Some lives enter ours not as mere encounters but as visitations—quiet emissaries of grace, akin to the angels of old who appeared at the crossroads to redirect a destiny with a single word or gesture. Among those visitations in my early life was Father Rocha Melo, a man whose presence never announced itself with thunder, but glowed like the steady flame of a lamp kept burning in a humble window. He seemed to carry within him a gentleness that moved as if guided by a light invisible to others, a light he offered others the way one offers bread—simply, daily, without spectacle.

I was a child in Canada dos Pastos, Praia da Vitória, when he first entered the constellation of my memory. My father called him “quick-witted,” but even then I sensed something deeper than intellect: I sensed a man whose interior sky held room enough for mercy to descend. He was at once of his time and mysteriously outside of it, like those prophets who appear in Scripture not to predict the future but to restore to the divine its human face. He seemed incapable of the severity that makes religion brittle. Nothing in him evoked the zealot or the sentinel of orthodoxy. He was, instead, a man who moved as though listening to a frequency where God still speaks softly.

If, as the Psalmist says, God calls each star by name, then surely, he entrusted to this priest the capacity to recognize those names in the ordinary people who passed before him. His God was never the God of fear, but the God who bends low, who listens, who gathers, who breathes warmth into the bruised reed. I learned this, without yet understanding it, in the dimming light of the Santa Catarina sermons. Guest priests thundered about sin until dusk itself thickened with dread. Walking home through the unlit roads of Canada dos Pastos, the night pressed heavily on my small shoulders, as if the universe were governed by punishment.

But when Father Rocha Melo preached, the darkness became porous, like a veil through which the first light could slip. It was as if creation remembered the primal command: Let there be light. His sermons were not threats; they were invitations. He spoke of forgiveness as if it were the native language of the cosmos. He offered reconciliation the way one offers daily bread—essential, tender, sustaining. Long before Pope Francis would give voice to these truths, this priest lived them: blessed are the merciful, blessed are the embracing, blessed are those who walk in another’s shoes.

When I was nine and my parents prepared to cross the ocean into the tremulous promise of America, my father hoped I would be confirmed before we emigrated. But the Matriz da Praia da Vitória closed its doors—rules stood where grace was needed. My father carried that refusal home like a small funeral. Then my grandmother, with the quiet authority of matriarchs shaped by Providence, said, “Go see Father Rocha Melo.”

He received us with the natural warmth of one who understood the grammar of mercy. Two months later, I stood before the Bishop—not by the strict logic of procedure but by the quiet, insistent logic of compassion, the same logic by which God governs the unseen. Thus began my first lesson that light, when shared by certain souls, becomes as sustaining as bread.

Years widened into oceans, but his presence returned to me across the miles, like a star refusing to fall from the sky. Tulare, in the San Joaquin Valley, became our meeting place. He visited cousins, greeted old friends, sat at my parents’ table, and appeared on my first radio program, The Voice of the Portuguese Immigrant. With him, faith never felt like a fortress. Theology was not a locked room but an open threshold through which wonder entered freely. In his company, questions were not sins but prayers in disguise. Doubt was not an enemy but a lantern one carried while walking toward the Mystery.

He embodied Father António Vieira’s insight that what we know is far less than what remains unknown. He honored the small offering I once gave to the parish church in Cabo da Praia—a few dollars—with the gratitude reserved for kings, not because of its sum, but because he saw in every act the intention of the heart. Each time he greeted me afterward, he recalled that donation with the joy of one who understands that generosity is measured not by quantity but by light.

The last time we spoke at length was during a visit I made to the island. Learning I had arrived, he insisted on seeing me. We met at my cousin Mercês’s home in Caminho do Meio. Time dissolved. Our conversation resumed as if it had paused only a moment. Before parting, we embraced, and he told me it would be our final meeting. He was right. Heaven, it seems, had already prepared for his return.

My memories of him remain steeped in sacred simplicity: the sueca card game resting patiently between our questions; the theological riddles I posed, which he welcomed without hesitation; the affection he held for my paternal grandfather—my lifelong hero—even though my grandfather never claimed to be “a church man.” Father Rocha Melo accepted people the way God accepts time—wholly, without edits, without the impossible demand of perfection. Long before Pope Francis said it aloud, he lived its truth: better an honest unbeliever than a pious soul poisoned by hatred.

Some people pass through our lives like shadows; others remain as burdens; a rare few become bread and light. He was among the rare. A soul who nourished without demanding, who illuminated without blinding, who walked lightly so others might walk freely.

And so he remains—neither fading nor distant, but present in the quiet folds of my memory, as a star God once called by name and entrusted to my universe. He is the reminder that the divine still walks among the ordinary, disguised as kindness, humility, laughter, and an open door.

For in the end, he was exactly what the title of this testament now declares: a man who spoke light as if it were bread—offering it freely, breaking it gently, feeding those around him with a nourishment that does not perish.

This is the legacy he leaves me. This is what I carry into my life and my work. This is, and will always be, part of my Azorean testament.

Diniz Borges

Adapted from a text included as a personal testimonial in a book published by author and editor Liduíno Borba and Father João de Brito: Clérigos Rocha de Borba: homens que marcaram a sua época (Clergymen of Rocha de Borba: men who left their mark on their era). A book that records the stories of various clergymen who, as the title suggests, left their mark on their era. Their era, in the Azores and in our diaspora