This is the witness given by Bob Sampson to Catholic university students in Pennsylvania in March

2010.

Hi, my name is Bob Sampson. Let me first give you a little background about myself. I am a
convert to the Catholic Church. When I was growing up, I was baptized in the Methodist church but I
rarely went. I got involved in drinking and drugs at a very young age, around 11 years old. For all of
my teen life I lived in this way. At age sixteen I got my first job. At this time I began to realize that my
time was worth something, at this point in my life my time was worth the money I was making. A few
years later I started to spend time with a girl that I worked with, who is now my wife Sharon. When
you have a girlfriend the second thing you realize about time is that it is not yours, you have to share it
with another. After Sharon and I were married, I was still drinking heavily on occasions. On one
occasion I was driving about 50 mph and I hit a telephone pole. I was thrown from the car out of the
driver’s side window, and I immediately got up. This was a real miracle. This is about the time I
realized that my time was given to me, and that my life was a gift. Shortly after this our first daughter
was born. During this time we started to attend church sporadically, then a month before our last
daughter was born I became Catholic. Sharon started to pray the rosary for me. She actually asked me
a couple times if I would consider being Catholic. I always told her when they start an RCIA program
at our parish I would consider it. So sure enough a new priest came to the parish and started the RCIA
program. It was not so much a catechesis, but what he wanted for us first was a friendship. Fifteen
years later, some of us are still friends. I actually met the Charismatic movement and was “baptized in
the Spirit,” but I felt something was still missing. Then I met the Franciscans of the Immaculate. These
particular charisms in the church were a great help to me but I still felt there was something lacking.
They really helped me in my spiritual life, but how could I stay with the people at my work who were
completely against the Church or would swear constantly? I was basically told to stay away from them.
Then when we started taking courses offered by the Diocese of Fall River, we met Fr. Michael Carvill
who was teaching a course on Christology. Here we met a man who spoke about Christ and the
apostles as his best friends, not someone who was around 2,000 years ago, but someone who was
present here and now. I asked to meet with him for spiritual direction. He told me I should always be
reading one book on the history of the church and one book on the saints. He then told me to go to this
address and you will meet people there doing school of community. He said you may not understand it
at first but give it a couple of weeks, then if you need more spiritual direction come back to see me.
Needless to say I didn’t go back for spiritual direction. I was immediately struck by school of
community. Fr. Vincent Nagle was there and for me it was like Christ with his apostles. He always
spoke of his experience when explaining the text.

School of community started a new path for me with many new encounters and a new way of
thinking that Christ was no longer just someone who was present on Sunday at church, but He was
present in all of my life: my family, my work, in every environment I found myself. I became more
aware of His presence. Fr. Giussani says this in the book on charity “Man’s awareness is the capacity
to order all things towards their destiny, towards their origin and their destiny: this awareness unites
things, and thus it is the Creator’s tool for completing His work.” (Charity)

Now I would like to share a few stories of how meeting this experience has changed me,
opened me up more to letting Him be the one to decide what I do with my time since it belongs to
Him. It has been about two years since my mother passed away and almost three years since my
father’s passing. During the two years leading up to their passing they had many medical problems.
My mother had emphysema and entered the hospital with a collapsed lung. During this time they
vented her which means they stuff a tube down your throat to have a machine breathe for you. The
worst part is you can no longer talk and my mother would be very angry so they sedated her
constantly. Then she started to get better, which was a miracle since she had been on oxygen for such a
long time because of her emphysema. Usually you do not get taken off the ventilator. My mother and
father are both stubborn. She came home before she was completely better and the very next day I just
happened to come home in the middle of the day from work to get money before going to pick up
some parts for work. When I arrived home my mother was stuck on the couch and could not move, and
my father had fallen in the basement trying to get my mother a bedpan and he broke his hip. For the
next few years up until their passing we were cooking all their meals, taking them to hospital and
doctor visits, and on a daily basis giving them their medications. My father had so many medications
when leaving the rehab they put it in grocery bags. He had 20 prescriptions. You can feel overwhelmed
immediately. The difference for me, the way I could stay in front of my parents with all their suffering
was the fact that there is meaning to their life, that they belong to Another. Two things usually happen
in these cases: you either want to remove their pain or you want to put them on machines to keep them
living forever. We had the grace of meeting the Movement so we could accompany them to their
destiny. It was only in the awareness of a tenderness Christ has for me that I could have this tenderness
for my own parents.

