Passion for.....

Living your life and mission "with passion", makes you transmit the positive aspects of a life given with love. Thank you Second!!! for your dedication, devotion and passion put during so many years in the "sublime task of education". many generations have had the good fortune to know and enjoy you. Here we take a closer look at your testimony.

How beautiful it is to share the experiences lived and contemplated from this vantage point of life. The heart expands in gratitude for what has been lived and learned with other people. It really makes one exclaim: All has been grace. As I retire as a teacher, I feel that it has been really passion for education I've had during thiss years. So my feeling is one of gratitude to God.

Thanks be to God for all that He has given me in the thirty-odd years I have been in this profession/vocation. Immense thanks to the Lord because I have always felt strengthened by his help wherever I have been. To educate for me has been to give life.

Why a passion for education? Passion because it has been a very intense love, enthusiasm, inclination to pass on what I knew, what I was taught, what I read. From a very young age, I have been teaching young children to earn some money and pay for a school trip for former pupils.

Reading was my hobby. I liked comics and I loved having a new book to read. I also loved writing. A cousin of mine gave me a diary and I enjoyed writing in it.

When I was eighteen years old, my teacher, Ms. Sotera Alcántara, who today has a street named after her in Ávila, gave me the book of The life of Saint TeresaWhat a wealth we have received from the generations of pupils who passed through her hands! Her kindness and affection for her students was immense. Her way of educating us has always been a point of reference in my work as a teacher.

Educate to listen. Listening to what they say, what they think, what they feel. We are the profession of humanisation. We look each child face to face. It is a privilege that technology does not have. Everything that is going to happen in the classroom is going to be meaningful for the pupil.

When Jesus was entering my life, "looking for my love"Profession and vocation became more and more closely linked. Now I wanted to transmit the Goodness and Love of God made Life in Jesus. And life is to be given, not kept. Now I can realise that it has not only been a passion for education, but also a passion for the education of others, passion for evangelisation. I remember the time when I was in the parish, in my neighbourhood, giving catechesis.

The two passions: educate and evangelise have been like two flames that have united in a single wick and have grown in me. During this time I have always had people who have helped me and accompanied me. The Lord took me by the hand! Thank you! Education and evangelisation have been very close to each other in me.

And I wonder Why? And the answer I give myself is: because evangelisation proposes to education a model of humanity inspired by Jesus Christ and education, when it touches the hearts of children/young people and discovers to them the meaning of life, favours and accompanies the process of evangelisation. I think that the two together will make a change of mentality and culture possible.

In my memories I go back, before becoming a Carmelite Missionary, to my first contact with the three year old children in the diocesan school Pablo VI, in Avila, which began with the infants in the ground floor of the "priest's" houses. Don Francisco López Hernández was the parish priest who allowed me to be there that year. I was able to have my first experience as an educator.

Once I had my own place in Hoyocasero, a village in the mountains of Ávila; here my moments of silence and formation as a postulant began with the wise work that Sister Gloria Sánchez, r.e.p.d., gave me. She will always be in my heart. Then Baterna, in the Amblés valley and a few days in Don Jimeno. During these years my vocation as a rural school teacher was carried out, briefly but intensely.

I remember the children and teenagers I was with in those years. Especially in Baterna. With what joy they came to Avila, the older ones from 8th grade of EGB, one Saturday, in spring, to visit it as tourists. I waited for them in the coach and spent the whole day with them. They brought their sandwich and enjoyed the Rastro, the Santa and the Museo de Oriente de Santo Tomás.

On my first assignment, as a juniora, "beyond the seas" I was able to experience the joy of being Home Salon Teacheras it is called there. In Puerto Rico: at the elementary school of San José, of the Carmelite Fathers, in primary school. With my first superior and wonderful teacher Pilar Costell, r.i.p.d., and her Principal or Director, Sister Soledad Díaz. What immense gratitude springs from my heart to them. And then, in High School, or Secondary School at St. Joseph's College, also run by the Carmelite Fathers. And I cannot forget my beautiful experience with the juniors in the Juniorate of Bairoa. And always with the catechesis in the parish. As it was my first assignment, it marked me and left its mark on my being a religious! Thank you Lord for what I experienced!

Then, in Costa Rica, in a very poor area: the Barrio CubaThe school started with the beginning of Pre-Kinder, and then the first graduation of Kinder. Today it is "El Carmelo" school. I fondly remember the novices in Tres Ríos. And in Barrio Cuba the postulants. What a wealth of Sisters I found. They were dedicated and totally available for the mission, both in formation and in service to the most needy in these countries. Their witness has always been a beautiful motivation and testimony in my life.

Love, as a real commitment, has always been the most important thing in my life. It is what I want to live, as Fr Palau tells us: "If you have charity, if you love what God loves, if you want what God wants, you can do for the good of others much and very much".. MM5,4

Later in Granada, in the school "El Carmelo". I taught primary and secondary school. I finish my theology studies. I combine it with classes, community, catechesis. What a richness at all levels. What an experience with the remodelling of the school and the community. The time spent here has been very intense and profitable. The sisters always working for the good of the students and families have always been a wonderful example for me!Thanks to the Congregation for everything!

And now, from Getafe, Perales del Río, in the Santa Teresa school. I had made my experienceI was a novice here. As a teacher and pastoralist it has been a precious time for me. Here I have lived the anniversary of the fiftieth anniversary of the presence of the Sisters. With gratitude to Sister Juana Irizar, R.I.P., with whom I lived in Granada. She was Provincial, of the former province of Madrid, when Saint Maravillas de Jesús asked her to make a Escuelita for the poor children of this place, a district of Getafe. The street of the school is called Dolores Valle, one of the first Sisters who left their mark here.

And, with education, confirmation catechesis, in the parish of Saints Justo and Pastor. Thank you, Sisters, Fr Fran, teachers and families, who have accompanied me on this journey! My affection and gratitude will always be alive in my heart.

If there is one Gospel text with which I would like to end this personal testimony of passion for education and evangelisation, it is that of the Prodigal Son. Every day in the classroom, for me, has been to see, to approach, to listen, to heal, to take the pupil upon myself and to carry him on my shoulders in the time of each course. AcoTo accompany in faith, silence, interiority, solidarity..., in short, to educate for the coming outdoors.

And I end with this poem-prayer:

Glory to the God forever encamped

in our midst!

Glory to the one who is your preferred Word

and has ordered us to listen!

Glory be to the Spirit who dwells in us

and sustains us! Glory. Thank you! Amen.

Second Sanchez