Javier only: a trip to evangelical radicality, from tennis to the cross

This Friday, September 14, it opens in Spain Javier onlya film that portrays the spiritual journey of Javier Sartorius, a young twentieth -century aristocrat who triumphed in sport, towards evangelical radicality.

Javier Sartorius Milan of the Bosch He died in 2006 at 45. During his youth and his first maturity he turned to experience, live the night and develop as a tennis player, facet in which he became a winner.

But by the time the success came, a fuse had started in its interior and its radical search for a true life, which included a close relationship with oriental spiritualities, led him to Peru, where he recovered the faith he had abandoned for decades.

Then he was sent to Spain, to be formed to be a priest in the seminar of the servants of the poor, but his desire to live poverty was stronger. He left it to live in the streets of Barcelona as a homeless person, until he arrived in El Sanctuary of Lordan enclave in the Leridano Pyrenees where he found his vocation.

After several years, due to obedience, he resumed his ecclesiastical studies at the Interdiocesan Seminar in Barcelona, ​​but a disease truncated these plans shortly before his ordination in 2006. His last weeks of life passed them in the Cistercian monastery of San Miguel de Dueñas, in León, where he died attended by the religious.

His remains rest in the cemetery of the Sanctuary of the Virgen de Lord, whose foundations were responsible for personally excavating.

“He tried absolutely everything”

“The Lord’s paths are what they are and above all, the times. Javier in the menu of life tested absolutely everything,” summarizes his brother Mauricio in conversation with Aci Press. However, it emphasizes that the important thing about the film, which does not hide anything, but is subtle at this point, is that you interpret the really spectator.

“What I want, and I ask it in fact in my prayer, I hope you touch hearts, hopefully people feel the curiosity of stopping and saying what Javier has happened to him”, to go from having as reference to tennis player André Agassi to look at San Francisco de Asís. “He had a brutal encounter with Jesus Christ face to face,” says Mauricio.

Father Joan Durbán, who became Javier’s spiritual companion in Lord, explained in a letter the purpose of the documentary who now sees the light: “What do we have in hand? Show the world the feast of our heart, when verifying with great joy, that this brother of ours was dead and has returned to life, was lost and found… ‘(Lc 15) The darkness in light, from selfishness to charity and that through a specific person called Javier. ”

Evangelical radicality

Throughout his life after his conversion, Javier wrote numerous letters to his relatives, some of which can be read in a book that will be, under the same title, available soon.

Mauricio acknowledges that, when reading them, he thought: “This uncle is more lost than a donkey in a garage”, and every time he told them his plans his reaction was “another story” by Javier.

The handwritten cards were stored for a while and Mauricio reread them in 2006 after the death of his brother, reaching a conclusion: “One thing has happened with the life of this creature and we have not heard absolutely anyone else.”

One of them, dated in March 1995 from the sanctuary of Lord, is especially significant for Mauricio, because it reflects that “he is a person who was with God”, so much that when reading them, the feeling is that “Jesus Christ is talking to me.”

Therefore, the film “is about Jesus Christ, because Javier’s model was Jesus Christ.” Not surprisingly, his two headers were the Bible and the Imitation of Christ of Tomás de Kempis: “And Javier did not remove any coma or any point. For Javier the word ‘However’, ‘but’, in his dictionary he was never: it was radical.”

Tomás Farrell, an actor who gives life to Javier in the documentary, coincides with Mauricio: “The radical word sounds like something extremist, as something bad. But something very beautiful of Javier is that in his heart he has an idea, he has a call and then pursues it, whatever happens” until he finds “the true wealth in the simplicity of God,” he explains to Aci Press.

“Have you already made your bags?”

A few days before Javier Miera, Mauricio received a call from his brother, prostrated in the monastery bed. I was about to go to Beijing airport to go to Hong Kong and, as I saw that Javier did not speak after a while, he warned him that he had to go.

“Have you already made your bags?” Javier asked. Mauricio told him that it was obvious yes, that he was going to the airport. “You don’t know what suitcase I am talking to you,” he added.

Mauricio emphasizes that this was characteristic of Javier, because “he always emphasized the ‘being prepared’.” Sometimes, he asked: “If you had a week of life, what would you do?” Remember your brother, who wants this message to be one of the most heated in the spectators.

“We flee from the saint of stamp”

The director of Javier onlyJosemaría Anglés, explains to ACI Press that having the letters in his hands, he considered that he was reading “a kind of St. Augustine”, who tried to “tried to guide some relatives of his on issues related to the experience of faith or morals.”

To make this film, he understood that “it was necessary that we also show a conflict within Javier, not simply record him in places doing things.” Thus, the internal conflict is reflected when asked to return to the seminar, the enormous difficulties that the disease caused, and, on the spiritual plane, “what we could call the dark night of the soul.”

Thus, the film shows Javier, “collapsing, staggering, doubting or fighting against himself. We flee from the saint of stamp.”

“We really liked this facet of ascetic struggle and inner struggle of Javier, because we believe that anyone can identify with her,” he adds. In fact, the film, which can be attractive to the Catholic public, is raised in such a way to enjoy people not believer or remote from the Church.