Antonio was more and more exited. Luis had opened a new world to him. He started avidly reading his Bible. He knew that he needed to become not only familiar with the Scriptures, or have head knowledge of what is in the Bible, but get so into them that he would really get the total meaning of being a Christian.

In 1st Timothy 6:20-21, he found this: ^“Timothy, guard what God has entrusted to you. Avoid godless, foolish discussions with those who oppose you with their so-called knowledge. Some people have wandered from the faith by following such foolishness.” (1 Timothy 6:20-21 – New Living Translation” 2019)

He did not want to depart from faith. He wanted to be totally immersed in faith and be what God wanted him to be. He had committed a big sin and had been arrested in Paris for what he had done. Then, he did not understand what made him attack the stone statue but he was learning now about the power of evil in the life of people.

He had been brought to Church since he was very little. He followed the motions of kneeling and standing and learned the Latin words to say during the mass. He took is First Communion, and he was slapped on his face by a priest at his confirmation.

For him, all this was just a habit, a motion that you just do. He really did not think about what he was taught to do and why. That was what Filomena, his grandmother wanted her family to do and that is what they did. His father accepted also the routine, but he was more interested in where to go to eat after mass or to get together with his friends to play a game of soccer or play the game of rayuela.

Floro, his father, was a big gambler, and rayuela was his favorite game. The “rayuela” or “tejo” is a typical game of the rural areas of Chile, practiced since colonial times. A stretched thin white rope is placed on the ground. The player stands at a certain distance and throws a coin or puck, trying to make it land right on the target rope. The highest score is obtained if the coin falls on the rope and fewer points the farther from it. Sometimes the bets for the winner could be very high.

Antonio remembered going to mass and concentrating on watching the statues of saints and paintings on the walls. He really liked the different saints. However, he could not understand why they had the same name but totally different faces. For instance Jesus Christ was hanging on the cross in several big or small statues around the church, and the cemetery, but in all of them he had a different face.

He was also intrigued by the statues of the virgin and saints. He started replicating some of the statues in mud, and he did a very good little statue of Saint Anthony, the statue that his grandmother kept in her room illuminated by a candle. However, he did not show them to his family. He promptly would bring the replicas to the patio and drown them in water so they melted.

His parents had moved to Santiago, the Capital, where his grandmother first asked for a truck so she could recreate the country she missed. He was just three years old when she started taking took care of him, carrying him with her while the truck wondered through the streets of Santiago. Only people living in apartments with a second or third floor could see the old lady weaving and rocking the young boy on her lap. She taught him to pray the Rosary, and took him and his family to different churches.

He grew up, as many children do, without any concrete education about faith. He was able to recite the Hail Marys and Our Fathers for the Rosary. He even learned how to pray the Mysteries. There are twenty mysteries reflected upon in the Rosary. Mysteries are divided into the five Joyful Mysteries (Monday and Saturday), the five Luminous Mysteries (Thursday), the five Sorrowful Mysteries (Tuesday and Friday), and the five Glorious Mysteries (Wednesday and Sunday).

Antonio was taught that he should not commit sins. However, he was not sure at all what a sin was. He never put any attention to what the priest was saying during a mass.

When puberty hit him, nobody in his family made any effort to explain to him what was going on. They made some jokes about what was going on in his body and how his voice changed but nothing else.

His love for statues and paintings grew, and at school he learned about museums. He insisted on visiting them, and his parents would take him to different museums in Santiago and leave him there for hours while they would go to a park or to a movie.

After he was arrested in Paris for raping the stone statue, he was very scared. This, he thought, was the time to pray. He remembered the Rosary and prayed it many times. He specially prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries that concentrate on the agony of Jesus Christ at Gethsemane. He knew, in jail, that praying the Rosary had to have some mysterious meaning. He had never put too much attention to rote praying but during this time of uncertainty he put attention to the words of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father almighty. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.”

He realized that he needed to believe what he was saying and made a big effort, trying to really understand the mystery behind this prayer. He found himself saying I believe in God and I know He can find a way to take me out of this place. God did the miracle through an intelligent volunteer lawyer assigned to him. The lawyer sustained that what Antonio did was not a crime against a person but a crime against a property and a property cannot be raped. After he was free, he tried three times to find the lawyer. He wanted to thank the volunteer lawyer but nobody seemed to know how to contact him. Antonio was absolutely sure that the volunteer lawyer was an angel.

He then made his decision to dedicate his life to God, becoming a priest. He knew the only explanation for what he did was his ignorance about spiritual matters.