Then a time came when I thought: "I have to pose a challenge." We were about to hold an internal "catechumenate", lasting a whole weekend, in Queluz (SP, Brazil). I was traveling by train from Lorena to Queluz. During my way I felt the idea of a challenge grow powerfully inside me, though at the same time it seemed so absurd: who would leave their family, their home and their studies to live with me in community…? Who would devote completely to the task we were just beginning? It was such an absurd idea that I thought: "I will pose the challenge. They will not accept it. If they accept it, it is a sign that the Lord Himself wants it."

When I arrived at Queluz, I posed the challenge and a great number of young people accepted it. This clearly showed that they were already experiencing a great necessity of giving themselves to that Christ they had just started discovering. In practice, when the time arrived for them to leave their family, stop studying, working and dating, not all of those who had accepted the challenge could make it. Though we began: we were exactly twelve! On February 2, 1978, we were launching Canção Nova Community and making our first compromise. The artery had already stemmed from God's Heart. Many facts prepared us to take that step. We were already holding meetings at São Joaquim School and some other places. We were asking God to give us a house. We had already occupied a house in the city of Areias (SP, Brazil), we had already built a house in Queluz (SP, Brazil), and the Canção Nova Association itself already existed. Many facts had prepared this birth but the artery itself was born on that February 2, 1978.

Dom Antônio could not foresee what he had pointed at. The following article of "Evangelii Nuntiandi" began with this title: "Usage of Means of Communication." It says: "In this century deeply marked by "mass media" or means of social communication, the first announcement, catechism or further deepening of faith cannot fail to use these means, as we have already stressed in other occasions. If they are at the service of the Gospel, they can amplify almost to infinite the field where God's Words will be heard, thus bringing the Good News to millions of persons. The Church will eventually be guilty before the Lord if it does not make use of these powerful means which human intelligence has been enhancing day by day. With the help of mass media, one can literally "preach from the terraces" the Message that has been entrusted to the Church. Mass media is a modern efficient version of the pulpit. Thanks to their existence, the Church can speak to the crowds" (EN 45).

At the occasion Dom Antônio told me about that first Article I did not pay attention to the second one. I did not know the adventure I was joining. I thought I would stay restricted to that catechumenate… The words of that Article have already come true! Just see the means of communication through which we are acting! Everything was born at that moment. Though the most important is that everything was born in that document, "Evangelii Nuntiandi": the Evangelization of the Modern World. We were born from a document about Evangelization and a concrete experience of evangelization. What we were doing with that catechumenate was a powerful evangelization. We were born to evangelize. Not only to make what I was already doing, the Youth Encounters, but also to use daringly these means of communication that "amplify almost to infinite the field where God's Words will be heard, thus bringing the Good News to millions of persons". Make the Word of God be heard by the crowds! This is exactly what is happening to us, God be praised. We were born from evangelization and we exist to evangelize.

This is what I always say to people who join us: the little vessels that stemmed from that artery were born from and live for evangelization. I do not even know which means God gave you to evangelize, but do not fear. Maybe it is your activity as a funds canvasser, your task as an Intervener in Prayers, your participation in our activities, and your work in our kitchens… anything the Lord has awoken or will awake inside you. We should not be so "modest" to consider ourselves so little and low that we are not capable of being useful. Maybe God will cause you to make great things. Is this not exactly what happens in a blood vessel surgery? The doctor will extract that big artery that was about to burst and a smaller artery will be the new main artery in place of that one who was removed due to necessity. Maybe you are a little artery and you think you are useless, though God can make you a David.

When David was anointed he was the smallest of all his brothers and even Samuel his father did not agree with his anointment, he wanted to have his eldest son anointed because this latter was the strongest and most handsome son. Though God said: "No, Samuel, beware for men only see external appearances but God sees with His Heart." Samuel had to learn: God did not choose any of the bigger brothers. It was the last one, that one Samuel hardly took notice of, that God commanded him to anoint. Maybe you are just a "little artery" like David, but it is through you that God wants to act. Even though you can be a very simple artery now, God can transform you in a big artery. One interesting fact is, God be praised, our birth shows that at that time there were already many people strongly bonded to Canção Nova. They could not even imagine how much they were collaborating to its existence. Without them, Canção Nova would never come into light.

Dom Antônio came to define things. He did not even imagine the amplitude of what he was doing: there were people, though, that God was already using at that time as a tool to make Canção Nova emerge. From it the core of Canção Nova "Life Community" was born, with twelve young people and I. Nowadays we are more than three hundred members. It did not stop just at that core. Many people "sprouted" from it and are working in close relationship with Canção Nova. Therefore our very birth shows that Canção Nova is not only a core. Canção Nova is core and Second Link (Life Community and Covenant Community).

Fr. Jonas Abib