I would also like to say how Christ is working among my coworkers. My company is a mid-
size company with about 260 employees. I have been working there for 25 years, and I have known
many of the people there for that long. Everyday, many of the people go there mechanically, full of
misery, doing the same thing day after day. They often ask me how I can be happy. I usually reply
because I know that my being here is for me, so why not be happy. After meeting the Movement, I
would always invite my coworkers to all the events, school of community, and to read Traces. I got
some response to these invitations, but not much. After a while I just didn’t worry about it. I began to
stay with them where they were at, and I started reading a small booklet with a group of them about
work. It was a series of talks Fr. Giussani had presented. From this grew a greater friendship with one
particular person. His name is Ronnie and he is from the Philippines. One day he came into work and
said he needed to talk to me about something important. I walked with him around the building and he
began to tell me how he had been accused of touching a young girl. Today when this happens you are
convicted before you go to trial. You have to prove your innocence. Basically, I told him I don’t know
what I can do to help but I will stay with you no matter what. I will even visit you in jail. That very
Thursday I did not go to work, but he called me that night and asked if I still met at the church. He
came to school of community that night, and he has been coming ever since. He went to trial last
summer and as usual in these cases he was found guilty. But the judge continued for one day before
sentencing. Ronnie called me to write a letter for him, so that night I wrote a letter asking the judge for
leniency. I said he was a friend, and also as his boss he is crucial to my business. I said he also had
participated in the community through charitable works by assisting the immigrants in the area. He was
sentenced to a two year jail sentence, but after the judge read the letters it was agreed that he would be
under house arrest with a bracelet around his ankle. They asked immediately if he would keep his job
and I said yes. I really wasn’t certain; usually if you are found guilty of crimes like this they terminate
you. I called work and spoke to the human resource person and she agreed that he could keep his job.
He is only allowed to go back and forth to work. He could pick one religious activity to attend and he
chose school of community.

I also spoke with many people at work about the death of my parents. There is a group of
Portuguese ladies that all lost their mothers around the same time my mother passed away. I had a
memorial Mass for my mother and invited these ladies, and they were struck by the outpouring of
compassion from the community. Ever since then we speak on a daily basis about work and what is
happening in their lives, and we try to make a judgment on things.
 Another guy at work who says he is an atheist came in one day and he was a mess. His mother
had passed away and then he and his best friend got into a huge fight. They were sharing an apartment
and his friend kicked him out. I am quoting what he said, “I am nothing but a piece of flesh, I have
nothing left.” The other guy who runs the shop with me just sat there, and you could see he had
nothing to say in front of this. I asked him what he wanted for his life, and what would make him
happy. I knew of another guy at work who was going through a divorce and he was living in a one
room apartment that he was moving out of, so I was able to find my friend a place to live that very day.
He is still an atheist and still always on the verge of a nervous breakdown but he told me if he was to
become any religion at all it would be the one I follow because it is more real.

I would now like to say what has happened in the last few months. I have been able to say yes
to the possibility of three young men coming to live with my family first of all because I met Fr.
Giussani through the Movement of Communion and Liberation. And from this yes, many more people
in the community have said yes and have accompanied us since these three young men came to live
with us. And they have continued to accompany us after the recent death of one of these young men.

Sami is 27 years old and he lives in the front part of our home, where my mother and father
used to live. He came to stay with us in August. I met him a few times in Attleboro when Fr. Michael
was there, but last summer I went to visit him at a psychiatric hospital in Fall River after an attempted
suicide. While I was visiting him there he told me he had no place to live. He had been sleeping on a
couch in someone’s living room where these people would do drugs. In front of Sami the only
response I could say was come and stay with me. He came a few weeks later with only some clothes.
Fortunately the front part of the house was furnished so he had a place to sleep. He now has a job at a
convenience store. This is one of his first jobs, and he filled out the application and interviewed to get
the job on his own. To most people this does not sound like a big deal but for him it was a huge step
for his own humanity. He has a car and his car insurance that he pays for through this job, and he has
begun to give us a small amount each week. We are working with him so he can work enough hours or
get another job so he can start paying for his utilities. Sami is also an alcoholic, but has been 90 days
sober and just this week was voted unanimously the “chairman” of the local AA meeting that he
attends faithfully.

