Zezão or A Tale of Hope

Four years ago I was invited to the inauguration ceremony  of the new president of our local Rotary Club. As always at events like this, there where a lot of endless speeches, so I slipped outside to catch some fresh air. There I met a tall man smoking a cigarette. We started talking, and I learned that he was a Catholic priest. We spent the rest of the evening chatting about Protestant and Catholic faith and tradition.
Zezão and I became close friends. From time to time I attended the Mass he celebrated in a small church, and he always insisted I, a Protestant, took Communion, thus disobeying instructions from his bishop. When I asked him if he wouldn't get in trouble if his bishop found out about this, he simply said: "No one gets excluded in my church."
But as time went by, I also learned that Zezão suffered from severe depression. Being a priest meant going home alone after Mass, having no one to share his food with, having no one to help him carry the burdens of life. One day he called me and asked if I could help him pay for an appointment with his psychiatrist. He was rapidly losing weight.
Then, sometime in 2015, he called me and asked if we could talk. From his voice I could tell that he was in trouble. We met that same day. He was incredibly thin, pale and trembling. Then he told me his story: He had met a woman and both had fallen in love with each other. I thought this was wonderful, but then I saw the tears in Zezão's eyes. "I made a vow as a priest", he said. "How can I break that vow I made before God?"
I tried to find anything I could tell him to ease his pain. Finally, I said - trying to offer him a different perspective: "You have given God 13 years of your life. You've served Him and His people, made sacrifices for Him, suffered for Him. Maybe God is now rewarding you for all that with the greatest gift of all."
Zezão and Dalila (what a name!) married a few weeks ago. Zezão is now a social worker and assists children who suffered abuse at home; Dalila is a lawyer. Unfortunately, Dalila wasn't home when I visited Zezão yesterday to take his picture for today's blip.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas. 
 
"I waited and waited and waited for God.
At last he looked; finally he listened.
He lifted me out of the ditch,
pulled me from deep mud."
First verses of Psalm 40

Translated by Eugene H. Peterson