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    Pedro Poveda Man of God
    Pedro Poveda Man of God
    Pedro Poveda Man of God
    Ebook56 pages45 minutes

    Pedro Poveda Man of God

    By Mª Dolores Gómez Molleda

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    About this ebook

    The inner biographical sketch of a man deeply united to God, free under the sovereignty of the spirit and attentive to the needs of his contemporaries. Pedro Poveda simply sought a way of living the 'sacred' amid the desacralized and profane, in the manner of the early Christians. He and his work represent a renewal and a model for the evangelizing presence of believers today.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNarcea Ediciones
    Release dateMar 1, 2017
    ISBN9788427723245
    Pedro Poveda Man of God

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      Book preview

      Pedro Poveda Man of God - Mª Dolores Gómez Molleda

      Mª Dolores Gómez Molleda

      PEDRO POVEDA,

      man of God

      NARCEA, S.A. DE EDICIONES

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Title

      I. A man and his time

      II. Portrait of a country priest

      III. A short biography of Father Poveda

      IV. Give your blood and you will receive spirit

      V. A great man’s humility

      VI. A necessary element in life

      VII. Our Lady, the hidden motif in everything

      VIII. The charisma of st. Pedro Poveda

      IX. The only limit

      X. Josefa Segovia

      Copyright and Notices

      I. A man and his time

      I have just turned forty-one and I know from my own experience that I am worth noting and can do nothing. By the same token, experience has taught me that, with God’s grace, I have worked wonders and accomplished many admirable things.¹

      Saint Pedro Poveda writes these lines in his diary in 1916 during the tragic days of the First World War. In Spain there is no war, but he is living his own war, that which is waged by faith, by the greatest sacrifice, by eluding weariness when weariness falls upon us. This is the war that never ends; that of men who are dedicated to the folly of transforming spirits. By now experience has already taught him what all of us learn at one time or another: that we are able to accomplish very little. But he also knows something else: that, with God, admirable things are accomplished. The first and foremost is to begin, because Pedro Poveda, without knowing how, has had the courage to plunge into that crazy war of the spirit, and crucify himself with his own hands on the wood of an almost impossible task.

      Have the determination to be more than men –Papini wrote to priests. Dare to be insane with that insanity which is wisdom in the eyes of the Most High. Do not fear death, but only the uselessness of life and the smallness of soul… Crucify yourselves with your own hands upon the rough wood of humanity if you want to be reborn and foster a rebirth in others.²

      The war of the rebirth of self and the rebirth of others is not waged by the sword, not even by the swift stroke of ex-communication, but by the slow process of charity. That is why the figure of Pedro Poveda has nothing to do with that of an inflexible man of the early twentieth-century type. At forty, when he writes Experience has taught me… he is above all a man of peace. His outstanding priestly and human maturity shows forth in a perfect equilibrium, in a witnessing to serenity. He is a man who has made a pact –once and for all- with the truth of his own self and the truth of God. He is a free man under the sway of the Spirit. He can write, I am so exclusively for God…³ and then again, It doesn’t matter to me not to know if I please the Lord, but I do desire ardently to please Him in all things.⁴

      Free and full of hope, like other great men of his time, Poveda lived in contrast with the pervading atmosphere. Chesterton lived exactly the same span of time as Pedro Poveda, from 1874 to 1936. Chesterton’s philosophy of existence has been condensed by one of his biographers in this sentence: Le but de la vie, c’est l’appretiation.⁵ Now, in the generation of Europeans who lived the tragic years of the war and post-war, there are names which we can place in this line of the discreet appraisal of things.

      These are contrary to the despair of the Lost Generation and also contrary to presumption, another

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