!" Despite the sacrifices that this pastoral work sometimes entails for him, such as not sleeping at night, Miguel is clear: "If I am happy, it is thanks to God, and I respond to him as best I can. Because God works in me and, through me, in others."
Yesenia Jasmine: "Without God, material poverty is even worse".
Yesenia comes with her granddaughter, who is about three years old, from the flea market that the project has near the dining room. Donations of clothes, household goods, shoes and accessories are collected and sold at low prices to raise money for the project.
Salvadoran by origin, she got to know "Amar siempre más" through one of her daughters, Paola. She arrived in Spain two years after her daughters and saw them "very far from God". A practicing Catholic, Jasmine emphasizes that "I have always defended that, no matter how much work a person has, he/she must dedicate time to God and I was concerned that my daughters were out of place, they did not find their place, especially one of them, Pamela".
There came a time when the family situation was almost unbearable and, at the same time, the culture shock in the parish was especially difficult for her. So she decided to go to one of the Tabor retreats of the "Amar siempre más" project and invited her daughter Pamela to accompany her.
"It was a conversion, for me too, but especially for Pamela. She changed completely. We started to talk about things as a family."
She also began to deepen her Marian piety: "I am in the Tierra de María group and I have begun to deepen my knowledge of Our Lady. Before I was little devoted to the Virgin, and now the other way around".
The difficulties continue, but the spirit is different and her work, the care of her granddaughter, the support in cleaning the parish, are done in a different way. "I really have material needs here," she acknowledges, "but what I have achieved is spiritual richness. If you are in need and you don't have that spirit, you see things worse. Now we still have problems, but with the support of Christ and the Blessed Mother, we live more peacefully.
Pamela, Jasmine's daughter, listened to her mother with a nod. This reserved young woman, "I have always been serious, but now I am more open" as she says with a certain laugh, collaborates in the spiritual work of the "Amar siempre más" project in Canillejas. She gives talks about her process in Spain and helps those going through similar situations. She recognizes, as her mother pointed out, that although in her country she was very involved in parish life, here she distanced herself from the Church.
When her mother invited her to go to the Tabor retreat and she accepted, "I didn't really know what I was going for either, and it was literally a conversion. You start to see life differently. You realize that there are people who are having a worse time than you because sometimes we think that only each of us has it so bad."
This change of perspective was achieved thanks to "letting God and Our Lady into my heart. Now, I am in the spiritual assembly to give talks about the process I have gone through and I support the volunteers in whatever way I can".
Jasmine, Pamela, Miguel or Aquilina are some of the thousands of names of men and women of different races and languages who, every day, carry out the "Amar siempre más" project.
They lack material things, yes, but they are not poor, at least not in their totality because the greatest and worst poverty is not having God and they have him... and they give him. If "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks", they speak of God because they have an abundance of his Spirit. They are rich in God. They are the saints of today.
