Dear friends, family and acquaintances,
Between 11.30 p.m. on Saturday 21 February 2015 and midnight the following day, Sunday 22, my brother Marcos died in a motorcycle accident, at the age of 23, a week and a half after entering the seminary.
It is not, as one would expect, at all easy. He is my brother, the one I have grown up with since I was born, the one with whom I discovered life from the time we were small, with its good and its bad, its suffering and its consolation, its beauty and its ugliness, the fun and the boring, the great and the small. The one I fought with, laughed with until I cried, the one I wept with, and the one with whom I discovered the greatest thing that could ever be discovered before the eyes of a poor man like him and like me.
These three days are the hardest of my life. The memory of Marcos is constant, of everything we lived through together, the good and the not so good. It is hard to be at home, because it is difficult to realise that he is no longer going to come through the door shouting ‘Minions!’ (referring to Juan and Mateo, my little brothers), or into my room, where he slept. It is hard to live, it is painful. The hardest thing is waking up in the morning, because it is as if you were being given the news all over again. This new life without Marcos in the way he always was, as we knew him, is painful. Those of you who knew him know this well, even if only for a short time, even if you only exchanged a couple of sentences with him. Many of you will have been told about him. And for others he was perhaps ‘so-and-so’s brother’, or ‘Itziar and Paco’s son’.
To all of you I want to tell what I have seen these two days. Before the Mass for my brother on Sunday, we had the chance to kiss him for the last time. He looked beautiful, in a simple coffin, like John Paul II’s. Dressed in white, pure. My family and I were able to pray beside him. Asking for his intercession for us, so that we might understand and trust in the Lord. The Mass was the first gift of all. It was a truly magnificent sight. The church was full, packed out, on both days. Passing before me were all the faces that the Lord caressed through Marcos. Everything God has brought about through him, through his whole person. There were the nuns from the soup kitchen where he had been helping (caritativa) for 3 years, his classmates and mine from the first school we attended, teachers from that school, a great many lecturers from the Abat Oliba, students from there, the friends he played football with at La Salle when he was little, those he played with not so long ago and those he played with this year, countless friends of his and mine from Madrid, married couples from there who knew him and came to be with us and to say goodbye, the whole CL community of Barcelona, all my family… I am leaving out a lot of people, forgive me. Mass was celebrated for him in Siberia, New York, Milan, Rome, Madrid, the Azores, Mexico, Santander… and many more places where people prayed for him. Thank you all for your prayers and your company. They are a true witness to everything the Father brings about through the weak flesh of my brother.
Friends of mine and of Marcos. God and my brother give me, every second, the love he has for you from heaven, and that he has always had for you. I have the clear certainty that Marcos always had. I have that peace, those eyes conquered by the Lord, that Marcos has. I have the feeling that the embraces I give you, the kisses and the caresses, are from Marcos. I find myself loving you a small fraction of the way he loved you, and that is enormous. I weep and suffer, I miss him, I would like to embrace him one last time. But he is with me. The relationship with Marcos is unique. I continually hear him telling me to trust. I see him smile, I see him happy, where he longed to be all his life. Marcos has given us the greatest gift anyone can give. He has set us before life, and before Christ. That was always his intention, to introduce us to Christ; look: ‘I have seen the very face of Christ, the tenderness with which God loves, I have seen how he loves me and it makes me dizzy. Why so much?! God prefers me, and in Giussani’s words, he prefers me “because I am nothing, because I am like that fifteen-year-old girl from Nazareth, nothing. Or like her husband, a man full of doubts, confused, humble, a carpenter, nothing”.’ And these days he is doing so in a radical and spectacular way, with the Mass, the funeral and what is to come. He sets the infinite before us. Every hymn, every reading and every psalm, every embrace you have given me, every face I have kissed, is a sign of the good God who dwells in Marcos. It is an overabundance I had never experienced, nor could have imagined. I suffer with great pain, but I am deeply happy. For who am I to receive such a gift from heaven as the certainty of Marcos? Who am I to be called to a relationship with the Mystery like the one he had? The Mercy God shows me in giving me this is beyond all measure. He gives us this gift: now only the infinite will be enough for us. Now only God will be enough for our torn human hearts.
