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Spirituality

The Swallows Always Return

Source: Book “A Missão dos Setenta e o ‘lobo invisível’” [The Mission of the Seventy and the ‘Invisible Wolf’], June 2018.
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Alziro Zarur

Alziro Zarur (1914-1979), late founder of the Legion of Good Will (LGW), wisely warned everyone: “Suicide does not resolve anyone’s anguish.” Therefore, no one should commit suicide imagining that they would be pain-free by acting in such a fatal way, because they will awake in the Other World more alive than ever, and with all their problems aggravated. To escape from suffering through suicide is to repeatedly fall in the hands of suffering, therefore, under the torture of the “invisible wolf,” the obsessing spirit that must be defeated, but not mistreated, and consequently redeemed by the sheep of Christ. We should always remember the popular saying that was immortalized by the beloved Brazilian poet, singer, and composer Adoniran Barbosa (1910-1982), in his Saudosa Maloca, recorded by him in 1951, and in a vinyl record by singer Marlene (1922-2014), from São Paulo, Brazil: “God gives us the cold as the size of our blanket.”

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Éliphas Lévi

And He really does. All we have to do is be clever and know that we should intelligently use our blanket in “winter” until “summer” comes around again. I usually remind everyone about this timely aphorism by the French writer Éliphas Lévi (1810-1875), comforting those who fight for the Good and move steadily on despite the worst conditions to be overcome, since the Sun of Hope shall shine: “Happy are those believers who never lose hope and, in the winter of the heart, await for the return of the swallows.”

José de Paiva Netto is a writer, journalist, radio broadcaster, composer, and poet. He is the President of the Legion of Good Will (LGW), effective member of the Brazilian Press Association (ABI) and of the Brazilian International Press Association (ABI-Inter). Affiliated to the National Federation of Journalists (FENAJ), the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the Union of Professional Journalists of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the Union of Writers of Rio de Janeiro, the Union of Radio Broadcasters of Rio de Janeiro, and the Brazilian Union of Composers (UBC). He is also a member of the Academy of Letters of Central Brazil. He is an author of international reference in the concept and defense of the cause of Ecumenical Citizenship and Spirituality which, according to him, constitute “the cradle of the most generous values that are born of the Soul, the dwelling of the emotions and of the reasoning enlightened by intuition, the atmosphere that embraces everything that transcends the ordinary field of matter and comes from the elevated human sensitivity, such as Truth, Justice, Mercy, Ethics, Honesty, Generosity, and Fraternal Love.”