“Where is your brother?” — Genesis 4:9

Here you have the next sketch of Memories of a Prisoner of Democracy.

Yes, these memories contain horrible accounts of so many cults to death offered through these years at the social abortion altar built for enforcing Unbeing to anyone that did not comply with the psychosocial terror tactics! They tell what I endured through covert malignant narcissism that became domestic terrorism, psychological terrorism, social-control tactics, social slavery, and exile from personhood, while a whole Unbeing War was, and still is, unraveling. They tell of years in which I experienced my own personhood as something that could be overridden, surveilled, interpreted by others, controlled, and institutionally displaced. Especially after 2014, they tell the story of a decade of de facto psychiatric imprisonment and psychological warfare: a long period in which coercive psychiatric interventions became entangled with questions of freedom, bodily autonomy, credibility, legal agency, family power, and the right to speak in my own name.

Yes, those are terrible things to write about, but it is also an exercise of historic reflection: why these lessons must be learned in this way to make possible a never more, after a never again, and after a never forget… and why learning these lessons will empower so many to embrace a more fraternal and human civilization? Yes, the details can become grotesque and horribly cruel sometimes… but this is not, ultimately, a tale of terror. It ends becoming a story of Love, a loveful story, because its deepest meaning is not found only in recounting what evil attempted to destroy. Its deepest meaning is found in witnessing what Love´s power triumphed over. These memories bear witness to what Divine Love can do with a history that seems irreparably wounded. They proclaim my conviction that no evil is so deeply corrupted that God cannot bring forth new life in its aftermath—not by calling evil good, not by pretending that injustice never happened, and not by erasing the wounds, but by transforming what comes after them. Love can take what was intended to diminish life and make its aftermath radiate life. Love can make the wounded places become places from which compassion flows. Love can make testimony become service. Love can make memory become mission. Love can make a never again become a responsibility toward those who come after us. This is what I mean when I say that Jesus Charity can transconsecrate and transfigure even the darkest chapters of a human history: the evil itself is never consecrated, but the life that survives it can be offered, transformed, multiplied, and made fruitful. Then something astonishing happens: we keep growing on, glowing on, blooming on, flowing on. Always on.

There is an extraordinarily beautiful image in Ezekiel 16. Jerusalem is portrayed as abandoned and covered in blood, until God passes by and declares that she shall live. Later comes what Scripture calls the “time of love.” God spreads His garment over her, enters into covenant with her, washes away the blood, anoints her, clothes her, and adorns her. The abandoned one is treated as beloved. The blood is washed away. The exposed one is covered. The forgotten one becomes a bride. For me, this image speaks powerfully about the covenant of spousal charity — la alianza de la caridad esponsal. God’s covenant does not mean that history did not happen. The blood was real. The abandonment was real. The suffering was real. But they do not receive the final word. Love does. The covenant changes the direction of the story, and so the memories that began as accounts of captivity can become testimony to liberation. Memories of degradation can become a proclamation of dignity. Memories of isolation can become an invitation into communion. Then the personhood exile and the unbeing imprisonment story becomes a loveful story because Divine Love enters history and refuses to let death determine its ending. That is the paschal mystery we proclaim: death does not receive the final word over life. Christ does.

No, these memories cannot end with me. In Christ Amor, for Christ Amor, through Christ Amor, and with Christ Amor, we are called into growing together in communion, becoming a living work of Divine Love-with-us. We are called to become what we receive: a people given to one another in love, a living Eucharist, a living manifestation of Divine Charity-with-us. We are family. We are Church. We are mission. We are called to embody and make visible His living icon of Divine Love. We are called to become living sacraments of charity: human lives through which another person can encounter mercy, dignity, accompaniment, truth, freedom, and hope, and that necessarily means walking together: walking as He walks, walking as equal brothers and sisters, helping one another to be, helping one another to do, helping one another to grow, helping one another to glow, helping one another to bloom, helping one another to flow… This is not merely something beautiful to contemplate: it carries responsible fraternity. The question asked after Abel’s death remains painfully alive: “Where is your brother?” Cain answers, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The whole biblical story teaches us to hear how inadequate that answer is. Yes, our brother matters. Our sister matters. The vulnerable person matters. The forgotten person matters. The child whose voice has not yet been heard matters. The person whose suffering is being interpreted away matters. The persons who will someday encounter these memories and recognize something of their own life within them matter too.

That is why I am writing, its an act to adore Jesus Charity with our whole growth: I am responsible for serving as I am called to serve. I am responsible for the growth I am called to radiate. I bear fraternal responsibility today toward brothers and sisters who may grow on, glow on, bloom on, and flow on after these memories have been written and known. Perhaps someone will learn earlier what took me years to understand. Perhaps someone will find language for something they could not name. Perhaps a family will recognize a destructive pattern before it becomes generational. Perhaps an institution will learn to listen differently. Perhaps someone who believes that everything has been taken from them will discover that their capacity to love, create, serve, learn, dream, and grow has not disappeared. Then memory becomes service. Then testimony becomes fraternal responsibility. Then suffering, without ever becoming good in itself, can yield knowledge capable of protecting another human being. So, never again ceases to be merely a cry about the past. It becomes a promise made to the future.

I do not want these memories preserved because terror deserves a monument. I want them preserved because the lessons learned through those years can become seeds. There are lessons about dignity. Lessons about personhood. Lessons about coercion and freedom. Lessons about what happens when another person’s voice ceases to be heard as the voice of a person. Lessons about institutions and families. Lessons about conscience. Lessons about the body. Lessons about psychological freedom. Lessons about the sacred responsibility of caring for another human being without possessing that human being. There are also lessons about surviving without allowing suffering to become the architect of who we become. These are the lessons of this never more.

