Comunidade de Deus e Nossa Senhora

Community of God and

Our Lady

Recife - PE

Dom Helder and the Hummingbird

The Dream of Dom Hélder and a Community of God and Our Lady

The Comunidade Deus e Nossa Senhora was founded in May 1980.

The founders are: Dom Hélder Câmara, Fr. Edward George Figueroa, and two religious, including Carla "Mãezinha", dedicated to the people of the favelas and streets of Recife.

Dom Hélder loved the Community because there, Jesus, in the form of a beggar, man, woman or child, found his identity as children of God and Our Lady, brothers from father and mother, as they said._cc781905-5cde-3194- bb3b-136bad5cf58d_He used to take his rest too.

On one of these days, he arrived, chatted, played on the field and even played ball. After lunch he decided, right there on the table, to lay his head down for a nap.

It was then that he dreamed:

Dom Helder Camara /reproduction

"I dreamed that I was in the field, playing with the children.

There was sun and there was wind.

Suddenly the children looked like flowers, they were children and they were flowers, and they were flowers playing and smiling.

I wanted to participate in this dance in the flower children's garden.

So I started feeling light, light, flying: I was a hummingbird."

I woke up...

Then, Dom looked at me and in a more serious tone he said:

"Look my daughter,when any bad weather,any danger appears in our garden,

and you see a hummingbird arriving,OHUMMINGBIRD it is mebringing the Father's blessing."

I kept these words in my heart, however without fully understanding their meaning. However, over time, often even in big storms, hummingbird came. And it came with faith, nourishing hope, making love alive.

For this dream, por this reality of the hummingbirdin our lives,

it is part of the logo of Comunidade Deus e Nossa Senhora.

We chose Carla's report as a testimony:

I'm Carla Pimentel. I arrived in the Community with only 02 months old. At the time of Dom's beautiful and prophetic dream, I was 5 or 6 years old, but it was only when I was 17 years old or so that my mother told me the basis for my emotional and spiritual security._cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b- 136bad5cf58d_

I didn't understand it well, but I kept it in my heart, like a precious possession.

Years later, I was married, and I was gripped by depression. This disease cannot be explained, it cannot be justified, it is only felt.

I wanted to die. My husband put a railing on the balcony of the apartment on the 3rd floor and kept the key. That porch window beckoned me down. I was aware of the pain that my gesture would cause, in my husband, in my daughter, in my parents, in my brothers. I didn't want to die. But something was leading me to death. I prayed. And he treated me with a psychiatrist and a psychologist.

One night it happened. I found the key to the balcony window. When my husband was already asleep, I got up, took the key and opened the window. He had only one thought: to die.

I looked down. There was no one, only the darkness of the night, and the darkness of the soul. There was nothing outside or inside me. I was no longer me. When I go to play, he appeared. It was a beautiful hummingbird, shining and dancing in the dark night before my eyes. I stifled the scream. It's the DOM restless to and fro, as if to prevent my fall. Then, I remembered the dream my mother had told me, years ago, I remembered that I had been part of that garden, that I had also been a flower-child, cherished by Dom Hélder as big and as small as we are. He did a pirouette and disappeared into the night, and in my heart there was day.

1.Mãezinha Carla participated in the CDNS Foundation

2. His adopted daughter Carla, who wrote this report, joined the Community since childhood and today she is married to Fabio Leonardo, the General Coordinator of the CDNS.