Brixton was nineteen years old. He is the nephew of Judy, a woman whom I have worked with
for 25 years. His mother died about three years ago. Judy came to me one day and said that her nephew
Brixton was having problems with drugs. There was an opening at my place of work, and I decided to
hire him to see if this would be helpful. Since he was still using heroin, he would fall asleep during the
course of the day, and the other managers did not like him and would be waiting to catch him. Despite
these problems he did the job well, but I knew this job was not a help for his life, and making money
was also a problem because he would use the money to get more drugs. When I had to fire Brixton I
explained to him that here he could never be who was meant to be, and I told him if he needed
anything to call me, and he would call me occasionally. He was in and out of rehabs. After finding out
he was living with a crack dealer I asked his aunt to extend him an invitation to dinner. He accepted a
dinner invitation at my home and came with another friend and their girlfriends. At that dinner I made
a proposal to them for their lives, and a few days later Brixton’s friend Jarrod went back home to live
with his parents. This left Brixton with no place to go, so I told Judy he could come to stay with us and
we would see how things went. The fact that Christ brought Brixton into our lives generated a series of
events and amazing encounters.
 The first night Brixton came to stay with us, he ate with a Bishop! Sami is very good friends
with retired Bishop of Providence, Bishop Gelineau. He came to see Sami’s new home, and took all of
us out to dinner, including Brixton. Brixton was not Catholic nor was he religious at all, and asked us
in the car on the way to our home what a Bishop was. He had a great desire to know everything, and
did not hesitate to ask questions. Brixton began to come to the events sponsored by the Movement,
and he was interested and struck by them, and very happy to be meeting new people.

Brixton almost immediately became a part of our family. It did not take him long to become
like a brother to my three daughters. There were never any problems with the relationship between
Brixton and my daughters, and they stayed up many nights together watching movies and talking,
especially during Christmas break when my daughter Amanda was home from college. Brixton
initiated cleaning sprees, and also made Gatorade popsicles for my daughter Abigail after she had knee
surgery in December. He said he had to take care of his “partner in crime.” Because Brixton was not
scared of his own needs, he also helped my daughter Jessica to become freer even in her own home to
take her needs seriously.

One of the events that began and still continues is a series of piano concerts performed by our
friend Miriam. The first one took place at our home, and she played Beethoven and Janacek. At this
concert there was a very diverse group of people, some of whom Brixton had invited because he
wanted them to meet what he had met. Jay was dope sick, still coming off of heroin. Tyler was here
because he arrived the day before from California. He is the son of my coworker Ronnie, whom I
spoke about before. Tyler lost a friend in a gang fight in California. There were also people from our
school of community, including Donna Boyle, the Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum from the
Diocese of Fall River. Each of these people was moved by what Miriam had to say about Beethoven,
and by her performance, which lasted about 40 minutes. Upon leaving the concert, Jay said this was
the first time in three days that he didn’t think about doing heroin. Tyler attempted suicide in
December, but when I went to see him the memory of this concert was the only thing that brought a
smile to his face. There are also many other moments and initiatives that were started because of the
presence of these young men in our home. The fact of them being present made us look at what we
desired for ourselves, and then caused us to share with them what has moved us.

On Veteran’s Day, Brixton invited another friend over for dinner. His name was Nick Farias.
Two days after that, Nick came to our home and slept over, and he also has been with us ever since.
Nick was Brixton’s best friend. Nick lost his dad when he was 12 years old and that is when he started
to do drugs. He eventually ended up on heroin, which is now the drug of choice in our area for high
school students. I went to meet with Nick and his mother one day hoping that he could go back home,
but after two minutes I saw that it would be impossible for him to live there without going back to
heroin. There was a confrontation immediately, and it was a real disaster! But he looked at her this
time and said he has nothing now and he is happier than he ever had been. He said he didn’t have to
have things to be happy now. At this point she looked at me and said good luck with him and I
understood he wasn't going back home but he would be staying with me.

Many people thought Brixton and Nick should not be together because they were capable of
getting into a lot of trouble together, but they stayed together at our home and our life has never been
the same. There have been some challenges, but even these moments have been times when we were
able to judge what happened and to see that Christ worked in these moments to bring friends together
who helped us to live our lives and to say yes again to the proposal He placed before us, that of having
Sami, Nick, and Brixton stay with us. The boys were embraced and loved by these friends, and they
began to see a new way to live, which is what Brixton would tell us. I remember coming home from an
event in Boston and he talked all the way home about what had happened and the difference between
what he lived before and what he was living now. It was never our intent to make these young men
our project but what we wanted for them was to meet what we had met, to embrace them as we were
embraced. This is the only possibility for conversion and conversion does not happen overnight but
through a life time.

