Tita Ving Melo moved on (June 16, 2011). She was 85 (turning 86 this August 25). She’s now at Mt. Carmel.

Please include her in your prayers…

Fr. Luis Espinal wrote a prayer before, which we would like to share with you:

Christ has said. “Whoever wishes to save his life must lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake shall have life everlasting.” Yet we are so afraid of losing our life, of giving it over unreservedly. A terrible instinct of preservation makes us selfish, it grips us when we want to risk our lives. We take all sorts of precautions to avoid risks. And above all, there is our cowardice.

Lord, Jesus we are afraid to lose our lives. But you have given us life in order that we may lose it. We cannot hold on to it in sterile egoism.

Losing one’s life means working for others, even though they don’t pay us back. It means doing a favour without it being returned. Losing one’s life means jumping in even when failure is the likely outcome—and doing it without being overtly prudent. It means burning bridges for the sake of our neighbor.

We are candles that only have meaning if we are burning, for only then do we serve our purpose of being light. Free us, Lord, from the cowardly prudence that make us avoid sacrifice and look only for security.

Losing one’s life should not be accompanied by pompous or dramatic gestures. Life is to be given simply, without fanfare—like a waterfall, like a mother nursing her child, like the humble seat of the sower of seed.

Train us, Lord, and send us out to do the impossible, because behind the impossible is your grace and your presence; we cannot fall into the abyss.

The future is an enigma; our journey leads us through the fog; but we want to go on giving ourselves because you are waiting there in the light, in a thousand human eyes brimming over with tears and hope.