Politics, the economy, what we study or where we work, what we are living now, the relationships with our loved ones and friends, everything becomes true again. Because everything is clothed in this waiting and this question: is there anything that lasts for ever? Yes. It exists. Because we have seen it and we see it. He always wanted to present God to the world. And these days he is doing so in a radical way. All or nothing, as he was. And Christ is here. Friends, the suffering of losing a ‘form’ of relationship is not incompatible with the peace and the certainty that God is here. The heartbreak is not incompatible with the joy that God present gives us. Everything our hearts desire, and today more than ever, exists. We saw it in Marcos and we see it among us today. We see it in the unity of a people where the Lord willed to create Marcos. He had it all planned. To take Marcos he had to be sure that he was giving his ‘yes’ freely and happily. And let me prove it to you: on 11 February Marcos wrote this. ‘ENTERING THE SEMINARY: Dizziness and full trust, I am Yours, Christ. May this be a path of holiness. Happy to give you my life! Let this prevail over whatever I don’t feel like doing, whatever makes me lazy or looks like future hard work. I entrust myself to you, Mary. Our Lady of Lourdes, make me faithful! Make me a saint!’
Do you see? Marcos departed fully happy, as he had never been before. And he wants to give us this peace. Let the pain enter your hearts, dive deep into the suffering to discover the desire for the infinite that characterised Marcos. But plunge into life as well. Be attentive to what God gives us, be attentive to the reality that fascinated Marcos. Because that is where we will find the peace God gives us. Do not cover up your pain, your questions, your suffering, the missing him, or the longing to be with him. Live them until those questions define you. Otherwise we will be scorning the gift Marcos is giving us. Tell one another what fascinated you about Marcos, remember what he used to say to you, tell one another about Christ and remember him, Christ who became more flesh through my brother. May the yes he gave also be our yes to living this suffering and this grace. Let us ask for his closeness to the Lord, his privileged relationship with the Father, and let us celebrate that he is now happy for ever. Rest in this certainty, in the image of his smile from heaven.
My relationship with Marcos is better now than ever. Now that I cannot touch him or embrace him, he is more mine, more within me, than ever. Today Marcos gives himself to me more than he did three days ago. The best of Marcos, Christ, is infinitely more present today than ever. He is more our friend today than ever. Word is already reaching me of the things that are happening. Many people are sending me testimonies of what God and Marcos are doing from heaven. I have to thank God for being a witness to such a spectacle. Please, keep telling me about it. It is already happening.
I ask you to keep one another company, to remind one another of this. I ask you not to close your hearts, but to open them to the pain and to the present. Pray too for my family: Francisco, Itziar, Natalia, Juan, Mateo and myself. Be with us and let us be with you. Pray for my aunts and uncles and my cousins, whom I thank for such special care of us.
I embrace especially Rocío, Javi, the Andreo family. Alfon, Rafa, Leo, Igna, Jordi, Suca, Talía, Virginia, Peter, Alex, Ferrán, Silvia… I am leaving out a thousand people. And I am sorry not to mention everyone by name, but this text would run to a thousand pages. Lupita, a huge embrace from Barcelona. We think of you often. To the whole community of Comunione e Liberazione, thank you for your prayers and your company. To Francisco Javier González Candela, an enormous embrace. To Miquel Carreras and his family, I never stop thinking of you, and of Ángel Vázquez too. Now, with Rocío and those closest to Marcos, we join your club of privileged ones. To my uncle Yago, for his witness and his boundless company. Miguel Ramón and José Fernando, thank you for looking after us.
I shall never manage to put into words my gratitude to José Miguel García, for the company he kept Marcos, and which today he keeps us. There are no words that can express it.
In the last conversation we had, Marcos said this to me, as he was moving to the seminary in Barcelona: ‘Our paths are separating, and that is heartbreaking. But on the great path we walk together.’ And so it is.
I pray for you, that this wound may be fruitful for each one of us. I pray that this waiting and certainty that are given to me now may only grow, as they did in Marcos. Close ranks, my friends. The adventure of this new life has begun. I feel unworthy of such greatness. I long to embrace you.
Nico Pou Gallo
P.S. I ask that this miracle, which I manage to explain with such poor words, may reach every one of you without exception.
VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS, VENI PER MARIAM
Machine translation. If you spot a mistake, do write to us.