Yes,  this is a never more — and therefore, what now? Now we build differently. Now we accompany differently. Now we listen differently. Now we love differently. Now we become responsible for making possible conditions in which another human being can flourish. That is how a memory of suffering can become a living work of charity.

I have also thought about Mary Magdalene while writing these words. She comes to the tomb expecting to encounter death. Instead, she encounters the Risen Christ. And then she is sent. That movement matters enormously to me. She encounters new life, and new life immediately becomes mission. The resurrection is not something to possess privately. It sends. It announces. It creates witnesses. This is the movement I want these memories to make: not from suffering into endless contemplation of suffering, but from suffering toward resurrection, and from resurrection toward mission: We are family. We are Church. We are mission (that is the tittle of Jesus Charity´s iconography). We are called to witness that resurrection can become present in the here and now: whenever dignity is restored, whenever communion defeats isolation, whenever another person’s humanity is recognized, whenever somebody helps another human being grow into the fullness of who they are called to become.

Yes, through this story runs gratitude.Gratitude for Mikhael as my guardian angel (today is the guardian angels´feast) and to Jesus Charity, for the infinite gift and joy of giving Him light. Gratitude for the family of Heaven. Gratitude for every moment in which I was guarded, accompanied, redirected toward life, or reminded that darkness was never entitled to define the whole horizon. Today I give thanks for that guardianship—not only for what has already been, but for what I trust will continue more and more, forever more. Because this story is still growing. Its growthful stars are still growing, still glowing, still blooming, still flowing, growing together in more and more communion, on and on, always on.

I imagine that journey through an image that has become deeply meaningful to me: a red lamp-post standing beside the Living Church-boat with its incarnated charity nets full of fishes, that become growthful stars as the sword is raised towards the lamp post, that is color “faro vivo”, as we know it in Jesus Charity´s iconography.  Its signs point toward many destinations. One sign points upward, toward the Moon, sign of walking together as a human family of brothers and sisters that walk in Love, for Love, by Love and with Love. When the goeiz torch-sword is raised toward the lamp, the image says: there is still new life ahead, there is a whole mission ahead as domestic church, as pastores domésticos. This family evangelization project brings new life to darknesses never reached before, radiating His new albor as stars of Heaven that radiate new life in the middle of the world. There are still places we have never reached. There are still brothers and sisters we have never met. There are still children who have not yet been born. There are still lives that may be changed by lessons we choose not to bury. There are still works of charity waiting to become incarnate. There are still new forms of communion waiting to be built. There is still Light enough to show the way.

So… yes: the Memories of a Prisoner of Democracy contain terrible accounts, but terror, torture and cruelty are not their identity. Love is. They are a loveful story because they testify not merely to what happened, but to what Love can bring forth afterward. They tell of wounds, but they are written for growth. They tell of psychological captivity, but they are written toward freedom. They tell of social isolation, but they are written for communion. They tell of the denial of personhood, but they are written in service of a world in which the personhood and inherent dignity of every brother and sister are recognized. They tell of a past that must never be repeated, while asking what we are willing to build so that never again becomes something more than words… because we remain responsible for the wounds we are called to heal in His body, as rebuilders of communion, so His whole living body can grow on, glow on, bloom on and flow on as a mystical body full of a sacramental motherhood that comes from the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We are responsible for the brother, responsible for the sister, responsible for the child, responsible for those whose names we do not yet know, responsible for serving as we are called to serve, responsible for radiating the growth we are called to radiate, mesponsible for helping create the conditions in which another human being can grow on, glow on, bloom on, and flow more and more, forever more. Yes, this is our fidelity to His alliance of charity: allowing Divine Love to shape our lives until we increasingly become what we are called to be—living icons of Divine Charity-with-us as a family, as a domestic Church, as a mission, as a living Eucharist, as a people walking together as equal brothers and sisters, allowing the Holy Spirit to form our whole person so that our lives become a living work of Divine Love.

So, the memories sketching continue. I am still not finished; there is more terror, torture, pain, cruelty, and cults to death pending to be sketched, although the most difficult ones are already written. A possible date to finish this sketch, right now, is on October 12, Día de la Raza… but no matter how much psychological and domestic terrorism are still being sketched, these memories continue not toward terror, but toward testimony; not toward hatred, but toward charity; not toward the grave, but toward resurrection; not toward isolation, but toward communion; not toward the destruction of personhood, but toward its flowering. Yes, we write because we remember. We do forgive those who had tortured me and had made me suffer so greatly and cruelly… but we refuse forget. No, this is not a grudge; the reason to not forget is not because we are holding a grudge. We remember and deliberately choose not holding a grudge but embrace all the lessons. We remember because we are fraternally responsible. We are fraternally responsible because we belong to one another. We belong to one another because Love has entered our history and made covenant with us, and that has changed us forever. May that covenant, His new alliance and His sponsal charity alliance, remain written into everything we become. May every never again become a new beginning. May every lesson become service. May every memory capable of protecting another person be offered with courage. May every brother and sister entrusted to our path encounter a family willing to walk beside them. May we keep walking together beneath that lamp, the torch-sword raised toward the Light, becoming more and more the incarnate Eucharist Jesus Charity calls us to be for His glory, growing on, glowing on, blooming on, flowing on and on, always on, because Love has the final word, and Love keeps making all things new. No matter how deep a wound is, Love can always heal on and on, always on.

Here at the end, you have attached the latest sketch of Memories of a Prisoner of Democracy.

Enjoy growing together in more and more communion, ever more!