“If I gave a talk and they were present, I knew that my children were seeing how we really were in our home, there was no inconsistency, but a reality. So, this was a reason for them to fall in love with Jesus and follow religious life, because of the witness of their parents at home. I think witness is very important. We always try to live what we preach,” she explained.
Eliete also said that the family would attend Masses and have moments of prayer together. “We did novenas; when there weren’t any at church we did them at home. It wasn’t always possible to have our prayer life together, due to schedules, but when there was a possibility, we were together in our conversations, at meals, sharing our faith,” she said.
The mother also commented that her priest sons, Wallace and Wellington, “always had a great love for the Church.” After catechesis they continued with ongoing formation groups and participated in ecclesial activities. “For them everything that related to God, and the Church was indispensable.”
The vocations of her priest sons
It was when they were taking college prep classes that the twins felt the call to the priesthood. First it was Wellington who made the decision to enter the seminary and then Wallace, who waited a few months to make sure he was not being influenced by his brother.
Eliete recalled how she felt when her sons told her they wanted to be priests: “It was a shock at that time, because I didn’t see anything in them that made me think they would be priests, nor did I encourage them to be priests. It gave me and their father great joy to see them as young people participating in the Church. But does this beautiful call from God on my family cross my mind? I would never have thought that I would receive this grace, but it happened.”
The initial shock, Eliete shared, was soon replaced by “great joy.”
“I was very moved to know that God, from my womb, called both of them, Father Wallace and Father Wellington, by name,” she said.
The ordination of her twin sons as priests
For Eliete, the day of her sons’ ordination to the priesthood, June 29, 1998, was a very special day.
“I even have the words I’ve kept in my heart about what I felt at that moment. What came to my heart and remains to this day is: ‘Heaven opened before my eyes,’ because it was wonderful to see that my sons were being consecrated, they were being completely given to God. They were so young.”
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“When they entered the seminary they were still 17 years old. They were ordained when they were 25 years old. They were still young, so I was moved by a great miracle, something divine that was happening in our family,” she said.
“To this day, with 25 years served in the priesthood I feel in my heart a joy that there are no words to express. I have great gratitude to my God,” she continued.
Eliete told ACI Digital that she lovingly keeps in a box “the cloth that enveloped her hands on ordination day.”
This white linen cloth, called a manutergium (hand towel), is used to wipe off the oil or chrism with which the bishop anoints the hands of the new priest on the day of his ordination.
According to tradition, when the priest’s mother dies, she must be buried holding this cloth in her hands. When the mother appears before God, he will tell her: “I gave you life. What did you give me?” Then she will hand him the manutergium and respond: “I have given you my son as a priest.”
“We don’t know who goes first, only God, who is the Lord of life, only he knows the day and hour of each person. I don’t know if anyone will remember at that moment, but I always tell them and show them the cloth,” Eliete concluded with a smile.