Unfortunately, on Saturday, February 13, Brixton went to visit an old friend and it was there
that he died. Even in these last moments of his life, he spoke about our family and of the possibility of
going to a winter barbecue the next day to one of the people present in that house. Since his death, the
community of CL has continued to support our family, which includes Nick and Sami, and many
people have been moved by Brixton’s death, and have begun to take their own lives more seriously.

I would like to read portions of letters that friends of ours sent us on the occasion of Brixton’s
death.

This one is from Lorenzo Berra.

“First, Brixton is a gift of tenderness that God donated especially to Bob and Sharon, and now
it is for everybody. Yesterday to see everybody faces, praying together, the priest that came with us for
the pizza and songs, the people in the room outside selling religious stuff asking what a beautiful
companionship, who is this Brixton? Brixton is now for everybody, he went through the heart of
everybody as Bob said beautifully. He touched our lives in such an unexpected way, a real sign of
Christ's gratuitousness towards us. All the tears, the struggles, the wound, the suffering are taken by
His Mercy, because it is impossible to even conceive what we lived yesterday at LaSalette (the mass,
the readings, the songs, the pizza together, the people around us, the words Bob said, the life’s changes
of the people who were there), what has been given to us every single day if we don't think about the
Resurrection of Christ. He won death, and a sign of this victory was yesterday’s Mass.

Second, Brixton was a man, stabbing his best friend and the day after sleeping in the same sofa bed,
wanting Christ and the Communion and getting drunk and being ashamed of it. Watching Mission and
wanting to become a Jesuit, reading soc and doing the opposite, listening to rap music all day long, he
could not stay still for a second, but when Miriam played the Beethoven sonata he was there to listen.
While he was doing a complete mess he changed the lives of the people who were close to him, he
invited his friends to this friendship, Nick, all his girls, and friends... he wanted to make everybody
part of this new friendship that was born in the Sampson's house. And even in the Sampson’s family
lives were changed by the sign that was Brixton.”

This is from Gabriele Vanoni.

When I got home, both me and Miriam wrote to all our friends in Italy to pray for Brixton,
Nick, your family and all of us. Because what we have seen yesterday is a fact: that Brixton’s sacrifice
is already changing our hearts and this thirst for meaning is a proposal to all of us, to make a step in the
way we live our life, our friendship, our time together, really to question what this time in this world is
given to us for. Because if it’s not for His Presence among us and the people we meet, it’s pointless.

This is from Fr. Vincent Nagle.

Our life does not promise simply a life that is more of the same. It promises a fulfillment. It
promises communion. It promises God. It promises Christ. His death cannot but feel like a . . . defeat. .
. But is it? In any case, the fulfillment of his life was not unknown to him. In some ways, it, through
you and your family, had become his orientation. This tells us a lot about the journey that he is now
making. Let us offer our prayers, our hurt, our sorrow, our regret even, our fasting in order to share
with him the rigors of that journey, and to accompany him to its glorious termination at the throne of
glory.

This is from a judgment we made and read at Brixton’s memorial Mass. Said by Bishop
Gelineau

“What possesses our time died for us, presents itself to our eyes and to our heart as the place
where our destiny is loved, where our happiness is loved, so much that He who possesses time dies for
our time. The Lord, He to whom time belongs, is good”. (L. Giussani, Is it Possible to live this way?)

In front of death usually there is only silence and confusion. We have something to say: even this guy,
like me, truly belongs to Christ, belongs to Another, belongs to the Mystery that makes things. This
certainty is the origin of the gladness we can see in these days in the eyes and faces of many people
who knew and loved Brixton. We would like to say with S. Paul: “Oh death, where is your victory?”
(1 Cor, 15.55)

I will conclude by saying the only way I could stay in front of all of these circumstances is to know
that Christ is present. Fr. Giussani says, “What is this charity without which we are nothing? It is that
the first object of man’s charity is called Jesus Christ. Man’s first object of love and of being moved is
called “God made flesh for us,” and because this Christ exists there is no longer any man who doesn’t
interest me.” I was given a companionship that helped me to recognize that I am loved first by Christ,
and then I can love others in the way that I am loved. It isn’t about doing nice things. The rich young
man in the Gospel said to Christ, “I follow all the commandments and do all these things,” but Christ
says, “Then sell everything and come follow me.” It is something more consuming than just following
the rules or doing nice things. It is an investment of your whole life, a gift of self as we are now
reading in the school of community on Charity. It is like Mary’s fiat. Her yes is our yes, so we give
everything without regards of the results. For Brixton, and for me too, life would be a failure if not for
the Resurrection, and if not for the yes to the invitation to “come follow me.”