alceu amoroso lima’s spiritual itinerary desert and faith’s ecstasy

This paper aims to show a little bit of Alceu Amoroso Lima’s (1893-1983) spiritual trajectory, the mainly catholic leadership in Brazil throughout XX century.  Amoroso Lima was a victim of the Agnosticism lived in the beginning of that century, exactly when he rediscovered religion as a source of life and turned into Catholicism.  All these changes happened during his strong friendship with two important intellectuals of that time: the writer Jackson de Figueiredo and the theologian Father Leonel Franca.  Amoroso Lima kept a non-stopping Correspondence with them, and then faced a kind of “spiritual battle” through six years, giving another significance to the Epistolography as a literary gender.  This research follows the “desertic paths” faced by Amoroso Lima up to his final meeting with God, the doubts and certainties, faults and lucky hits, specially in the peculiar difficulties of those who believe in God.

Keywords: theology; literature; spirituality; conversion.